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Its not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.5 In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.6 They claimed that because the early Christians didnt know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiahs birth and celebrating it accordingly.
More recent studies have shown that many of the holidays modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan.
There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.
Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worshipincluding eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary artwould have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E.
This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we dont have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.
The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have known it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.7
There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus birth may lie in the dating of Jesus death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years.8 But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus death and his birth.
Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus diedc was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.9 March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciationthe commemoration of Jesus conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.d
This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus birth to the winter solstice.
Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399419) he writes: For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.12
In the East, too, the dates of Jesus conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendarApril 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6the eastern date for Christmas. In the East, too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.13 Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.e
Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6).
Interesting, proving Christmas was on Dec 25th prior to Constantine the Great converting Rome to Christianity.
Who cares?
Jesus is the reason for the season, not the season for the reason of Jesus.
God born of a virgin at this time of years is pagan. Jesus is a substitute. The way it is celebrated is also pagan.
To say Jesus is the reason we celebrate this day is wrong.
No sheep or shepherds in the field, not taxes or census, not even the right birth place or time of year.
If jesus is a reason to create a celebration, should it be at the right time of year and for the right reasons?
Who cares?
Jesus is the reason for the season, not the season for the reason of Jesus.
Who cares?
Jesus is the reason for the season, not the season for the reason of Jesus.
The question is purely of scholastic interest. No one is going to burn in Hell because they got the B-Day of Jesus wrong, lol.
I think the traditional date of Jesus birth reflects the way they did things back then, as most people did not celebrate their BDays, and all except the most powerful in most cultures did not note the specific day anyway. I think the Winter solstice was just a convenient but unmistakable day that was close to His actual BDay.
The specific day is totally unimportant, but the question of why we have Dec 25th is of curiosity, but not dogma.
The question is purely of scholastic interest. No one is going to burn in Hell because they got the B-Day of Jesus wrong, lol.
I think the traditional date of Jesus birth reflects the way they did things back then, as most people did not celebrate their BDays, and all except the most powerful in most cultures did not note the specific day anyway. I think the Winter solstice was just a convenient but unmistakable day that was close to His actual BDay.
The specific day is totally unimportant, but the question of why we have Dec 25th is of curiosity, but not dogma.
The specific day is actually crucial. It's literally the reason for the season. Our ancient ancestors, tied closely to the earth and its cycles for sustenance, observed that the sun, the giver of all that abundance, would slowly "die" until the solstice, which is the shortest day of the year -- then sit in that position for three days, then start rising again moving to the north, resurrecting the daylight for the next year. So the date of that "resurrection" would be approximately December 25th.
That's why all those other gods before Christ (Horus, Mithra et al) had the same story: dying, lying for three days and resurrecting, always on 25 December. We've been anthropomorphizing myths about it as long as we've been on this planet, and Jesus is the latest of them. Just as the "three kings" (three stars in Orion's belt) point to the exact spot where the event is about to happen. All allegory, all based on celestial events that were in agrarian societies absolutely crucial for "salvation".
Who cares?
Jesus is the reason for the season, not the season for the reason of Jesus.
The question is purely of scholastic interest. No one is going to burn in Hell because they got the B-Day of Jesus wrong, lol.
I think the traditional date of Jesus birth reflects the way they did things back then, as most people did not celebrate their BDays, and all except the most powerful in most cultures did not note the specific day anyway. I think the Winter solstice was just a convenient but unmistakable day that was close to His actual BDay.
The specific day is totally unimportant, but the question of why we have Dec 25th is of curiosity, but not dogma.
The specific day is actually crucial. It's literally the reason for the season. Our ancient ancestors, tied closely to the earth and its cycles for sustenance, observed that the sun, the giver of all that abundance, would slowly "die" until the solstice, which is the shortest day of the year -- then sit in that position for three days, then start rising again moving to the north, resurrecting the daylight for the next year. So the date of that "resurrection" would be approximately December 25th.
That's why all those other gods before Christ (Horus, Mithra et al) had the same story: dying, lying for three days and resurrecting, always on 25 December. We've been anthropomorphizing myths about it as long as we've been on this planet, and Jesus is the latest of them. Just as the "three kings" (three stars in Orion's belt) point to the exact spot where the event is about to happen. All allegory, all based on celestial events that were in agrarian societies absolutely crucial for "salvation".
That old lie is not supported by the facts.
1. Not all of the older 'gods' died and were resurrected. Those that were, were resurrected by other gods, not by themselves as Jesus was.
2. There are only so many storylines and plot shapes for the human imagination, around 60ish, and every story can be pegged within one of those well worn and established plot shapes. That doesn't mean that all stories are plagiarized from older tales of similar plots and tropes.
3. most of what we know of these older religions were uncovered well after Christianity become the dominant religion of Europe via archeology and Roman record keepers of later centuries. How much of that was older religions impacting Christianity and how much the older dying religions trying to copy the hot newest religion is any0ones guess, but far more likely cases of the latter than the former.
These bullshit twists on Christianity have been refuted in detail many, many times by Christian theologians, and anyone actually interested would do a better job of informing themselves than to take their facts from a libtard who thinks the précis day Jesus was born a central importance to Christianity.
The specific day is actually crucial. It's literally the reason for the season. Our ancient ancestors, tied closely to the earth and its cycles for sustenance, observed that the sun, the giver of all that abundance, would slowly "die" until the solstice, which is the shortest day of the year -- then sit in that position for three days, then start rising again moving to the north, resurrecting the daylight for the next year. So the date of that "resurrection" would be approximately December 25th.
That's why all those other gods before Christ (Horus, Mithra et al) had the same story: dying, lying for three days and resurrecting, always on 25 December. We've been anthropomorphizing myths about it as long as we've been on this planet, and Jesus is the latest of them. Just as the "three kings" (three stars in Orion's belt) point to the exact spot where the event is about to happen. All allegory, all based on celestial events that were in agrarian societies absolutely crucial for "salvation".
That old lie is not supported by the facts.
1. Not all of the older 'gods' died and were resurrected. Those that were, were resurrected by other gods, not by themselves as Jesus was.
We're only concerned here with December 25 and the resurrection concept. Not "all gods". As for who does the resurrecting, that's irrelevant. These are not "lies"; they're myths found in antiquity. Myths of anthropomorphized "gods" (spirits and facets of nature) have always been used as allegories since we started thinking. What we have here are several related ones through time, sharing in common their date. Which I thought was your question.
2. There are only so many storylines and plot shapes for the human imagination, around 60ish, and every story can be pegged within one of those well worn and established plot shapes. That doesn't mean that all stories are plagiarized from older tales of similar plots and tropes.
3. most of what we know of these older religions were uncovered well after Christianity become the dominant religion of Europe via archeology and Roman record keepers of later centuries. How much of that was older religions impacting Christianity and how much the older dying religions trying to copy the hot newest religion is any0ones guess, but far more likely cases of the latter than the former.
What's your point?
These myths have been uncovered from texts, archeological digs and the like, from far before Christianism arrived. This monolith, constructed for the purpose of observing and "worshipping" the winter solstice, is 5200 years old. It's still there today. You can watch a webcast on Friday.
These bullshit twists on Christianity have been refuted in detail many, many times by Christian theologians, and anyone actually interested would do a better job of informing themselves than to take their facts from a libtard who thinks the précis day Jesus was born a central importance to Christianity.
So you ask a question, get a learned answer, and can only react with attack and ipse dixit gainsaying.
Good learning plan there.
That old lie is not supported by the facts.
1. Not all of the older 'gods' died and were resurrected. Those that were, were resurrected by other gods, not by themselves as Jesus was.
We're only concerned here with December 25 and the resurrection concept. Not "all gods". As for who does the resurrecting, that's irrelevant. These are not "lies"; they're myths found in antiquity. Myths of anthropomorphized "gods" (spirits and facets of nature) have always been used as allegories since we started thinking. What we have here are several related ones through time, sharing in common their date. Which I thought was your question.
What's your point?
These myths have been uncovered from texts, archeological digs and the like, from far before Christianism arrived. This monolith, constructed for the purpose of observing and "worshipping" the winter solstice, is 5200 years old. It's still there today. You can watch a webcast on Friday.
These bullshit twists on Christianity have been refuted in detail many, many times by Christian theologians, and anyone actually interested would do a better job of informing themselves than to take their facts from a libtard who thinks the précis day Jesus was born a central importance to Christianity.
So you ask a question, get a learned answer, and can only react with attack and ipse dixit gainsaying.
Good learning plan there.
No, 'we' are not only concerned with December 25th when you make invalid assurances across all religions to include Christianity.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique, and it is irrational of you to talk about similarities and then dismiss inconsistencies as irrelevant.
And, once again, there are only so many tales to tell, everything has been said before and everything has been retold in various ways, EXCEPT the story of Jesus' life which is unique in a great many ways, all of which you choose to ignore and then draw generic conclusions having omitted things contrary to your thesis.
No, I don't want to learn' that kind of thing; it is also known as 'lying'.
We're only concerned here with December 25 and the resurrection concept. Not "all gods". As for who does the resurrecting, that's irrelevant. These are not "lies"; they're myths found in antiquity. Myths of anthropomorphized "gods" (spirits and facets of nature) have always been used as allegories since we started thinking. What we have here are several related ones through time, sharing in common their date. Which I thought was your question.
What's your point?
These myths have been uncovered from texts, archeological digs and the like, from far before Christianism arrived. This monolith, constructed for the purpose of observing and "worshipping" the winter solstice, is 5200 years old. It's still there today. You can watch a webcast on Friday.
So you ask a question, get a learned answer, and can only react with attack and ipse dixit gainsaying.
Good learning plan there.
No, 'we' are not only concerned with December 25th when you make invalid assurances across all religions to include Christianity.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique, and it is irrational of you to talk about similarities and then dismiss inconsistencies as irrelevant.
And, once again, there are only so many tales to tell, everything has been said before and everything has been retold in various ways, EXCEPT the story of Jesus' life which is unique in a great many ways, all of which you choose to ignore and then draw generic conclusions having omitted things contrary to your thesis.
No, I don't want to learn' that kind of thing; it is also known as 'lying'.
Actually you're pretty close -- it's known as
Hey, if you're not ready you're not ready. I can only lead you to the water. But what is unique is the winter solstice, and that's in no way limited to either Xtian myth, Xtian times, or Xtian places. It is however limited to the Northern Hemisphere. At least as far as the date goes, which was your question.
If you don't want to face the answer, maybe you're not ready to ask the question.
Happy Holi-daze.
No, 'we' are not only concerned with December 25th when you make invalid assurances across all religions to include Christianity.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique, and it is irrational of you to talk about similarities and then dismiss inconsistencies as irrelevant.
And, once again, there are only so many tales to tell, everything has been said before and everything has been retold in various ways, EXCEPT the story of Jesus' life which is unique in a great many ways, all of which you choose to ignore and then draw generic conclusions having omitted things contrary to your thesis.
No, I don't want to learn' that kind of thing; it is also known as 'lying'.
Actually you're pretty close -- it's known as
Hey, if you're not ready you're not ready. I can only lead you to the water. But what is unique is the winter solstice, and that's in no way limited to either Xtian myth, Xtian times, or Xtian places. It is however limited to the Northern Hemisphere. At least as far as the date goes, which was your question.
If you don't want to face the answer, maybe you're not ready to ask the question.
Happy Holi-daze.
lol, the conceit required for making unsupported assertions, finding them rejected, then making an analogy of them being water for the thirsty, undranken, lololol.
What you think of as water is provably a pack of poisonous lies born of hubris.
Actually you're pretty close -- it's known as
Hey, if you're not ready you're not ready. I can only lead you to the water. But what is unique is the winter solstice, and that's in no way limited to either Xtian myth, Xtian times, or Xtian places. It is however limited to the Northern Hemisphere. At least as far as the date goes, which was your question.
If you don't want to face the answer, maybe you're not ready to ask the question.
Happy Holi-daze.
lol, the conceit required for making unsupported assertions, finding them rejected, then making an analogy of them being water for the thirsty, undranken, lololol.
What you think of as water is provably a pack of poisonous lies born of hubris.
"Unsupported assertions" such as... "provably a pack of poisonous lies"?
Why "poisonous"? On what planet is history "poisonous"?
Hey, if it's "provable" -- prove it.
Again, why ask the question if all you're going to do is melt down in a diaper rash of "libtards" in a thread that isn't even about politics?
You asked the question; you got the answer. Deal with it.
