Surrounded by the signs of the Zodiac.
Bas-relief of Modena, Rev. arch., 1902, I., p. 1.

"Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December*. He was born of a Virgin. He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He slew the Bull (symbol of the gross Earth which the sunlight fructifies). His great festivals were the winter solstice and the Spring equinox (Christmas and Easter). He had twelve companions or disciples (the twelve months). He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings. He was called Savior and Mediator, and sometimes figured as a Lamb; and sacramental feasts in remembrance of him were held by his followers. This legend is apparently partly astronomical and partly vegetational; and the same may be said of the following about Osiris. "

[ Carpenter, Edward: Pagan and Christian Creeds, DODO Press, p10 ]

*The birthfeast of Mithra was held in Rome on the 8th day before the Kalends of January, being also the day of the Circassian games, which were sacred to the Sun. (See F. Nork, Der Mystagog, Leipzig.)

"Among the gods of eastern origin who in decline of the ancient world competed against each other for the allegiance of the West was the old Persian deity Mithra...doctrines and the rites the cult of Mithra appears to have presented many points of semblance not only to the religion of the Mother of the Gods but also to Christianity. The similarity struck the Christian doctors themselves and was explained by the them as a work of the devil, who sought to seduce the souls of men from the true faith by a false and insidious imitation of it... However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Mithraic religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity, combining as it did a solemn ritual with aspirations after moral purity and a hope of immortality... the long struggle is preserved in our festival of Christmas, which the Church seems to have borrowed directly from its heathen rival( Mithrism). In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte. Now Mithra was regularly identified by his worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December. The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ’s birth, and accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. In time, however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of commemorating the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the fourth century it was universally established in the East. But at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century the Western Church, which had never recognized the sixth of January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of December as the true date, and in time its decision was accepted also by the Eastern Church. At Antioch the change was not introduced till about the year 375 A.D."

[ Frazer, James.: The Golden Bough, Touchstone, 1963. Page 415-416 ]

" The Egyptian Isis, with the child Horus, on her knee, was honored centuries before the Christian era, and worshiped under the names of "Our Lady," "Queen of Heaven," "Star of the Sea," "Mother of God," and so forth. Before her, Neith, the Virgin of the World, whose figure bends from the sky over the earthly plains and the children of men, was acclaimed as mother of the great god Osiris. The saviour Mithra, too, was born of a Virgin, as we have had occasion to notice before; and on the Mithrais monuments the mother suckling her child is a not uncommon figure.**

**See Civilisation: its Cause and Cure, ch. i.

[ Carpenter, Edward: Pagan and Christian Creeds, DODO Press, p114 ]

"Since Mithras was a sun-god, Sunday was automatically sacred ti him - the "Lords Day" - long before Christ. On Dec. 25th, just after the winter solstice, there were elaborate rituals and celebrations...gifts given, sacraments of bread and water administered to the initiate. Between Dec. 25th (winter solstice) and the spring equinox came the mystical forty days' search for Osiris, which later was the origin for Christian Lent. On Black Friday (cf. Good Friday)...He was mourned for in liturgy, and placed in a sacred rock tomb called "Petra", from which he was removed after three days in a great festival of rejoicing."

[ Berry, Gerald: Religions of the World, B&N, p56-57 ]