Karl wrote:

Mr. Duke:

I sent your link to my list. This came in from a fellow who lives in
south Africa. He's a good man.
He gave me permission to forward to you.
If you have time to correspond with him, I would be interested in
being copied.

Sent: 12/24/2009 12:09:14 P.M. Eastern Standard Time
    Subj: Re: Pagan Propaganda: The Other Attack on Christmas
    Sorry, but Mr Duke is wrong on many points. It is well established (and has been for more than 150 years in a wide range of scholarship) that Christmas and Easter are "Christianized" pagan
    events (along with dozens of others, including Lent, "All Saints Day," and so on). I personally have studied this issue deeply and
   for some years and I'm satisfied with the provenance of the scholarship and analysis. I'm afraid he's a reverse-PC revisionist. This kind of thing does little for the credibility of the cause of Biblical Christianity.

Dear Karl,

No, I won't be responding to your friend, and this is for a simple
reason. While he may be a "good" man, practically speaking (not
theologically; Jesus said only God is good), I suspect that interacting
with him would be like talking to a wall. After all, my article is
sufficient to refute his thesis. And the fact that it didn't even cause
him to question his beliefs one iota is quite telling.

As for his assertion, just because he says he has "studied" the issue
and that I'm wrong doesn't make it so. Many Muslims and atheists have
studied the question of religion and say Christians are wrong, period.
And understand that the tactic your friend uses to discredit Christmas
is the same one many of these people will use to discredit Christianity
itself. They will say that Mithraism involves a virgin birth, 12
apostles, a figure who died for our sins, etc. and that this means
Christians just co-opted the Mithras story. What is the problem? All
those assertions about Mithraism are false, it appears; they were made
up out of whole cloth. And the same is, it seems, true of the idea that
Christmas was influenced by Mithraism and/or other pagan religious
beliefs. Of course, I'm sure your friend has his sources that say
otherwise, just as the Muslims and atheists have sources that make those
specious claims about Mithraism birthing Christianity. And just as your friend will never
admit he could be in error, they will insist they're right as well. But
do you really want to align yourself with people who use this tactic?

I also should point out that I received a very interesting email from a
historian in Italy. He said that there is new research out of Israel,
conducted by a Jewish source, indicating that Jesus actually was born on
the 25th. If this is true, I myself was incorrect in one of my
assertions in my piece. Is it true? I don't know, not any more than your
friend knows about the historicity of his claims. The only difference
between us is that I am mindful of Confucius' saying, "Wisdom is,
when you know something, knowing that you know it; and when you do not
know something, knowing that you do not know it." Of course, your friend
would now probably say, "Aha! Duke is quoting a pagan!" I suppose
nothing can be true if a pagan said it, even though pagans expressed
certain truths that the Bible does itself.

At the end of the day, what is the reality about the history here? Well,
Napoleon once said, "History is a series of agreed upon myths." I'm not
quite that cynical, but we should note the truth behind his statement.
The fact is that history (like the Bible and even the Constitution, as
we, sadly, have seen) can be easily spun to fit an agenda. And it's
especially easy with history because its book is the size of the world
and contains innumerable pages, and many of those pages are very hard to
read. That is to say, history is often very fuzzy; it's often difficult to
ascertain what really happened at a given time. This is just another
reason why it's silly — profoundly silly — when some people claim that we
should dispense with almost 2000 years of Christian tradition in the
name of some specious analysis of history, history which, mind you,
these folks usually don't even know very well. Moreover, even if they
did, they lack the wisdom to place it in proper perspective anyway.

And, really, if we are to be constrained by the reason God gave us, the
anti-Christmas crowd simply cannot win this debate. Because aside from
the fuzziness of history, there is the following point I made in my piece:

If we were to discard all things pagan, I should think we'd plunge
ourselves back into the Stone Age. We walk on concrete, record our
knowledge with letters, and designate our months with names
originated/invented by the pagan Romans. We steer our boats with rudders
invented by the pagan Chinese; make calculations with numbers invented
by pagan Indians; and create computer graphics, medical imaging, and
designs for buildings and bridges using geometry formalized by pagan Greeks. And
much of our philosophy (and much of that drawn upon by early Christians,
mind you) was generated by pagans such as Aristotle and Plato. Should we
"go Taliban" and burn all their works — and other books thus
influenced? A pious Christian must believe that pagans could not have
had the whole Truth, but only an ignorant Christian would believe they
had no Truth.

The point is that even if — and, again, there's no evidence it's the
case — early Christians did co-opt a pagan festival, it wouldn't matter.
The fact is that we celebrate Jesus' birthday on the 25th, not Mithras
or Sol or anything else. As for any pagan "influence" that might exist
to this day, my above paragraph addresses it. Much of what we have
originated in pagan times. "A pious Christian must believe that pagans
could not have had the whole Truth, but only an ignorant Christian would
believe they had no Truth," and this is the truth. The early Christians
did not come as a bull in a China shop, clumsily destroying everything
that came before. They came to correct. If pagan traditions accorded
with Truth, they could be retained; it was only when they didn't that
they had to be discarded. This is simple wisdom.

What this means in practice is that if we have decorations with pagan
origin, such as a Christmas tree, mistletoe, etc., there is nothing
wrong with displaying them. All celebrations are attended with some kind
of decorations. No one worships the tree, after all. It's just a pretty
decoration.

Frankly, the whole thing is supremely silly. The sin here is wasting
time initiating such a battle, which is what the anti-Christmas forces
are doing (all in the name of a certain kind of prejudice, and I think
it's obvious what it is).

I wish you a very merry and blessed Christmas and the best of new years.

               © 2009 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved