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Cultish

Is Christmas Pagan? Discerning Fact From Fiction With R.L. Solberg

Cultish

Jeff Durbin

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, God, Theology, Jesus, Cult, Apologia, Spirituality, Apologia Studios, Spiritual, Cults

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Join us for this year’s Christmas investigative episode as we sit down with R.L. Solberg to examine one of the most persistent and controversial claims surrounding the holiday: Is Christmas truly rooted in paganism, or is that narrative built on selective history and modern mythmaking? In an age where viral videos and sensational headlines confidently declare Christmas to be nothing more than a repackaged pagan festival, we slow the conversation down and follow the evidence. Together, we trace the historical claims back to their original sources, evaluate what the early church actually believed and practiced, and expose where popular talking points often rely more on assumption than documented fact. But this conversation doesn’t stop at history alone. We also confront the modern tension many believers feel each December—caught between sincere faith and an overwhelming culture of excess, marketing, and consumerism. Is there a meaningful way to celebrate Christmas that resists commercialization while remaining grounded in Christian conviction? This episode isn’t about defending tradition for tradition’s sake—it’s about truth. If you’ve ever questioned the origins of Christmas, felt conflicted about how it’s celebrated today, or wanted a historically informed, biblically grounded perspective, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss. Tune in and discover what the evidence really says.

Transcript

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0:00.0

My name is Eddie and I was in a call.

0:09.0

Planet Earth about to be recycled.

0:12.4

Your only chance to survive or evacuate is to leave with us.

0:19.3

It started as an effort by a charismatic creature to build a new society, but it ended, of course, with the tragic deaths of more than 900 people. Please, for God's sake, let's get on with it. We've lived, we've lived, as no other people have lived and loved. We've had as much of this world as you're going to get. Let's just be done with it. Let's be done with the agony of it. This is the revolutionary suicide. This is not a self-destructive suicide.

0:43.2

So they'll pay for this. They brought it upon us.

0:49.9

You're in a cult. I love you, and I want you out of it and with Christ.

0:54.9

But you're...

0:56.0

All right. Welcome back to cultish, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co-hosts here.

1:07.4

I want to start off by saying Merry Christmas, everyone.

1:10.1

This is our Christmas episode. As

1:12.5

always, I am joined by Andrew, the super sleuth of the show up in his super secret headquarters,

1:18.1

somewhere up around the Utah areas. Andrew, Merry Christmas. How are you doing, man?

1:22.6

Hey, Merry Christmas, man. I'm doing better than I deserve. And, you know, Christmas is always the best time of year.

1:28.7

So praise God. I'm having a wonderful time, Jerry. Awesome. And so we are super excited for this

1:33.7

episode because we have us with today, Professor Rob, as we like to call him. He's been around.

1:40.9

What is your name that when you, how do you title the books that people know you for online? How, where are you out online that people know you as typically? R.L. Solberg.com or, which is, which is my author name. Robert Luke Solberg is my full name. And then the biblical roots.org is the main, is the main website where you can get to everything that we do. That's the ministry I run, the biblical roots ministries. Absolutely, man. And so you've been on with us before we had a great conversation talking about your book and commentary. You did it on the Galatians. That was a great blast. Just talking about all the work that you put in that. But I reached out to you and had you come on today because you've been doing a lot of work lately on the whole topic of

2:18.5

Christmas, whether or not it's okay to celebrate. As you can see, I have something here in the

2:23.5

background that some people might attribute to being something of pagan origins. And so you've

2:29.5

been putting some content as of lately. So tell us about that. So you've been talking about that,

2:33.5

but you also wrote a book. What's, yeah, kind of bring us into that us about that. So you've been talking about that, but you also

2:34.5

wrote a book? What, what's, yeah, kind of bring us into that if you could. Sure, yeah. Yeah. So, so the book is called, uh, oops, I got it right here, full of grace and truth, the biblical roots of Christmas. And what I actually did, this actually started a couple years ago, because our ministry deals with a lot of fringe beliefs that try to

2:53.7

claim biblical authority but are actually teaching false doctrine. And Christmas is a high time

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