Posted on 12/07/2005 2:36:38 PM PST by Charles Henrickson
According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into the Christian celebration. But this view is apparently a historical myth—like the stories of a church council debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or that medieval folks believed the earth is flat—often repeated, even in classrooms, but not true.
William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article "Calculating Christmas," published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.
True, the Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, "The Birth of the Unconquered Sun," on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian's new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ. According to Mr. Tighe, the Birth of the Unconquered Sun "was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians." Christians were not imitating the pagans. The pagans were imitating the Christians.
The early church tried to ascertain the actual time of Christ's birth. It was all tied up with the second-century controversies over setting the date of Easter, the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection. That date should have been an easy one. Though Easter is also charged with having its origins in pagan equinox festivals, we know from Scripture that Christ's death was at the time of the Jewish Passover. That time of year is known with precision.
But differences in the Jewish, Greek, and Latin calendars and the inconsistency between lunar and solar date-keeping caused intense debate over when to observe Easter. Another question was whether to fix one date for the Feast of the Resurrection no matter what day it fell on or to ensure that it always fell on Sunday, "the first day of the week," as in the Gospels.
This discussion also had a bearing on fixing the day of Christ's birth. Mr. Tighe, drawing on the in-depth research of Thomas J. Talley's The Origins of the Liturgical Year, cites the ancient Jewish belief (not supported in Scripture) that God appointed for the great prophets an "integral age," meaning that they died on the same day as either their birth or their conception.
Jesus was certainly considered a great prophet, so those church fathers who wanted a Christmas holiday reasoned that He must have been either born or conceived on the same date as the first Easter. There are hints that some Christians originally celebrated the birth of Christ in March or April. But then a consensus arose to celebrate Christ's conception on March 25, as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking when the angel first appeared to Mary.
Note the pro-life point: According to both the ancient Jews and the early Christians, life begins at conception. So if Christ was conceived on March 25, nine months later, he would have been born on Dec. 25.
This celebrates Christ's birth in the darkest time of the year. The Celtic and Germanic tribes, who would be evangelized later, did mark this time in their "Yule" festivals, a frightening season when only the light from the Yule log kept the darkness at bay. Christianity swallowed up that season of depression with the opposite message of joy: "The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).
Regardless of whether this was Christ's actual birthday, the symbolism works. And Christ's birth is inextricably linked to His resurrection.
That is the point of the article. Veith isn't saying with absolute certainty that December 25 was the actual date. (Note the "Regardless.") What he is saying is that the ancient belief about a death-date/conception-date congruence--in this case, a March 25 Crucifixion/Annunciation, making for a December 25 Nativity--works well theologically in connecting the Incarnation with the Passion of Our Lord. Furthermore, a December 25 date serves the theological point of the darkness not being able to overcome the Light of the World.
I don't have a problem with the theological point the use of December 25th as Mithra's birthday was for the same reason. The defeat of the light over the darkness. My problem is with the tendency of some people to deny that christianity borrows traditions from other religions.
"Which is why the Sabbath, in the Bible and in Jewish practice, falls on Saturday."
"So why did Christians change it to Sunday?"
Because Jesus was resurrected from the dead on Easter Sunday, and that was the single most astonishing event in all of human history, the day that everything that everyone believed about the world changed for all of those who witnessed the Resurrection and for everyone that came after in their footsteps. The early Christians were as astonished and shaken by the event as everyone since. The difference is that today we can ignore it or dispute its historicity, but they were standing with the living, risen man, come back from the dead.
They called Sunday "The Lord's Day" from this event, and met on that day from the time of the Apostles forward.
There was no conscious, reasoned out debate about celebrating the Christian holy day on Sunday versus the old Jewish Saturday Sabbath, at least none that has come down to us in any of the records.
The fact of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday was enough to cause the early Christians to gravitate to that day as the day that death was conquered, and the day that the tentative good news of the Kingdom of Heaven preached by Jesus in his lifetime (but not really wholeheartedly believed by anybody, really: the apostles fell away with the crucifixion) was dramatically proven by the literal coming back from the dead of the crucified Jesus.
Christianity as such didn't really START until Eastern Sunday. Jesus walk around and preached, and had a following, but with his arrest, torture, crucifixion and death, even his closest followers fell away on the Friday. That was the end of the religion of Jesus the prophet. An abject failure.
But then on the following Sunday he walked out of the tomb, alive, resurrected, transformed, and was seen by the women, and then by some of the Apostles. And THAT'S where Christianity began, when the failed prophet came back from the dead and demonstrated that he was actually GOD.
That's why the Christians immediately gravitated to Sunday. It was the day that the whole universe and everything they believed in it changed forever. The day Christianity well and truly began.
It's a fascinating story, whether it's really true or not.
And what's particularly fascinating about it is the historicity, and the particular fact that we apparently have two relics of the actual event that inspired this most dramatic and unlikely of all religions: the Sudarium cloth and the Shroud of Turin.
Chapter and verse, please?
Matthew 28:1
Mark 16:2
Luke 24:1
John 20:1
Luke 24:13
John 20:19
John 20:26
Acts 20:7
1 Corinthians 16:2
Revelation 1:10
At the time of Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25 and the vernal equinox on March 25. Between Caesar's calendar reform and the Council of Nicaea was about 370 years, so the winter solstice would have moved up to December 22 by then. Pope Gregory was trying to restore the situation as of A.D. 325, so that the rules for calculating the date of Easter (which depends on the vernal equinox) would work as they had been set out at the Council of Nicaea.
This year the winter solstice occurs at 7:35 p.m. Dec. 21, Rome time.
Reportedly the discrepancy in the calendar was already discovered by the Venerable Bede in A.D. 730, but nothing was done about it for more than 800 years.
I'm just glad that He was born. Everything else is just mankinds meaningless attempt to put God in a box.
redrock
You seem pretty certain and dogmatic in your belief that he was not God. How can you be so sure?
and in a year the media would have some sort of gift giving event going and we'd be in the same boat again.Jan is a slow retail time.They would LOVE your suggestion.
Paul was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22.28) but that doesn't mean his father was not Jewish (as well as being a Roman citizen). By this period many people had acquired Roman citizenship who were not descended from the early Romans. If Paul's father had been a pagan Roman, there would probably be some indication of it in the New Testament, because his opponents within the Christian community would have tried to use that against him.
". . . up until recently I believed there was a Jesus of Nazareth. I'm not so sure now. At any rate, he was not god."
What is it, specifically, that has caused you to seriously doubt that Jesus of Nazareth, the man, didn't actually exist?
Let's leave aside the issue of divinity for awhile, as in the end that has to be taken on faith.
But the actual historicity of Jesus is not a matter of faith. That is a matter of historical record. The religion didn't come out of thin air. Others, non-Christians and contemporaries, commented on Jesus. Who (or what) he was is certainly open to interpretation. THAT he was, however, is difficult to dispute.
What texts do you have to override the accounts of Josephus (a Jewish priest of the High Temple and no Christian) regarding Jesus' actual existence, or Pliny the Elder's (again, certainly no Christian!) reference to him and the cult that grew up around him?
However, it is dark at night, too dark to do work in a tomb. So the women had to wait until daybreak on Sunday morning, when there would be enough light. And they wanted to get there as early as possible, since they were dealing--so they thought--with a body that had been dead since Friday afternoon.
"Paul was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22.28) but that doesn't mean his father was not Jewish (as well as being a Roman citizen)."
His Judaism would have passed to him by his mother.
Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was certainly a Jew.
Paul talks about being of the tribe of Benjamin...I doubt he would have made such assertions if it was just through his mother's ancestry. The rule in Judaism is that someone is Jewish if his mother is...but had that rule been formulated by that time?
He calls himself "the son of Pharisees"--plural. Could his mother have been considered a Pharisee, or could he mean both his father and his grandfather were Pharisees?
You and Cromwell...kindred souls.
Yet, Jesus was 30 when he began His ministry and ministered for 3 and 1/2 years. That would make Him 33 and 1/2 years old in March or April... pushing back His birthday until August - October range.
I have been told that it has to do with the Roman tradition of honoring Caesar on the day of His ascension to the throne... It was called the King's day... Therefore, because Christ rose and ascended on the first day of the week, it was His King's day, and they worshipped on that day accordingly.
And it would have also to do with the celebration of First Fruits, which occurs on the day after the Sabbath following the Passover...
Huh? What Greek text are you reading? What English translation are you using? What are your credentials in Greek?
I have the Greek text right in front of me. It reads, transliterated:
Opse de sabbaton, tei epiphoskousei eis mian sabbaton. . . .
Now I am looking at a Greek lexicon. It says, first:
opse: (1) adv. late in the day, evening; (2) prep. with gen. after
This then would be #2, the preposition opse with the genitive sabbaton, i.e., "Now after the sabbath. . . ."
The lexicon says, second:
epiphosko dawn, draw near, begin
epiphoskousei would be a participle form of that verb. Thus, "at the dawning of the first day of the week. . ."
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