The word Easter is a derivation of Ishtar, Astarte, or Eostre. All of these were names for Semiramis, the queen of heaven. In the Babylonian cult, each year a festival for Semiramis was held in honor of her receiving Tammuz back from the dead. This festival is where the Easter holiday has it’s origins. Let me explain.

The emperor Constantine’s decree that Christianity would be the state religion of the Roman empire eventually led to the Christianizing of this yearly festival for Semiramis and Tammuz. So, the holiday changed from being about the resurrection of Tammuz to being about the resurrection of Jesus. However, even though the meaning of the holiday changed, many of its trappings didn’t.

First, during this festival, people exchanged colored eggs. They did this because Tammuz considered the egg sacred. He saw it as depicting the miracle of his resurrection and symbolic of new life. This, of course, is the origin of the idea of Easter eggs.

Second, in the forty days prior to the festival for Semiramis, the people engaged in a time of mourning. This forty-day period was held to commemorate the forty days Semiramis mourned between Tammuz’s death and resurrection. This forty-day period just before the festival of Semiramis is the origin for Catholicism’s forty-day observance of Lent during the forty days leading up to Easter.

Third, rabbits were a part of the festival held in honor of Semiramis. The rabbits, with their incredible ability to reproduce, spoke of Semiramis as a fertility goddess. This set the stage for the idea of an Easter bunny.

Continuing on with that topic, in second century Europe the predominate spring festival was a Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon goddess Eastre (Ostara). She was the Saxon version of Semiramis, and her sacred animal was a hare (rabbit).

Fifteen hundred years later, in Germany, children would await the arrival of Oschter Haws, a rabbit who would lay colored eggs in nests for children to find on Easter morning. It was this German tradition that was popularized into the American “Easter bunny” after the tradition was introduced by German settlers who settled in Pennsylvania.

Alright, now as I begin to close out this post and this series, let me say that the issue we face today is keeping a right balance on all of this. Personally, I don’t believe that we should shun Easter baskets or create a picket line in front of Easter egg hunts. Neither do I believe that we should try to ignore the holiday all together.

We can’t isolate ourselves from the world and become spiritual hermits. When our children go off to kindergarten, they want to take part in their class Easter party. When they go into Wal Mart around Easter, they want to buy an Easter basket. How can we possibly isolate them from this kind of thing? Are we supposed to say, “No, honey. Those chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs might lead you to worship the Babylonian goddess Semiramis and her son Tammuz”? I think that is taking things to a wrong extreme.

Here is a good piece of advice for any parent: Choose your stands well. Be much in prayer over what to make an issue of and what to let go. The last thing that you want to do is turn into a mean-spirited legalist who raises a child who can’t wait to get out from under your domineering thumb and try everything under the sun. Easter is such a fun time for kids. Don’t rob them of that. Instead, use Easter to teach them about the glorious resurrection of Jesus.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to read about how God is going to bring down the mighty Catholic Church during the coming tribulation period, you should read Revelation chapters 17 and 18. In those chapters the Catholic Church is called “Mystery Babylon,” for reasons I’ve explained. Chapter 17 describes the destruction of the religious power of the Catholic Church, and chapter 18 describes the destruction of the financial power of the Catholic Church.

Study those chapters, and you will see that the system of religion that was started by Semiramis way back in ancient Babylon and was ultimately merged with true Christianity will one day be brought to an end by God. For now, though, we, as Christians, must deal with the mess that was created by that merging of the Babylonian cult and Christianity. That mess includes the Easter holiday.

So, despite all of Easter’s pagan origins, let’s just stay focused on the fact that Jesus Christ really did arise from the dead. Unlike the lies associated with Tammuz, the story of Christ’s resurrection is true. We worship a living Savior, and that is definitely worth celebrating!

The nation of Rome eventually rose to become the most powerful empire on earth, and the Babylonian mother-child religion (these days referred to by many as “the Babylonian cult”) became deeply entrenched in that massive empire. This is where a Roman emperor by the name of Constantine comes into the story.

As legend has it, Constantine had a vision that led him to convert to Christianity. Whether or not he actually got saved is highly debatable, but he at least outwardly professed to be a Christian. As emperor, he then began a process of making Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire. This was in 324 A.D. And here is where we start pulling some things together.

When Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire, millions of lost Romans flooded into the Christian churches. And, basically, those Romans said to the Christians, “Okay, the emperor says that we are now Christians. Show us how to do it.” Well, those Christians surely tried, but Rome’s old system of pagan religion, which was built around the mother-child idolatry of ancient Babylon, was just too ingrained in the people to go away. Just because an emperor forces Christianity onto his people, that doesn’t make those people truly Christian.

So what happened? Over a period of about four hundred years, those lost Romans, mingled in with true Christians, created a bizarre mix of Christianity and Babylonian cult paganism. This mix ultimately became what we know as the Roman Catholic Church.

Let me use four specific examples to help explain what happened. Keep in mind now that these things didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual process that played out over about four centuries. But they did happen.

Example #1 centers around the worship of the queen of heaven. When the lost Romans came into the Christian churches, those pagans looked for Christianity’s version of the queen of heaven and her son.

But they soon found out that Christians didn’t worship the queen of heaven or her son. So, rather than give up on the worship of the queen of heaven and her son, those lost Romans made Mary the queen of heaven and her son, Jesus, the equivalent of Tammuz. This is why Catholics, to this day, call Mary the “queen of heaven” and pray to her.

Example #2 centers around continuing, blood, sacrificial offerings. Such offerings were a vital part of the Babylonian cult system of worship. Those lost Romans soon found out, however, that Christianity didn’t offer up such offerings. Christianity looked to Christ’s death on the cross as the one, final, blood sacrifice that eliminated the need for any more blood sacrifices.

But rather than give up on the idea of continuing, blood sacrifices, those lost Romans devised a new interpretation for the Lord’s supper. They began to say that a miracle takes place during the partaking of the Lord’s supper. Through this miracle, the symbolism of the Lord’s supper is done away with as the bread literally becomes the actual body of Christ and the content of the cup literally becomes the actual blood of Christ. Under this interpretation, by partaking of the Lord’s supper, we sacrifice Jesus over and over again for our sins. This interpretation is now known as the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, and it is why mass (the Catholic version of the Lord’s supper) is so important to Catholics.

Example #3 centers around the priests. The Babylonian cult system of worship prominently featured priests, but those lost Romans soon found out that each Christian was a priest in his or her own right. As Revelation 5:9-10 puts it, Jesus has “made us kings and priests to our God…” Instead of having priests who were in charge, the Christian churches had pastors, men who were on the same spiritual level as those in the congregations.

But rather than give up on the idea of having priests, those lost Romans made the pastors priests. They started calling them priests, and they got them to wear ornate, priestly garments. These garments were actually duplicates of the garments that were worn by the priests in the Babylonian cult system of worship. Furthermore, under the rules of the Babylonian cult, a person had to confess his sins to a priest before that person could be initiated into the religion. So those lost Romans began to confess their sins to the pastors, a practice which eventually led to the Catholic act of confessing one’s sins to a priest.

Example #4 centers around the vestal virgins. In the Babylonian cult system of worship, a special class of women were set apart for religious service. These women were the vestal virgins. Don’t be fooled by that name, though. Even though these women were supposedly dedicated to God, they, in essence, served as temple prostitutes. To understand this, you must understand that the queen of heaven was associated with fertility, and the subject of fertility brings in the act of sex.

Of course, the pagan Romans soon found out that the Christian churches didn’t have a class of women who were especially set apart in any way for religious service. But rather than give up on the idea of having a class of women set apart for religious service, those lost Romans created the order of women that we now call nuns. You see, in this case, the situation swung from one extreme (temple prostitutes who were set apart for service to God) to the opposite extreme (literal virgins who were set apart for service to God).

Alright, now as long as I am in this deep, let me go ahead and name some other examples of how the Babylonian mother-child religion was mixed with Christianity to produce Roman Catholicism. Again, these Catholic doctrines didn’t come into being overnight, but they were ultimately created:

-Example #1: The Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory has its roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, a priest would offer up prayers for a dead person to get that person into a better afterlife. But he would only do this after a large fee had been paid.

-Example #2: The Roman Catholic practice of last rites has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, the dying were anointed for their journey into death. This anointing was done in the name of the “lord of heaven.”

-Example #3: The Roman Catholic practice of burning candles and incense to Mary has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. Remember that Semiramis had shrines to herself placed along the roads leading in and out of ancient Babylon. Worshippers stopped at these shrines and burned candles and incense to her.

-Example #4: The Roman Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult, water baptism was one part of the initiation rites into the religion. This explains why the idea of baptismal regeneration was found in places like India and Mexico before Roman Catholic missionaries ever arrived in those places.

-Example #5: The Roman Catholic doctrine of the supreme authority of the Pope has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. In the Babylonian cult system, one man served as the greatest high priest. The Latin for “the greatest high priest” is Pontifex Maximus. Keep in mind now that the Roman empire was saturated with the ideas of the Babylonian cult. This was shown in the fact that each Roman emperor held the title of Pontifex Maximus.

But what happened to that title when the empire system was ended? Well, that’s when the Bishops of Rome began to claim it. Today we call the Bishop of Rome the Pope, but Catholicism properly sees him Pontifex Maximus, “the greatest high priest.”

-Example #6 (and this one will shock you): The sign of the cross has it’s roots in the Babylonian cult. Believe it or not, the sign of the cross was not originally made famous by Christianity. Long before the sign ever represented Christ and His death on the cross, it symbolized Tau, which corresponds to the letter “T,” the initial for the name Tammuz. This explains why the sign has been found on many altars and temples that were built long before the time of Christ.

In ancient Babylon, a cross was placed on coins. In other places, different variations of the cross appeared. Sometimes the cross had a small circle on the top of the cross. That circle identified Tammuz with the sun. Other times a full circle was drawn around the entire cross. This, again, identified Tammuz with the sun. The symbol of the cross was even used on the garments of the priests of the Babylonian cult.

So, to sum up, by the year 700 or so, true Christianity had been dwarfed by an unholy mix of paganism and Christianity. This mix dominated Europe into the Middle Ages. It wasn’t until the age of the Protestant Reformation (led by Martin Luther) that any dent was made in the religious and political machine that the Roman Catholic Church had become. And today we still deal with the fallout of a world that has been deceived and confused by Catholicism.

Now, to get us started, we need to read Genesis 10:8-10:

Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD.” And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

(For the record, the land of Shinar ultimately came to be known as the kingdom of Babylon. Today we call that land Iraq.)

Now, what you need to know is that Nimrod had a wife. Her name was Semiramis, and she was the first high priestess of idolatry. Her story is not found in the Bible, but it is certainly found in the ancient records of the history of this world. According to the story, Semiramis gave birth to a son. His name was Tammuz. Semiramis claimed that Tammuz was conceived in her womb by a sunbeam. In other words, she claimed that he was conceived miraculously. This claim led to the worship of both Semiramis and Tammuz. Semiramis became known as “the queen of heaven,” and Tammuz became known as a miraculously conceived, Savior-like figure.

As the story continues, when Tammuz grew up he was killed by a wild boar. Semiramis then wept for her dead son for forty days, after which he reportedly arose from the dead. This was a lie, of course. Either Tammuz wasn’t killed by a wild boar or he didn’t rise from the dead. But people believed the lie. This furthered the purported divinity of both mother and child, and the worship of them grew.

The primary symbol of this mother-child religion was the scene of the motherly Semiramis holding the infant Tammuz in her arms. Semiramis had these images set up as worship shrines along all of the major highways running in and out of Babylon. Worshippers stopped at these shrines and burned candles and incense to her.

Many Bible scholars now refer to the mother-child religion as the Babylonian cult. Whatever we call it, one thing is clear: From its very inception, it was Satan’s master counterfeit to the true story of Jesus. Make no mistake, there is a reason (and not a godly one) why Semiramis and Tammuz interchange so easily with Mary and Jesus.

Well, over the next one thousand years, the religious system (cult) that began in ancient Babylon spread it’s influence through the known world. Would you believe that archaeologists have uncovered mother-child images from ruins as far as ancient China? These ruins date back to several centuries before the birth of Jesus.

And as the Babylonian cult system of worship spread across the known world, it took on new facets and details. For example, the names of Semiramis and Tammuz were changed to fit the languages of the various cultures. Some of the other names for Semiramis, the queen of heaven, were: Isis, Astarte, Ashtoreth, and Ishtar. Tammuz became known by names such as Baal and Adonis. Still, though, despite the frequent cultural changes and the changing of the names, the fundamentals of the system of religion remained the same.

Sadly, even the nation of Israel, God’s chosen nation, eventually succumbed to influence of the Babylonian cult. In Jeremiah 7:17-18, Jeremiah relates what God had said to him:

Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger.

Then, in Jeremiah 44:15-18, we see more of this same kind of thing:

Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.”

As you can see, the worship of the queen of heaven, Semiramis, eventually became common practice in Israel. The people even attributed their abundance and blessing to her!

Next, let’s read Ezekiel 8:13-14. Here Ezekiel says of God:

And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.” So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

Remember that, according to the legend, Tammuz was killed by a wild boar, after which Semiramis wept for forty days. Those forty days ended with Tammuz’s resurrection from the dead. In honor of his resurrection, those who followed the mother-child religion observed an annual forty day period of mourning and weeping for Tammuz. That mourning and weeping is what Ezekiel saw those women of Israel doing.

(More to come next post.)

We’re in a little series on the origins of our Christmastime traditions. With the first post, I covered the subjects of the winter soltice and Saturnalia. With the second, I explained the effect the Roman emperor Constantine had upon the winter soltice and Saturnalia celebrations. With this third post, I’ll cover the origins of three major traditions.   

Tradition #1 is the name “Christmas” itself. The word comes from the Roman Catholic term “Christ’s Mass.” When you know this, it will come as no surprise that each Christmas Eve the Roman Catholics observe Mass, which is their version of the Lord’s Supper.

Tradition #2 is the Christmas tree. Long before the time of Christ, ancient Egyptians brought green palm branches into their homes on the shortest day of the year, the day of the winter solstice. To them, those green palm branches symbolized life. Centuries later the Romans decorated their homes with evergreen wreaths during the days of Saturnalia. The idea of a Christmas tree came out of these historical observances of the Egyptians and the Romans.

The first recorded reference to an actual Christmas tree comes from the 16^th century. At that time the families in Strasbourg, Germany are known to have decorated fir trees with colored paper, fruits, and sweets. In 1520, Martin Luther, who was German, saw the beauty of the stars twinkling through the evergreen trees outside his home and attempted to copy this beauty by placing lit candles on his Christmas tree. His neighbors soon followed suit.

The custom of the Christmas tree eventually spread through Europe. Records tell us that Prince Albert of Germany married Queen Victoria of England and set up a beautifully decorated tree in England’s Windsor Castle. The tree was decorated with candies, sugared fruits, and tiny wrapped gifts.

As for the United States, the custom was brought here by German soldiers and Hessian mercenaries who were paid to fight in the Revolutionary War. In 1804, U.S. soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn, in what is now Chicago, hauled trees from the surrounding forests to their barracks at Christmastime. Once the custom had begun in America, it quickly spread.

In 1851, a man named Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds loaded with trees from the Catskills to the streets of New York and opened the nation’s first retail lot. In 1882, Edward Johnson, a partner of Thomas Edison, invented electric Christmas tree lights and hung the first string on his tree. This was safer than Martin Luther’s old idea about placing lit candles on Christmas trees. Franklin Pierce, America’s fourteenth president, was the first president to place a Christmas tree in the White House. Later on, in 1923, Calvin Coolidge began the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony, which is held every year on the White House lawn.

Tradition #3 is Santa Claus. In approximately 280 A.D., a man named Nicholas was born in Turkey. He was raised in a wealthy family and received a fine education. As a young man, he became a priest. This Nicholas was well known for his kindness and generosity. When his parents died, he even distributed his inheritance and property to the needy. Ultimately, Nicholas became the Bishop of Myra. To this day a feast is held on December 6th, the date of his death.

It is from the life and deeds of Saint Nicholas that the basics of the legend arose. The most famous story is about him making three secret visits to the home of a poor father of three daughters. On each of the first two visits, Nicholas threw a bag of gold through the window of the home. On the third visit, he threw the bag of gold down the chimney. As the story goes, the bag landed in a stocking that had been hung by the chimney to dry. The father used those three bags of gold as dowries to get his daughters married into good families. Because of this, over the course of time, people began to thank Saint Nicholas anytime they received an unexpected gift.

According to legend, Saint Nicholas’ cape was bright red and trimmed with white fur. This was the origin of what Santa wears. The name “Santa Claus” comes from “Sinter Klaas,” the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. The Dutch were the ones who brought the story of Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) to America.

Once in America, the legend began to take on new details. In 1809, Washington Irving wrote a story about children leaving stockings out for Saint Nicholas to fill. A few years later, in 1821, Irving wrote a book entitled “The Children’s Friend,” in which he said that Santa traveled by a sleigh that was pulled by reindeer. That was different from earlier versions of Santa’s story, which said that he traveled by wagon with the assistance of a magic white horse.

One year later, in 1822, a New Yorker named Clement C. Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” It began, “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house…” That story inspired an artist named Thomas Mast to draw a cartoon of Santa for the popular magazine Harper’s Weekly. That cartoon depicted St. Nicholas as a jolly, fat man.

Actually, Santa is just one of the many areas in which America has added its own touches to Christmastime. In 1942, in the movie “Holiday Inn,” Bing Crosby first sang the song “White Christmas.” In 1946, Jimmy Stewart starred as George Bailey in “It’s A Wonderful Life.” In 1947, Twentieth Century Fox released “Miracle On 34^th Street.” In 1964, Elvis Pressley recorded the song “Blue Christmas.” Also in 1964, television gave us the cartoon classic “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” In 1965, it gave us “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” In 1966, it was “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.” In 1968, it was “The Little Drummer Boy.” In 1969, it was Frosty the Snowman. All of these elements and a vast assortment of others that we all know so well have become a part of the far-out, odd, colossal mix that we call the Christmas holiday.

With yesterday’s post I began a series on the origins of the traditions of our Christmas holiday. That post explained the winter solstice and the Roman holiday known as Saturnalia. Now, with today’s post, I need to say some things about a Roman emperor named Constantine.  

Constantine became one of the emperors of the Roman empire in the year 306. Six years later, in 312, he found himself at a pivotal point in his war against his brother-in-law and co-emperor, Maxentius. According to the historian Eusebius, it was on the day before a crucial battle at Milvian Bridge that Constantine prayed to God and asked for divine assistance.

As the story goes, Constantine then saw in the noonday sky a vision of a cross of light. The cross was superimposed upon the sun and written on the cross were the words in Latin “in this sign you will conquer.” That night Constantine had a dream that reaffirmed his vision. Supposedly, in the dream, God told him to use the sign of the cross in all of his battles. So, the next day Constantine added the sign of the cross to his flags, and his army went on to win the battle at Milvian Bridge.

A short time after that, in 313, emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan. That Edict made Christianity legal throughout Constantine’s empire. This meant that Christianity went from being a despised and persecuted religion (which is where the New Testament record leaves it) to being an accepted and even highly favored part of Roman religion.

The fact is, over the years of his reign, Constantine took Christianity even further than that. With the help of the bishops of the church in Rome, he made Christianity nothing less than the state religion of the Roman empire. He lavished gifts upon Christian leaders. He made Sunday a holiday so that people, especially his soldiers, could attend church. He made Christian clergy exempt from government duty. He made churches tax-exempt. He even personally funded the construction of several lavish, ornate church buildings. In Constantine’s view, his Rome and the Christian church should be as close as possible.

All of this, of course, ultimately helped to bring about the financial, political, and religious empire that we know as the Roman Catholic Church. And therein lies the great debate about Constantine. Was he, as some contend, a true Christian who was used by God to greatly serve the cause of Christianity? Or was he, as others contend, a lost man who was deceived by Satan and greatly used by Satan to corrupt Christianity? The answer you get depends upon who you ask.

One of the most serious problems that people have with Constantine’s supposed salvation is in the area of how he handled Rome’s pagan festivals. Rather than outlawing those festivals, Constantine, with the help of the bishops of the church in Rome, “Christianized” them. A prime example of this is what happened with Saturnalia and the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. Rather than forbidding the observance of those days of pagan celebration, Constantine and the bishops simply changed the meaning of the days. The festival of Saturnalia, which ran from December 17^th through December 24^th, went from being about the birth of the sun to be about the birth of the Son. Likewise, December 25th changed from being the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun to being the birthday of the Son of God.

Please don’t think that December 25^th is our best guess for the actual date of Christ’s birth. The Bible doesn’t tell us the exact date of His birth, but we can say with virtual certainty that it wasn’t December 25^th. We can say that because the Bible does tell us that those shepherds and their sheep were out in the fields that night. In Israel the month of December is usually cold and rainy. During that month, shepherds normally keep their sheep penned up in sheepfolds. Furthermore, Luke chapter two says that Joseph and Mary made their trip to Bethlehem to register for the purpose of paying taxes to the Roman government. Such registrations weren’t usually decreed during the cold winter months because travel was just too difficult. Nevertheless, despite these Biblical roadblocks, Constantine and the bishops of Rome went ahead and made December 25^th the official date that was given to Christ’s birth.

So what am I saying? I’m saying that the very idea of a holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus was really just a way to claim Saturnalia and December 25^th for Christianity. I’m saying that the idea of the world annually celebrating December 25^th as the date of Christ’s birth came from the mind of Constantine and the bishops of Rome. I’m saying that it was Constantine and those bishops who linked the celebration of Christ’s birth up with days off from work, parties, evergreen wreaths, and the exchanging of gifts. And that’s where I’ll leave the story until my next post.