“Learn not the way of the heathen” (Jeremiah 10:2, KJV)

We know we are in the Christmas season—that time of year true Christians dread—when we find ourselves humming along with the piped-in music at the store and suddenly realize it is a Christmas tune. The church has published many messages over the years about the pagan origins of Christmas, but it is rare to hear or read about the New Year’s Eve celebrations that occur just a week later. This article is intended to fill that gap.

The Internet is also shockingly devoid of useful articles on this subject—most of the more popular ones are from church of God groups. One of these, “The Truth About New Year’s!” is a well-written article by William H. Ellis, appearing in the December 1964 Plain Truth magazine. Though it is more than a half-century old, it holds up well, so we will draw a few quotations from it below.

On an online forum, an anonymous user titled his entries, “True Christians should not celebrate New Year’s because it is pagan to the core.” Some commenters agreed, but others did not. One very indignant person wrote:

There is nothing wrong with going to church for a watch night service to bring in the New Year in the House of God. In our current calendar, the New Year is January 1st. While it makes no sense for a New Year to start in the middle of winter, it is what it is, and we can’t change the calendar now. This is [sic] not the biblical days, when the New Year started in March. We live in the USA and the New Year begins January 1st here. As long as your [sic] are not involved in drunkenness, lewd behavior, your [sic] doing nothing wrong.

So, where does the celebration of New Year’s Eve come from? Is it wrong to participate, as long as we are not involved—as the commenter said—in drunkenness and lewd behavior?

God’s New Year

Let us first establish when the New Year begins according to God.

Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, “This month [speaking of Abib or Nisan] shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.” (Exodus 12:1-2)

So, the New Year begins in early spring (abib means “spring” in Hebrew), generally falling in mid-to-late March or early April. God notes this but says nothing more about it; it functions only as a time marker. Two weeks after the year begins, Passover on the fourteenth day and the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the fifteenth through twenty-first days, both festival times, occur.

It seems as if God mentions the New Year in passing—that it is only essential for calendar matters. Nowhere does He tell us to throw a party, count down the last few seconds of the old year, drink champagne, kiss our partner, or worse. How did all that come about?

In his Plain Truth article, Mr. Ellis quotes from a book, 4000 Years of Christmas: A Gift from the Ages by Earl W. Count. Let me quote a little passage here:

Mesopotamia is the very ancient Mother of Civilization. Christmas began there, over 4,000 years ago, as the festival which renews the world for another year. The “twelve days” of Christmas; the bright fires and probably the yule log; the giving of presents; the carnivals with their floats; their merrymakings and clownings; the mummers who sing and play from house to house; the feasting; the church processions with their lights and song—all these and more began there centuries before Christ was born. And they celebrated the arrival of a new year! (pp. 20-21)

4000 Years of Christmas, first published in 1948, is still around. Earl W. Count was an Episcopalian priest who died at 97 in 1996. His widow, Alice, updated the book, reissuing it in hardcover in 1997, and it is still readily available on Amazon. Some of its reviews on the Amazon website make for interesting reading.

His book provides the history of the paganism involved in Christmas. Mr. Count did not intend it is an exposé of its pagan aspects, as he acknowledges them right up front. Instead, he endeavors to show that the “Christian” side of Christmas won the war, one might say, over the pagan side. Here is Amazon’s sales blurb describing the book (since removed):

What if our entire civilization could write its own memoirs and tell the complete story of Christmas past? Surprisingly, the tale would not begin in Bethlehem but 2,000 years earlier, in the cradle of civilization. It would be a nostalgic story involving Christians and non-Christians alike. Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, whose ancient customs became part of the Christmas celebration, would people its pages. We would see early Europeans hanging fir sprigs and winter greenery to renew life and protect against the cold blasts of Arctic wind. People who had not yet learned of the Christ-Child would be burning Yule logs. Of course, the most important chapter in these memoirs would take place in a manger surrounded by wise men and marked by a brilliant star.

This ancient history of Christmas might seem like a tangent, but Christmas and New Year’s are connected. The ancient Romans celebrated Saturnalia, which lasted a week, in which they practiced drunken revelry, role reversal, gift-giving, and even human sacrifice in honor of the deity Saturn. Keep in mind that the publisher described this book as “a charming story of our Christmas traditions.”

The Incredible Morphing Holidays

On page 28 of 4000 Years of Christmas, Mr. Count writes:

The first day of the Saturnalia shifted during the lifetime of Rome . . . it began around the middle of December . . . and continued until January first. In its midst was December twenty-fifth, the day (as the Romans calculated), [sic] when the sun was at its lowest ebb.

So how did this pagan celebration containing precursors of both Christmas and New Year’s morph into a “Christian” one? Around AD 375, the Roman emperor Constantine imposed what he called “Christianity” on his empire. Earl Count’s book explains:

There were many immigrants into the ranks of the Christians by this time [of Constantine]. The Church Fathers discovered to their alarm that they were also facing an invasion of pagan customs. The habit of Saturnalia was too strong to be left behind. At first the church forbade it, but in vain. The Church finally succeeded in taking the merriment, the greenery, the lights, and the gifts from Saturn and giving them to the Babe of Bethlehem. . . . The pagan Romans became Christians—but the Saturnalia remained! (p. 31)

In his Plain Truth article, William Ellis buttresses what Mr. Count wrote:

During the Middle Ages many of the ancient Roman customs were maintained and augmented by the incoming heathen rites of the Teutonic peoples. It was during this period that the customary Yule log and mistletoe were added to the popular New Year’s festivities. The Yule log is a carry-over from the bonfires of sun-worship, and mistletoe is a parasite used in Druid rites as a symbol of sex-worship!

As Teutonic customs were added, the date of New Year’s celebrations was temporarily changed to March 25, to coincide with the Germanic spring rites of fertility.

Finally Pope Gregory reinstituted the ancient pagan Roman date of January first. He imposed it on the whole Western world in 1582 when his Gregorian calendar “reforms” were accepted. All Roman Catholic countries accepted this change at once! Sweden, Germany, Denmark and England, the strongholds of Druid customs, finally acquiesced to Rome in the 1700’s [sic]!

A History of Anti-Semitism

Aside from his other faults, Pope Gregory XIII was an anti-Semite of the first order. U.S. News and World Report ran an article in December 1996 that explains some things about Pope Gregory:

• On New Year’s Day, 1577, this Pope decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services.

• On New Year’s Day, 1578, Gregory signed a tax into law, forcing Jews to pay to support a house of conversion to convert Jews to Catholicism.

• On New Year’s, 1581, Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

So, throughout the Medieval and post-Medieval periods, January 1—supposedly the day on which Jesus was circumcised (that math is a little shaky)—was recognized as the day Judaism died, and “Christianity” took over. It was a day reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue- and book-burning, public torture, and simple murder.

Pope Gregory XIII was not the first pope to use New Year’s as a time of Jewish persecution. More than twelve hundred years earlier, in AD 324, Pope Sylvester convinced Emperor Constantine to prohibit Jews from living in Jerusalem. The following year, at the council of Nicaea, Sylvester arranged to pass a host of vicious, anti-Semitic laws. All Catholic saints receive a day on which Catholics celebrate a tribute to their memory. Guess which day is “Saint Sylvester Day”? December 31. Throughout Europe and in the State of Israel, Jewish people call New Year’s Eve “Sylvester,” showing something of the dark humor of which the Jews are capable.

It is hard to grasp the depths of perversion that linger in the historical background of this pagan celebration.

A Pitiful Excuse for a Holiday

What about some of the other New Year’s traditions? What about kissing on New Year’s Eve? At midnight on New Year’s Eve, a person can kiss another person, be they someone he knows or a stranger. It is another holdover from the Roman Saturnalia, an element of the sexuality that frequently appears in pagan celebrations. People cannot resist bringing sex into everything they do.

Traditionally, the old year is pictured as an old man, who is departing, and the new year, depicted as a baby in a diaper, takes over. These images are a reference to reincarnation and a never-ending cycle of life. The modern spin is that one gets a chance to make a new start in the new year, but it is also a tip of the hat to the Roman god, Janus, who has two faces, one that looks to the past and the other to the future.

Various cultures have some strange traditions. When nursing a hangover on New Year’s Day, a person should eat some lucky food: greens, beans, noodles, and grain. Slurping the noodles somehow brings more luck. Fruit and cake are also lucky, as are fish and pork. Pigs are a symbol of luck because they “root forward.” Where do people come up with such looney ideas?

In the American South—and having lived there all my life, I have never run into this—there is supposedly a traditional dish eaten on New Year’s Eve called Hoppin’ John. It combines greens, beans, and pork, several of those lucky foods. And we are the crazy ones for keeping God’s holy days.

New Year’s Eve is a pitiful excuse for a holiday. I attended exactly one New Year’s Eve party in my life in the bad old days of the early 1970s. Believe it or not, a church deacon (who later became an elder!) threw it. A streak of liberality was running through the church at the time, and most of the Who’s Who of the Nashville congregation were present. I was home from college on winter break, and in those days, I was not in the least interested in doctrine.

While the event is fuzzy at this remove, I do remember that it was a horrible night. There was excessive drinking by just about everyone. The attendees tried to force a good time on everyone, and a houseful of supposedly Christian people attempted to out-pagan the pagans. The aftermath was bad—it produced terrible, unmentionable fruit.

Even if God did not warn us against this kind of celebration, the byproducts of New Year’s Eve celebrations should keep us away. The horrible fruit, at minimum, is a hangover. But in many cases, it is much worse: adultery, sexual disease, drunk driving, accidents, prison, and broken relationships. Common sense alone should tell us to stay far away from these pagan holidays.

“Come Out From Her”

God also makes it plain how He feels. He says in Jeremiah 10:2, “Do not learn the way of the Gentiles [heathen, KJV].” The Gentiles were heathens because they did not practice the true religion God revealed to the Israelites, and He did not want His special people to add pagan rites and festivals to His way. We can see very clearly from the Episcopal priest who wrote 4000 Years of Christmas that New Year’s is pagan to its core. It is one of the ways of the heathen.

In Leviticus 18:3, God commands the children of Israel, “According to the doings of the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, you shall not do; and according to the doings of the land Canaan, where I am bringing you, you shall not do; nor shall you walk in their ordinances.” That is plain.

Of course, this verse appears in the Old Testament, and many nominal Christians say, “That’s all fine and good. It is interesting stuff, but it doesn’t apply to us.” Is that true? No, the New Testament confirms this principle from the Old in Mark 7:7, where our Savior quotes from Isaiah 29:13: “And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” God did not command us to keep New Year’s Eve; it has its source in pagans and syncretizing churchmen.

The forum commenter quoted earlier said nothing was wrong with going to a “Watch Night” service on New Year’s Eve because “[t]his is not the biblical days . . .. We live in the USA.” His or her thinking sees no problem with Christians changing with the times or covering paganism with a thin sheen of “Christianity.” Yet, that thinking is contrary to God’s thinking. He says in Malachi 3:6, “For I am the LORD, I do not change.” He repeats this in the New Testament, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Even though we are thousands of years removed from the children of Israel in the wilderness, God still wants us to keep His instructions as He gave them. If He wants us to do something different, He lets us know in His Word—and there is no word in Scripture about observing any New Year’s holiday.

New Year’s Eve contains nothing redeemable. It is pagan to the core. In the Northern Hemisphere, it falls in the dead of winter. It began as an adjunct to Saturnalia, celebrating the sun’s rebirth. We can also add pagan fertility rites, human sacrifices, and later, an excuse to kill Jews and burn their homes and synagogues. And what is it today? An excuse to get drunk and act the fool.

The apostle Paul admonishes Christians in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” The apostle John warns, “Do not love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you do not love the Father” (I John 2:15, Good News Translation [GNT]).

Revelation 18:1-5 (GNT) seems to sum the matter up very well for us:

After this, I saw another angel coming down out of heaven. He had great authority and his splendor brightened the whole world. He cried out with a loud voice, “She has fallen! Great Babylon has fallen! She is haunted by demons and unclean spirits; all kinds of filthy and hateful birds live in her. For all the nations have drunk her wine—the strong wine of her immoral lust [elements of a New Year’s Eve party]. The kings of the earth practiced sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the world grew rich from her unrestrained lust.” Then I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out, [M]y people, come out from her!” You must not take part in her sins; you must not share in her punishment.

Twice the voice from heaven says, “Come out from her,” because He does not want His people to practice Babylon’s wicked ways and go through the punishments for them. Is that not enough of a warning from God that we should not participate in these Christianized pagan holidays?