Posted on 12/25/2025 8:34:50 AM PST by SunkenCiv
(Excerpt) Read more at babylonbee.com ...
A city near me raised a tree and, in conjunction with the teachers’ union, proclaimed that they were celebrating ‘the holiday’ and NOT Christmas.
So, the other day I had an epiphany about which I’d never heard nor read about:
If the left merely celebrates an undefined - yet declared - ‘holiday’ and not CHRISTMAS...
...they can take THEIR ‘holiday’ any time of the year.
If it falls on/around 12/25, it’s either Hannukah or Christmas (few other exceptions) and they deserve to be pummeled for the gaslighting/hypocrisy.
I’ve had enough.
Additionally = and personally - I’m done with the commercialism/consumerism.
No gifts this year (and likely moving forward):
I’m tickling family’s palate.
Actually the most likely birth date for Jesus is something like Feb 25, 4 B.C. ... shepherds would be in the fields during lambing season which is late winter and early spring, and some Roman monk made a four to six year error in backdating to the death of Herod (which must have been after Jesus was born) resulting in the year 1 A.D. being actually four or five years earlier.
The reason we have Christmas in late December is that it was substituted for the pagan feast of Saturnalia at that time in the Roman calendar.
The idea that Jesus was born on Dec 25th with snow gently falling is basically a cultural adaptation to medieval Europe where that might have been quite frequent; snow rarely falls in Bethlehem at any point and less likely in late February than in December or January.
Merry Saturnalia!
McGowan replied, "Christ was born on Christmas. I was born on December 25th."
In case anyone thought it should be December 25, zero A.D., in fact historians ignore the possible year zero and date events in either 1 A.D. or 1 B.C.; astronomy confusingly adopted a year zero so if you consult an astronomical table and see an event in any year B.C. then to a historian that would be one year less (earlier), so for example if there was a planetary conjunction claimed as possible “star of David” that an astronomer said was in 3 B.C., to a historian that would be in 4 B.C. ... anything that happened in the year zero would be in 1 B.C. for historical reference.
I have read estimates of the birth of Jesus between 6 and 3 B.C. based on what is actually known about the historical context (most important of those being the actual timing of the relevant Roman census and the later death of Herod).
By the year 1 A.D. when historians would say the first Dec 25th took place, Jesus was probably approaching his fifth or even sixth birthday. This has a practical significance in that estimates of the year of the crucifixion (30 and 33 A.D. are the two most quoted) are probably more accurate which means Jesus was approaching forty at that time, not in his early thirties. That gives a longer interval of time possible for His active ministry since it would appear that the spiritual baptism was an event in his young adult years, if He were 21 for example that would have been in 16-17 A.D. not 21 A.D. ... a full decade and a half before the crucifixion.
.... not the catholic calendar.
Oh, here you are.
I was looking for the post of that individual who insists on sticking his beak into a Christmas thread and making the unfounded (but, oft-repeated) claim that Jesus wasn't born on December 25th. (You didn't let me down!)
It's well-documented that even in the first century, Christmas was celebrated on 12/25. We can actually use Scripture to pinpoint this date as well, although this is a bit more complex.
Was there a star atop the tree?
Asking for a friend.
Please provide the book, chapter and verse.
Using specific wording in Luke Chapter 1, we can actually determine that December 25th is the day of Christ's birthday; the problem with this is that it relies on a source outside of the Bible itself, so I'm not sure if the Sola Scriptura people are on board with this. (It's basically tying Scripture with Jewish history that was not recorded in Scripture.)
This is an excellent summary here: www.dec25th.info
BIL born on Christmas Eve.
The family has always had a standing rule to celebrate him on that day. So he get’s 2 Christmases!
No year zero exists, or can exist, mathematically speaking.
The best way to conceive of this is through the use of a number line.
A dot in the center, a first ray extending from the center dot to the right, and a second ray extending from the center dot to the left.
Hash marks are not labeled with numerals but instead merely indicate the transition between years.
Braces labeled with numerals indicate the span of a year, a decade, a century, a millennium, etc. A year is represented in this way as a certain standard distance along the number line.
The first “braced” span between the center dot and the nearest hashmark, one to the left of the center dot, and the other to the right of the center dot, is labeled with the numeral “1”.
The last year in the first millennium was year 1000. The first year in the second millennium was year 1001.
Similarly, the last year in the second millennium was year 2000. The first year in the second millennium was year 2001.
The last year of the twentieth century, for example, was the year 2000. Then, the new year’s eve ball dropped and we found ourselves, on January 1, 2001, in the twenty-first century.
The New York Times celebrated the arrival of the twentieth century in the paper it published on January 1, 1901. Nobody argued at the time with the mathematics the New York Times used to support its editorial decision to commemorate the arrival of the twentieth century.
The New York Times strangely allowed January 1, 2001 to arrive with no such fanfare within the pages of its newspaper, despite the arrival of not only a new century, but a new millennium. Why do you think this was?
Don’t bother. This Guy will answer:
Metastasizing societal ignorance and stupidity.
There is not and never was any such thing as a year zero.
I was born mid-December.
As a child grew up often receiving combination birthday-Christmas gifts from friends and extended family members.
Meh.... pretty weak sauce
That’s interesting. Thanks.
Interesting postwar song. There were a lot of elements Tennessee Waltz in the Melody. Thanks.
That’s a good way to handle it. That way nobody feels stiffed.
Christmas is that “special time of year”when we can make jokes about the coming of Christ to redeem mankind.
Interesting observation. Tennessee Waltz by Pee Wee King & His Golden West Cowboys charted just over a year later, so the melody of "Rainbow" might have been stuck in Pee Wee's mind as he was writing it. Missouri Waltz by Eddie Howard (1946) might have also been an influence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptlsXtTf6n0
"Scripture is the perfect and only standard of spiritual truth, revealing infallibly all that we must believe in order to be saved and all that we must do in order to glorify God. That—no more, no less—is what sola Scriptura means." (link)
Use of Extra-biblical sources to infer the time of Jesus' birth do not violate the above definition of sola Scriptura.
Jerusalem isn’t Europe or America. Lambing would be when the new grass comes in and that happens after it starts raining in late November. The new grass would be growing in December and starting to whither in the spring.
“the principal lambing season of Awassi ewes .... in ... Israel in December-January.” https://www.fao.org/4/p8550e/P8550E01.htm
Saturnalia as the reason for Christmas date is a modern myth.
“The early church fathers believed that Jesus was conceived on Passover and born nine months later. However, they differed in their dates for Passover, which is calculated on the lunar calendar. This resulted in a variety of dates for Christmas, one of which was December 25.”
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/december-25th-and-christmas/
Merry Christmas!
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