How Soviets Came to Celebrate New Year’s Like Christmas (and Why Russians Still Do)

Foreign Policy ^ | Dec 30, 2016 | Emily Tamkin

[deks]

If I may reply to your comments (#13 & #25) with a question: What is the date of Christ’s resurrection?

[trebb]

No. The New Covenant began with Jesus' circumcision--one week after His birth.

The New Covenant began with Jesus' death and resurrection - He lived under the Old Covenant and had to stay true to it...using His circumcision as a beginning point for a Covenant that made circumcision no longer a religious necessity makes no sense.

[dangus]

So if it’s not important when Jesus was born, why do you spread the lies of the Satanists and God-hating atheists? YOU seem to think it’s important to insist its NOT not December 25, because every last time someone mentions Dec. 25, you chime in about how it’s not Jesus’ birthday.

[dangus]

Funny, though, how God managed to work it out that the sacrifice of Jesus’ death managed to fall on the same calendar day as the conception of Jesus! God became Man on the same day that Man was restored to holiness!

[null and void]

You misunderstand me. It is important! But there is no Biblical fixing of the exact date of his birth. Being born wasn't a unique accomplishment, billions of us managed that, in a life marked by extraordinary events, from schooling Rabbis at age 13, through healing cripples, making the blind see, and even raising the dead two stand out, His blood sacrifice on the Cross, and especially, in my mind, His Resurrection, except for His raising Lazarus unique in all of human history, and proof positive of the validity of His gospel. AND THOSE EXACT DATES ARE RECORDED IN THE BIBLE, Passover, a known, fixed date (Nisan 15-21) on the Hebrew calendar, and three days later.

Here's your mission, start a calendar, you have 3 dates to choose from. One you don't exactly know, but you know shepherds were in the fields and two you do know exactly. All three days are important, the unique proof of the validity of the Life and The Message is the last day. Pick one. The Guess, The Sacrifice, or The Proof.

We, as humans, prefer to celebrate births, they are almost always joyous occasions. We also like to think of the day beginning at dawn. But Jews begin their day at sunset, as the ending of one day is surely the beginning of another.

That's the Crucifixion and Resurrection. That's when the Christian Era starts.

We celebrate (or at least used to) Lincoln's birthday, this is a date we know exactly, but the important dates in his life weren't being born, they were proclaiming slavery over in America, winning the Civil War, and attending Our American Cousin. We barely mark those days, but we live as free men.

Calendars are confusing, the Roman calendar was a total mess, 10 day weeks, one day weekends, near random intercalary days and months.

They've been getting better. George Washington’s birth was recorded as Feb. 11, 1731, under the Julian calendar, which starts the year on, of all things March 25th (roughly spring equinox and closer to Passover and Easter, hmmm). But because the Gregorian calendar starts on January 1, we now recognize Washington’s birthday as Feb. 11, 1732.

Postscript, thanks to AnalogReigns thoughtful posts, particularly about the Crucifixion being either on the anniversary of his birth or conception. The traditional date of the conception of Jesus (Dec. 25 minus 9 months)(the Annunciation) is March 25 (there's that date again!), also very close to (or on, depending on the year) Easter. And his noting that flock were kept year round to provide sacrificial lambs. I no longer advocate that it couldn't have been December 25th. Still no Biblical fixing of the exact date though...

deks? I hope this fixed day suffices, as to the year, that's better left to someone skilled in tying Roman history and their dreadful dog's breakfast of a calendar to the Jewish calendar and thence to ours.

[null and void]

How is taking the day and the celebration away from pagans satanic?

[YogicCowboy]

That is indeed more important.

What many have forgotten is that Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little) calculated the birth of Christ as a preparatory step to calculating Easter for the future annual church calendar.

The Resurrection of Christ was the focal point, not the Birth of Christ.

Dennis erred because he was juggling records based in Roman Numerals, without the Zero. He was, in truth, a brilliant scholar.

As far as the issue of Christians using a pagan festival, and/or the date being in error, I do not care:

“One man regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.” [Romans 14:5]

[Forward the Light Brigade]

December 25th was the birthday of Mithras in the Roman Empire. Mithraism was a mystery religion, a protestant form of Zoroastrianism, with a god of light and an admonition that none of its followers could tell a lie! Symbol of Mithras—an “X” branded on the forehead! People liked these people because they never lied. BUT—Why did it fail? Unlike Christians—they never admitted Women to their ranks.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

It is logical—Christmas to celebrate Christ and New years for the secular gift giving, parties and feasting. And, as its Russia—Drinking. Not a bad compromise—then, Jews, Islamic people, others (even Zoroastrians) can get into the act and have Santa come and all the trimmings of the “New Year”.

[dangus]

You’re giving credit to the pagans, and believing the lies of the Satanists. Do you think the Satanists and God-hating atheists would be inventing the lies you brainlessly parrot, if they didn’t believe it was serving their evil purposes?

Now quit equivocating, look up the date of Saturnalia, and STOP SPREADING YOUR EVIL LIES!!!!!

[null and void]

Especially impressive if you've ever looked at what passed for a calendar in Roman times. While the Mayans were using a calendar that didn't need leap days over a 63 million year timespan, the Romans had a hodgepodge of 10 day weeks, a ten month calendar with the winter not even being on the calendar, a habit of adding days or even months more or less at random, and even going so far as bumping things around so badly that the seventh month, september, is the ninth month, the eighth month, October, is in the tenth position, November, which means ninth month, is of course, the eleventh, and the last month in the original ten month calendar is the 12th.

In Roman numerals.

Dionysius Exiguus did a stellar job, without google, a zero, or even a four-banger calculator.

Just thinking about it makes my head hurt!

[null and void]

We’re done here.

[Rebelbase]

So there’s no room for rounding? Six months to most people means somewhere over or under 180 + - days.

[Zionist Conspirator]

We don’t know for CERTAIN what day Jesus was born, but Dec 25th is the day the Spirit of God returned to the Temple of God, and Jesus said he was the Temple of God... and observed that date, himself.

What . . . ?

We also know from the book of Ezra that the feast of Sukkot was transferred to the Feast of the Dedication. And finally, if we mark the beginning of the world as 1 Nisan, then the first date Eve could conceive would be 14 Nisan, which is, not coincidentally, the feast of the first fruits, On Good Friday, that fell on March 25. 9 months after Good Friday would be Dec 25. (Although that year, the Feast of the Dedication would have fallen on Nov. 25, but of course Jesus wasn’t born that year.)

First of all, Chanukkah was not a "re-dated" Sukkot. They were still, as they remain today, two completely separate holidays. Sukkot is one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals; Chanukkah is a minor festival. The Book of Maccabees mentions that the eight days of Sukkot were used as a pattern, but Sukkot was NOT transferred to a new date!!!

Furthermore Chanukkah isn't mentioned in Ezra because it had not yet been instituted. It wasn't instituted until after the Biblical canon had been closed, which is why Maccabees isn't in the TaNa"KH. I think you got your books mixed up.

So even if the date of Jesus’ birth were lost to history, and there’s no reason to think it was, there would be plenty of biblical basis to celebrate it on Dec. 25.

Kislev 25 is not December 25. The Biblical calendar is luni-solar, not purely solar. And though it is mentioned in the "new testament," Chanukkah is a post-Biblical holiday.

And btw . . . Pesach is not firstfruits. Why do so many on this forum labor under this delusion? Firstfruits (Chag HaBikkurim) was Shavu`ot, which was seven weeks after Pesach. Perhaps you are all thinking of the `omer offered on the second day of Pesach???

[trebb]

I wasn’t aware of that but I don’t doubt it - God works in His time (which seems funny to say since He created time and exists outside of it) and has done much that we should be in constant awe and amazement of...Merry Christmas