The Occult History of Christmas
(Chaz Anon) As I get older and more nostalgic, Christmas is the family tradition that I most enjoy and look forward to each year. Though many focus on the material aspect promoted by corporate interests, most people simply enjoy taking time to get together to talk about the year.
On December 25th of each year, 2.2 billion people from around the world come home to celebrate their spiritual connection to one another, paying homage to the symbolic and literal sacrifice that Jesus Christ represents (giving). Unfortunately, many people seem to get distracted by (receiving) gifts from Santa Claus, which many Christians consider an inversion of the true meaning of Christmas.
So what is it truly about, giving or receiving? Materialism or Spiritualism? Many people who celebrate Christmas don’t really know, because they don’t have a complete understanding of the historic meaning of the holiday and the seasonal symbolism relating to it.
SATURNALIA: Merry Christmas the Roman Way
Saturnalia
What many Christian practitioners don’t realize is that much of the rites and rituals of Christmas predate the actual religion. The Roman Catholic Church incorporated many of the symbols and ceremonies of the Pagan holiday Saturnalia, which began as a festival of rebellion and a disregard for rules.
The popular Roman festival began on December 17th as a two day ceremony, which began with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman forum, followed by a public banquet, then gag gift-giving along with continual partying with a carnival-like atmosphere.
It was originally a farmer’s festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season. Archeological sites from the Roman coastal provinces seems to demonstrate that the cult of Saturn survived in the region until the early third century.
During the festival, the working and slave class were able to experience an inversion of hierarchical roles. Roman social norms were overturned. Gambling was permitted, with masters providing table service for their slaves.
This was seen as a time of liberty for the slaves and working free men. They were given temporary freedom to say and do what they liked, and certain moral restrictions were eased. Like a modern day purge, some historians have uncovered evidence that the celebration included extreme intoxication and possible rape and human sacrifice.
The poet Lucian of Samosata (AD 120-180) describes the festival from Saturn’s perspective in his poem, Saturnalia:
‘During my week the serious is barred: no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping … an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water – such are the functions over which I preside.’
Saturnalia grew in duration over time, Moving to progressively later dates until the Roman’s moved the finale of Saturnalia to December 25th, making the astrotheological connection to the winter solstice.
And as late as 1466, Roman soldiers forced Jews to run through the city naked as a tribute to Saturnalia. According to The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators.”
The planet Saturn is named after the Roman God Saturnus. According to occult researcher David Icke, it’s not a coincidence that Saturn is called, “The Lord of the Rings.” JRR Tolkien symbolized the controlling force in his books as a fiery reptilian eye – the Eye of Sauron.
Saturn has often been symbolized as an eye by the ancient mystery religions, and that is very likely the origin of the all-seeing eye, one of the major symbols of the Illuminati and Freemasons.
“Because of the Pagan origins of Christmas, the Puritans banned this holiday and between 1659 and 1681, Christmas was illegal in Massachusetts.”
Turn, Turn, Turn
Each season is reflected by the tilt and spin of the Earth’s axis resulting with the sun being more prominent in the northern hemisphere for half of the year and in the southern hemisphere for the other half. The winter solstice occurs in winter when the sun has reached its lowest elevation reflected with the fewest amount of daylight hours and the greatest amount of nighttime hours around December 21st.
Our seasons are reflected by the amount of sun and darkness that we receive:
Autumn Equinox – daily sunlight is waning, day and night is equal in length
Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year
Spring Equinox – daily sunlight is waxing, day and night are equal in length
Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year
These equinoxes and solstices both have meaning for Pagans and Christians, who both celebrate their holidays on the sacred astrological dates.
Esoteric Meaning of the Winter Solstice
From an esoteric point of view, the sun’s cycle represents the growth of the soul’s consciousness and illumination.
The metaphor is described like this, imagine that Spring is the birth of your soul. Once you have reached Summer, your soul begins its decent from its spiritual home into incarnating to this planet. As the days begin to get shorter beginning on the Summer solstice, the decrease in sunlight represents the veil of forgetfulness where we do not remember why we came here or what our purpose is. As the days become longer beginning on the Winter solstice, your soul is released from its physical presence and makes its ascension back to its spiritual home with God.
In a grander scheme, this cycle is repeated through seasons and our personal lives from birth to death, proving how our life is simply a mere fractal of the universe, the cosmos and ultimately, God.
Interestingly, the Winter solstice falls under the sign of Capricorn, which represents materialism and ego. In America, Christmas has become a holiday of consumerism and materialism.
Linguistic Break Down
The root words of Christmas are Christ and Mass. The origin of the word mass is the Latin word missa, “derived from the concluding words of the Roman Rite mass in Latin: “Ite, missa est” (“Go, it is the dismissal”). The dismissal is an ancient Roman rite (magic ritual) that dismisses the participants of the mass.
In a Saturn cult inspired mass, a sacrifice is required, though it is debated whether it’s a symbolic or literal. This means an “offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage.” In the mass of the Roman Catholic Church, Christ is the representational sacrifice.
From a linguistic perspective, Christmas is derived from the Middle English Cristemasse, which is from Old English Crīstesmæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038. Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is from Greek Khrīstos, a translation of Hebrew Māšîaḥ, “Messiah”; and mæsse is from Latin missa, the celebration of the Eucharist. The form “Christenmas” was also historically used, but is now considered archaic and dialectal.
Saturn in the Church
Surprisingly, Saturn is historically depicted in Christian art in many churches and cathedrals.
On the ceiling of St. Andrews church on Waterloo Street in East Sussex, there is a painting showing the sun surrounded by stars, a comet, a crescent moon and Saturn. Keep in mind that in astrotheology, Saturn is representational of Satan.
The inner circle of 12 stars most likely represents the 12 apostles surrounding the sun/son, which is another astrotheological reference for Jesus Christ being the SUN of god. The outer circle contains 9 stars, the crescent eclipse of the moon, Saturn and a comet that appears to perhaps be diving toward the sun. The moon represents the Virgin Mother.
The Cologne Cathedral in Innenstadt, Cologne, Germany clearly shows Saturn on their stained glass window
Santa is Satan
The American version of Santa Claus is a creation of Coca-Cola during the 1930's as part of an advertising campaign aimed at children. The original Santa is housed at the Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, Georgia. The original artist was a Coke employee named Haddon ”Sunny” Sundblom, "A hard drinking Swede whose work was brilliant but usually late, who made himself indispensable by creating the classic Coca-Cola Santa Claus in 1931.”
Sunny’s Santa was bigger than life, bright red, eternally jolly, and caught in whimsical situations involving a well-known soft drink as his reward for a hard night's work of toy delivery. . . Prior to the Sundblom illustrations, the Christmas saint had been variously illustrated wearing blue, yellow, green or red. In European art, he was usually tall and gaunt, whereas Clement Moore had depicted him as an elf in "A visit from St. Nicholas." After the soft drink ads, Santa would forever more be a huge, fat, relentlessly happy man with broad belt and black hip boots- and he would wear Coca-Cola red."
According to American historian and religious studies scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell,
"The Devil comes from the north, domain of darkness and punishing cold. Curious connections exist between Satan and Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas). The Devil lives in the far north and drives reindeer; he wears a suit of red fur; he goes down chimneys in the guise of Black Jack or the Black Man covered in soot; as Black Peter he carries a large sack into which he pops sins or sinners (including naughty children); he carries a stick or cane to thrash the guilty (now he merely brings candy canes); he flies through the air with the help of strange animals; food and wine are left out for him as a bribe to secure his favours. The Devil's nickname (!) "Old Nick" derives directly from Saint Nicholas. Nicholas was often associated with fertility cults, hence with fruit, nuts, and fruitcake, his characteristic gifts. This odd connection indicates how freely associative folklore becomes and how tangential to the essential point. The permutations of the folklore Devil are almost limitless; for the most part they do little to penetrate the problem of evil." (Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Prince of Darkness 1988, Cornell University Press)
Santa represents a spiritual figure or God for children, which is most operative in the early stages of development. This presentation of Santa as "real” fulfils the human need to "know God". When one gets older, and finds out Santa is a lie, that faculty has already been neutralised and to fill that void, Santa Claus is their to give you a new religion of Western consumerism, the worship of mammon.
This ‘script flip’ is in opposition to the Christian ethos of spiritual enlightenment, therefore, symbolically the modern inversion of Christmas is a satanic bait and switch psyop designed to put your focus on the material world as apposed to the spiritual realm of limitless possibility.
