Who Do the LDS Celebrate Today?

As a Church we have critics, many of them. They say we do not believe in the traditional Christ of Christianity. There is some substance to what they say. Our faith, our knowledge is not based on ancient tradition, the creeds which came of a finite understanding and out of the almost infinite discussions of men trying to arrive at a definition of the risen Christ. Our faith, our knowledge comes of the witness of a prophet in this dispensation….

Gordon Hinckley, 2002 LDS General Conference

Hinckley, as well as other LDS teachers, is correct that the LDS Jesus is NOT the Christian Jesus.

While the Christian Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit so that Mary was pregnant while a virgin, the LDS Jesus was conceived by their man-god having sex with Mary.

While the Christian Jesus suffered the punishment of the Cross for our salvation through our faith, the LDS Jesus suffered in the garden of Gethsemane (just how did he suffer other than emotionally?) and only provides salvation through our works.

While the Christian Jesus never married, the Mormon Jesus was a married and probably a polygamist. Although this isn’t the current official view of the Church, under their doctrine of eternal progression Jesus had to be married:

Joseph Fielding Smith stated, in response to the question In the Temple ceremony we are told that only through Temple marriage can we receive the highest degree of exaltation and dwell in the presence of our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Christ came here to set us the example and, therefore, we believe that he must have been married. Are we right? Yes! But do not preach it! The Lord advised us not to cast pearls before swine!  (Letter to J. Ricks Smith, 3/17/1963)

Apostle Orson Hyde stated the following:

She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.' Is there not here manifested the affections of a wife. These words speak the kindred ties and sympathies that are common to that relation of husband and wife … Now there was actually a marriage; and if Jesus was not the bridegroom on that occasion, please tell who was. If any man can show this, and prove that it was not the Savior of the world, then I will acknowledge I am in error. We say it was Jesus Christ who was married, to be brought into the relation whereby he could see his seed, before he was crucified.  (Journal of Discourses  2:81-82).

…I said, in my lecture on Marriage, at our last Conference, that Jesus Christ was married at Cana of Galilee, that Mary, Martha, and others were his wives, and that he begat children”(Journal of Discourses 2:210).

We have now clearly shown that God, the Father had a plurality of wives, one or more being in eternity, by whom He begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus His First Born… We have also proved most clearly that the Son followed the example of his Father, and became the great Bridegroom to whom kings' daughters and many honorable Wives to be married. (The Seer, 172)

Brigham Young stated: The Scripture says that He, the Lord, came walking in the Temple, with "HIS TRAIN; I do not know who they were, unless his wives and children; (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13:309)

Apostle Orson Pratt also taught that Jesus was a polygamist: ...it will be seen that the GREAT MESSIAH who was the founder of the Christian religion, WAS A POLYGAMIST, . . .the MESSIAH chose. . .by marrying honorable wives himself, show to all future generations that HE approbated the plurality of wives under the Christian dispensation, as well as under the dispensation in which His polygamist ancestors lived. . . .We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives. . . (The Seer, page 172)

More of the early LDS apostles also taught the practice of polygamy by Jesus. Now, these Apostles claimed that what they taught came from God, so for the current Church to deny this teaching they have to denounce Brigham Young as a prophet as well as state uncategorically that their Apostles were false teachers.

So, for celebrating Christmas, remember that Mormons don’t celebrate the birth of the same person as do Christians.