Christmas is the most popular holiday in the United States, with about 9 in 10 Americans celebrating the holiday. Far fewer celebrate the Feast of Epiphany. Many Catholics attend a religious service on January 6 to commemorate the wise men’s visit to the baby Jesus, but most others don’t know much about Epiphany other than that it marks the end of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” referenced in a famous English nursery rhyme.

Although the religious significance of the 12 days of Christmas has faded in many areas, it is important to understand the Feast of Epiphany because it exposes the pagan roots of Christmas.

In a.d. 567, the Council of Tours proclaimed the 12 days from Christmas to Epiphany as a sacred and festive season, yet the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches celebrated Epiphany for different reasons. The Eastern churches said that January 6 marked the day Jesus Christ was baptized, while the Roman Church emphasized the magi’s visit as the primary event (even calling January 6 “Three Kings Day”).

The reason for this disagreement between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches reveals that neither Christmas nor Epiphany are biblical. They are pagan holidays.

The word epiphany is from the Greek word epipháneia, meaning manifestation. The first reference to the feast was recorded around a.d. 200 by Clement of Alexandria: “There are those, too, who over-curiously assign to the birth of our Savior not only its year but its day, which they say to be on 25 Pachon [May 20] in the 28th year of Augustus. But the followers of Basilides celebrate the day of His baptism too, spending the previous night in readings. And they say that it was the 15th of the month Tybi [January 10] of the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. And some say that it was observed the 11th of the same month [January 6].”

This is important testimony. Not only does Clement of Alexandria tell us that the Christians of his time didn’t know when Jesus was born, he also tells us that the Basilideans celebrated Christ’s baptism in January.

The Basilideans were the followers of Basilides, who was trained by Menander, who was trained by Simon Magus. According to Clement, Basilides was active in Alexandria, Egypt, between a.d. 117 and 161. His followers commemorated Christ’s baptism on January 6 because the Hellenistic deity Aion was reborn that day.

According to Epiphanius of Salamis (a.d. 320–403), the goddess Kore gave birth to Aion on January 6. Aion is understood as the personification of eternity and was synchronized with Osiris, Dionysus, and Jesus by Basilides. Clement’s pupil Origen explicitly rejected the celebration of birthdays as a pagan practice, but this did not stop many Christians from celebrating Christ’s birth on January 6, since the Bible notes that Jesus was about 30 years old when He was baptized (Luke 3:23). They accepted the pagan belief that Jesus was baptized on Aion’s birthday and used Luke 3:23 to argue that Christ was baptized on His own birthday.

The idea that Christ was born on January 6 quickly spread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, but the Church in Rome soon adopted a different birthday for Jesus. In the early third century, Hippolytus of Rome argued that Jesus Christ was born on the winter solstice (fixed upon December 25 on the Julian calendar). He argued that the winter solstice was exactly nine months after the spring equinox, when he believed Jesus was conceived. Of course, none of this reasoning comes from the Bible but from paganism.

The writings of the 12th-century Syriac bishop Dionysius bar Salibi claim that the Church of Rome moved Christmas from January 6 to December 25 to correspond with the birthday of Sol Invictus. Many modern Christians dispute this claim because Emperor Aurelian did not establish the cult of Sol Invictus in Rome until four decades after Hippolytus died. Yet they forget that Aurelian did not establish the cult of Sol Invictus in Rome; he merely revived it. The cult was established by Emperor Elagabalus (a.d. 204–222), while Hippolytus was still alive. The idea that Hippolytus changed the date of Christ’s birth from January 6 to December 25 to correspond with the birth of a pagan Roman deity instead of an Alexandrian one is feasible.

The Council of Tours sought to reconcile the two conflicting dates for Christ’s birth by making Christmas a 12-day festival that started on December 25 and ended on January 5, the day before Epiphany. Since the Armenian Apostolic Church formally split from the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in a.d. 451, it continued to celebrate Christmas and Epiphany on the same day. The Eastern Orthodox Churches agreed to celebrate Christ’s birth on Christmas but continued to celebrate His baptism on Epiphany. The Roman Catholic Church, meanwhile, decided to celebrate the magi’s visit on Epiphany, even though Matthew 2:11 describes Jesus as a “young child” (paidion in Greek) in a house, rather than a baby in a manger (indicating that Jesus was a bit older than 12 days old when the magi arrived from the Parthian Empire).

The Western world’s adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582 has further confused these dates, but the historical record is clear that celebrating Christ’s birthday at all is a pagan practice introduced into Christianity by the followers of Simon Magus. This practice originally centered around the worship of the Alexandrian deity Aion, who represented eternity, but soon shifted to the worship of Sol Invictus as the Church of Rome rose in prominence in the early Christian world. Early “church fathers” admitted this.

What does all this mean? It means a great apostasy occurred in early Christianity before a.d. 200.

“Scholars and church historians recognize that events in the early Christian Church between a.d. 50 and 150 can only be seen in vague outline—as if obscured by a thick mist,” wrote Herbert W. Armstrong in Mystery of the Ages. “The noted English scholar Samuel G. Green in A Handbook of Church History wrote: ‘The 30 years which followed the close of the New Testament Canon and the destruction of Jerusalem are in truth the most obscure in the history of the Church. When we emerge in the second century, we are, to a great extent, in a changed world.’ … But if we look closely through this mist, we can begin to see what was happening.”

This time period between a.d. 50 and 150 was when men like Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides and others were most active. If you want to follow the teachings of true Christianity, you cannot rely on mainstream Christian traditions, which were corrupted at an early date. Rather, you have to follow the truths explained in the Bible itself, which instructs us to commemorate the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s death but never says anything about celebrating His birth or baptism (neither of which occurred in winter). These human-devised celebrations are compromises between Christianity and paganism.

To learn more, request your free copy of The Truth About Christmas.