That is a myth promoted by atheist anthropologists.
Lupercalia may have coincidentally fallen on the Ides of February in the Roman calendar, but Christians do not hold naked races and whip each other with goatskin thongs on St. Valentine's Day.
Samhain technically would have fallen on October 21st not 31st, and was celebrated by feasting, sport and lighting bonfires. In other words, Homecoming Day bears a much closer resemblance in timing and in activity to Samhain than traditional Christian Hallowe'en practices.
Saturnalia was traditionally celebrated on the winter equinox, or December 21st - not December 25th - and was characterized not principally by feasting but by gambling and role-playing. If any modern holiday resembles Saturnalia it is Boxing Day, and that is likely by design.
The Sol Invictus reference is completely anacnronistic. We know that the Church in North Africa observed the Nativity on December 25th as early as 225, and we also know that the feast of Sol Invictus was a novelty introduced to the Roman world by Aurelian in 274. The only previous sun-god feast in Rome began in 222 - but that was the summer solstice feast of Heliogabalus.
The Church had its own calendar from the beginning, based on Sunday worship and on dating yearly events from the feasts of the Resurrection and Pentecost - in other words, the Church year is derivative of Shabbat, Pesach and Shavuos and not from pagan feasts.
To this day, almost every Sunday of the Church year is counted either in terms of its proximity to Pentecost or the Resurrection.
Thanks!!!
That's not really accurate. You worded your response in a way that implies that the traditional churches calendar is somehow based on God's calendar in the bible. That's not really true.
Look under this heading for computus
This is the way that the modern church computes Easter.
They've been using this method since 1582 (not since the beginning). Here is how they say Easter is computed:
"Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon date."
Sounds good, doesn't it? Paschal = Passover...right? Not quite.
"The Paschal Full Moon date is the Ecclesiastical Full Moon date following 20 March and can be found in this table":
Whoops. So it has nothing to do with the Passover of THE BIBLE. It has to do with a computation agreed upon by men.
To find this date, you take the current year and divide it by 19. You then take the remainder and use the chart to determine the date.
For example, 2008 (this year) divided by 19 = 105 with a remainder of 13. The 13 remainder corresponds to the 22nd of March on the chart.
So you say? So it has nothing to do with the Passover of God, the Paschal of the Lord.
The bible is clear on when Passover is:
Lev 23:5 On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD's Passover.
This corresponds to Nisan 14 on the Hebrew calendar which in 2008 fell on April 19. That's nearly a whole month of difference.
The notion that the modern church is basing it's calendar on God's calendar in scripture is a tough one to believe when you actually look at the date calculations.
Here's the bottom line: God. Jesus Christ. The Lord. Told us what holy days to observe. Jesus Christ created them. They are his. He actually took the time to have them written down and preserved in scripture.
Lev 23:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.
He, the Lord, Christ who became Jesus, then lists his holy days. His feasts.
Christians, for the most part, have turned their back on these holy days of Christ and have instituted their own calendar, their own feast days, and have incorporated the customs and trappings of pagan days into these observances.
As for the winter solstice, that date (and the dates of the other seasons) have drifted due to a flaw in the Julian Calendar. When the Julian Calendar was first instituted, the vernal equinox fell on 3/25. By 325 (the year of the First Nicene Council), it had moved up to 3/21. And by the time of the Gregorian Reform in 1582 it had moved up to 3/11 (which is why ten days were removed from the calendar that year). The vernal equinox currently falls on 3/8 of the Julian Calendar, which is why that calendar is thirteen days behind. Thus, the winter solstice could very well have been on 12/25 when the Julian Calendar was first adopted.