Charles Spurgeon –
“When it can be proved that the observance of Christmas . . . and other Popish festivals was ever instituted by a Divine statute, we also will attend to them, but not till then. It is as much our duty to reject the traditions of men (ref: Mark 7:9 and Matthew 15:9), as to observe the ordinances of the Lord. We ask concerning every rite and rubric, “Is this a law of the God of Jacob?” and if it be not clearly so, it is of no authority with us, who walk in Christian liberty.”
– From C.H. Spurgeon’s Treasury of David
Quote –
“If Rome be indeed the Babylon of the Apocalypse (book of Revelation), and the Madonna (Catholic virgin Mary) enshrined in her sanctuaries be the very queen of heaven, for the worshipping of whom the fierce anger of God was provoked against the Jews in the days of Jeremiah . . . it is of the last consequence that the fact should be established beyond all possibility of doubt.
For that being once established, every one who trembles at the Word of God must shudder at the very thought of giving such a system, either individually or nationally, the least countenance or support.
Something has been said already that goes far to prove the identity of the Roman and Babylonian systems; but at every step the evidence becomes still more overwhelming. That which arises from comparing the different festivals is peculiarly so.
The festivals of Rome are innumerable; but five of the most important may be singled out for elucidation–viz., Christmas-day, Lady-day, Easter, the Nativity of St. John, and the Feast of the Assumption.
Each and all of these can be proved to be Babylonian. And first, as to the festival in honour of the birth of Christ, or Christmas. How comes it that that festival was connected with the 25th of December? There is not a word in the Scriptures about the precise day of His birth, or the time of the year when He was born.
What is recorded there, implies that at what time soever His birth took place, it could not have been on the 25th of December. At the time that the angel announced His birth to the shepherds of Bethlehem, they were feeding their flocks by night in the open fields.
Now, no doubt, the climate of Palestine is not so severe as the climate of this country; but even there, though the heat of the day be considerable, the cold of the night, from December to February, is very piercing, and it was not the custom for the shepherds of Judea to watch their flocks in the open fields later than about the end of October. *
– ref: The Two Babylons, chapter 3, By Alexander Hislop