By Douglas Anele
In a series of essays I wrote  about Easter several months ago, I argued that the biblical story concerning the arrest, trial, crucifixion and purported resurrection and ascension of the character named Jesus is a myth. I also insisted that the Holy Bible currently in use is a highly distorted version of the original documents from which the narratives were taken, and that it would be seriously misleading to take its contents at first value as accurate statements of historical facts. In response to my article, some highfalutin-title-loving fellow who described himself as “extraordinary professor of theology” in a university in South Africa wrote very tedious and convoluted essays in an ineffectual attempt to refute my claims which can easily be corroborated by objective assessment of relevant works by numerous competent theologians,

New Testament scholars and philosophers. In due time, I will articulate an appropriate rejoinder to the self-styled “extraordinary professor” and a Nigerian priest in Rome, both of whom seem to think that criticism of the dogmas of Christianity is an intellectual abomination that must be countered with ad hominem arguments and irrelevant copious quotations from texts to create a false impression of erudition.

Certainly, no amount of personal attacks or obloquy can stop me from criticizing religion, especially Christianity and Islam, because I strongly believe that religion is a dangerous opium which pollutes the intellect degrades our common humanity, and promotes self-alienation, discrimination, fear, hatred and the irrationalities of superstition. For any society, it would be extremely dangerous for everyone to adopt a religious world view or for non-believers to keep silent in the face of rampaging religious superstitions. Without the sanitizing influence of criticism, civilization will be imperiled by childish faith in the supernatural; moreover, scoundrels masquerading as pastors, imams, prophets and evangelists would continue swindling gullible believers with impunity. In my view, considering the ubiquity of religion in our country, criticism of religion is the foundation of all criticism.

The superstition that a Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, was born on December 25, or Christmas day, in fulfillment of God’s plan to have a begotten son that would die as ransom for the remission of sins has led to one of the biggest religious festivals in the world. Millions of Christians worldwide celebrate Christmas because they genuinely believe “that the son of God” was born on that day about two thousand years ago. However, a little investigation would disclose that Christmas has a non-Christian origin: it is essentially the adoption of pagan celebrations which were not connected to the birth of Jesus in any way. To understand the origins of Christmas, reference must be made to the cult of Sol Invictus which originated from Syria and was imposed by Roman emperors on their subjects a century before emperor Constantine.

The cult was monotheistic: it posits the sun-god as the ensemble of all the attributes of other gods, and was consilient with Mithras, another form of solar worship that was common in Rome at the time also. Emperor Constantine was preoccupied with territorial, political and religious unity in the Roman Empire, and the religion of Sol Invictus which subsumed other religions suited his purpose. Some scholars dispute the claim that Constantine made Christianity the state religion of Rome. Probably, he remained an adherent of Sol Invictus until 337 AD when he was baptized as he lay on his deathbed – apparently he was too indifferent or too weak to do anything about it.

Several key features of orthodox Christianity were adapted from the cult of Sol Invictus, which actually modified and allowed the former to spread. To start with, Sol Invictus, like Christianity, was monotheistic. In AD 321, Constantine issued an edict making Sunday, “the venerable day of the sun,” a sacred day of rest. Previously, the early Christians held the Jewish Sabbath day, Saturday, as sacred. The change from Saturday to Sunday as the day of rest and worship further alienated Christianity from its Judaic origins. Again, before the fourth century AD, the birthday of Jesus was marked on January 6. However, in Sol Invictus, December 25, the celebration of Natalis Invictus, the birth (or rebirth) of the sun when the days began to grow longer, was the most important day in the year. Thus, the choice of Christmas as the birthday of Jesus on 25th of December has its roots planted firmly in paganism.

But that is not all: some of the beliefs and practices that Christians take for granted today originated from the cult of Mithras, one of the religions that flourished among the Mediterranean peoples. According to Arnold Toynbee, in his informative work, Mankind and Mother Earth, Mithras was an Iranian God whom the Iranian prophet, Zarathustra, had demoted to the ranks of the devils but who, as a migrant from Iran to Asia Minor, has reclaimed his divinity in alliance with the sun and the stars that purportedly fixed the destinies of humans. Jesus, like Mithras, was believed to be celibate, but unlike the latter he had an Isis-like mother,

Mary, that eventually evolved into a goddess incarnate venerated by the Roman Catholic Church. Mithraism emphasized the divine status of the sun, held Sunday as a sacred day, celebrated a major birth festival on December 25, and emphasized belief in the immortality of the soul, a future judgment, and resurrection of the dead. Because of his obsession with unity, Constantine deliberately tolerated the deification of Jesus as the earthly manifestation or incarnation of Sol Invictus, the sun god. He took further measures that boosted the consolidation and spread of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire: he ordered the confiscation and destruction of works that challenged orthodox teachings and paid for the production of new copies of the Bible.

In the foregoing, there is an implicit assumption that the gospel narratives about the birth of Jesus are accurate, that the content of the stories depict events that really took place as presented. But the situation is not as cut and dried as that because the question of the historical Jesus is far from settled. If one reads the stories about Jesus’ ancestry and birth in the four gospels with an open mind uncontaminated by faith or conviction in the inerrancy of the Bible, one is struck by contradictions in the narratives. For example, Matthew presents Jesus as an aristocrat, a legitimate claimant of the kingship who descended from David through Solomon, and was visited when he was born by wise men. Luke, on the other hand, claims that although Jesus descended from the house of David, he was of somewhat less exalted pedigree; and it is on the basis of Mark’s gospel that the legend of a poor carpenter arose. Luke also says that Jesus was visited not by wise men but by shepherds. Concerning the issue of what is known about the man, Jesus, Alfred Reynolds tells us in his book, Jesus versus Christianity, that “if we rely on historical sources, nothing. The New Testament cannot be regarded as a historical record since the extant copies were written by believers, in foreign countries and in Greek, over almost a hundred years after the events they describe.”

Is Christmas celebration justified given that the historicity of Jesus cannot be determined and that the festival evolved from ancient paganism in Mediterranean communities? To those benefiting from Christmas, especially members of the clergy and those engaged in all manner of business, the celebration is a money-making opportunity. In addition, Christmas holiday is a time for recreation and enjoyment, for visiting friends and relatives. For a vanishingly small percentage of Christians the spiritual essence of Christmas derives from the joy that the redeemer was born who gave his life as ransom for the sins of humanity.

Christians celebrate Christmas not because they believe that Jesus was born on December 25: they are merely following tradition and habit. In my view, Christmas is a reminder of the immense power of fiction and superstition in humankind’s search for meaning; which reminds me of one of the teachings of my late teacher, Prof. C.S. Momoh, that the greatest force in human history is fiction. The concept of God, including the notion that the deity was incarnated in human flesh on the 25th of December, is the greatest fiction ever invented by the human mind.