Have you ever wondered about the dating of Christmas? What on earth is December 25th all about and how did we come up with that? Was it adopted from the pagans in Rome? Does your very salvation rest on rejecting or accepting the date? Do we even know what the history is? I’ve wondered about it quite a bit.
Let me guess, you don’t need to investigate it because you already know that it’s pagan, right? I understand. That’s precisely what I thought …until I investigated it. Well, there are so many theories floating around out there, so many claims, so much information, so many people saying so many things. Who has time in this busy age to study history?
When I was a teenager, I joined the Worldwide Church of God where we taught the keeping of holidays such as Easter and Christmas was pagan and sinful. One fine day, while speaking out against Easter, a question was posed to me that made me desire to look into its origins. After decades of speaking out against celebrating Easter based on what I was told, I studied Easter for myself, and what I found didn’t match what I was preaching. I was forced, at great pain and internal turmoil, to change my entire outlook. For Easter to not be completely pagan made no sense to my mind. Yet, there it was. The next logical step was to a study into Christmas. I wanted to test the spirits, so to speak. Shaken by my Easter experience, I had to know if what I had been preaching was really the truth. I wanted to know for certain how Christmas came about. “Just the facts.” The truth can handle itself. If something is true, then it’s true. If not, then not. So I set out to study Christmas as objectively as I could.
Certainly the people who are familiar with this topic should already know a little about what is being asserted on the subject. Certain religious historians, the Wiccans, the Puritans, Protestant fundamentalist groups, random YouTube and TikTok videos, your uncle in the trailer park, - they all say Christmas was co-opted from the pagans. It is a staple feature of certain groups that, annually, as people start putting out their decorations, they start rolling out a barrage of material protesting Christmas. While the Christians are saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas,” the Wiccans are saying, “Put Wicca back into Christmas.” Fifty thousand Elvis fans can’t be wrong, as they say. Christmas must be pagan. Case closed.
Is any of that correct? Did Christians really co-opt Christmas from the pagans? Where does Sol Invictus fit in? Or how about Saturnalia, or Brumalia, or Yule? Well, in this writing I hope to straighten out the claims and separate truth from tale.
What this study is about is the dating of December 25th for Christmas. I will not be getting into whether or not December 25 is the right day. I will not be getting into customs added to Christmas long after it was set to December 25th, such as evergreen swags and wreaths, bobbing for apples, caroling, and etc. This study is not intended to answer every question or touch on every issue. Some things have no answers. This study is about dates and timing.
INDEX
Click on the link below to jump to that section:
BRUMA / BRUMALIA
The claims:
For sake of space, I cannot possibly give all details on what was claimed regarding the pagan festival of Brumalia over the years and in various places. I hear people say the wildest things! Suffice it to say that I’ve heard it claimed that the festival honored Bacchus or Dionysus and Chronos, was celebrated anywhere from November 24th to December 25th, was anywhere from one day to thirty days long, and that during Brumalia the pagans decorated their houses with greenery and there were raucous celebrations.
The facts:
People are confusing many distinct things here.
A man named John Raymond Crawford wrote what has been called “not only the latest, but by far the most careful and searching investigation ever made of two festivals which are little known.” Problem is, the writing is in Latin and there are no English translations readily available. Roger Pearse was sent a review of Crawford’s book – in English.
According to Roger's review, which he generously presents to us in his online article “A Review of Crawford on the Bruma and Brumalia”, (I will summarize here) true bruma is the Roman name for the winter solstice, which is also called “solstitium et initium hiberni” (or “solstice at the start of winter”). Roman tradition placed this solstice on December 25th. However, the solstice was not usually on that date literally.
Meanwhile, Bruma is the name of a completely separate ancient celebration, which was celebrated on November 24th.
Meanwhile, Bruma is the name of a completely separate ancient celebration, which was celebrated on November 24th.
We are dealing with two different brumas. Notice the capitalization there. I have inserted this capitalization on my own to help you the reader distinguish the two brumas.
The word bruma (lower case b) comes from the superlative form of the Latin word for “brief”. Ie. "shortest". The days grow shorter in winter, so “bruma” came to mean the shortest day of the year; the winter solstice.
Bruma (capital B) was the name of a festival on November 24th that marked a kind of unofficial start of winter.
Bruma (capital B) was the name of a festival on November 24th that marked a kind of unofficial start of winter.
Got that? Two brumas, only one was a festival: Bruma (capital B).
Let's go on a little trip through time and space.
We start in western Rome, prior to 55 BC. Here, we find the oldest extant Roman calendar we have from before Julius Caesar's calendar reforms. It is called the Fasti Antiates Maiores. Part of what it does is shows festivals. It shows nothing at all on November 24 or December 25. The Bruma festival was either non-existent or very minor.
Let's zip forward in time.
By the 300s AD, calendars do mention Bruma. The Philocalian Calendar, made for 354 AD, shows Bruma on the 24th of November. Even so, it shows no bruma festival on December 25.
Now we move forward in time, and far to the east.
From the sixth century through the tenth century AD, in the Byzantine Empire, there was a festival called Brumalia. Notice the location here. We are talking Constantinople, not Rome. Also notice the dating here. The 500s are centuries after Christmas became popular in Rome and the western Roman Empire ceased to exist. Brumalia is now a twenty-four day festival, lasting from November 24th through December 17th. It was not celebrated for twenty-four straight days, mind you. Rather, it was divided up alphabetically – one day for each letter of the Greek alphabet – and each person celebrated on the day that matched the first letter of their name.
Roger Pearse wrote to me and informs us that it would appear that, in the course of time, Bruma was combined with Saturnalia to become Brumalia. This matches what was written in his review of Crawford I mentioned earlier. Thanks for the excellent research, hard work, and timely help, Roger!
If Bruma, on November 24th, was eventually combined with Saturnalia, on December 17th, then Saturnalia was not replaced by Christmas at all. It lived on and was merged, in the opposite direction in the month, with Bruma and other holidays.
As Bruma became Brumalia, there were dinner parties, games, and the slaughtering of a pigs and goats. To the ancient Roman mind, these things were what one would expect in the winter. They weren’t given to farming or going to war in the winter, so they would plant some seeds then slaughter some pigs and goats and throw a party. The parties were at night since Cronos was a god of time and harvest, and was pictured as being in darkness, just as seeds were in darkness. The pigs were symbolic, as were the goats. This wasn’t some random choice of animal for a generic feast. None of these symbols carried over into Christmas.
You can read more about this in Roger Pearse’s review of “De Mensibus”.
John the Lydian wrote De Mensibus (or “On the Months”) in the late 400’s AD. He points out that these things were opposed by the Christians of that time and the church turned away from them. I repeat for emphasis - opposed by Christians a century after they were supposedly adopted by Christians.
It appears that this distaste for such celebrations came to a head in the Council of Trullo (ala "Quinisext Ecumenical Council”) in 692. The Canon 62 begins this way:
“The so-called Calends, and what are called Bota and Brumalia, and the full assembly which takes place on the first of March, we wish to be abolished from the life of the faithful.”
It would appear that all of this business about the Church’s eagerness to adopt paganism after Constantine the Great’s reign is not necessarily as accurate as we would be led to believe. No doubt some did. Were there converts still holding on to old pagan practices? Yes. But was the church rushing to “cleanse” and adopt pagan practices? No!
Roger Pearse gives us a great deal more details in his article "On 'bruma' and 'brumalia' in ancient Rome, as found in the OLD".
Summary:
In Rome, “bruma” was the winter solstice, but not a festival, while “Bruma” was the winter festival in November. In the Byzantine east, Bruma eventually merged with Saturnalia and became Brumalia. As lengthy as the Byzantine celebration became, it was popular in the East long after Christmas caught on. Bruma had no bearing on the dating of Christmas.
Plus it has the distinction of being opposed by the Church a century and a half after it was supposedly adopted by the Church.
Plus it has the distinction of being opposed by the Church a century and a half after it was supposedly adopted by the Church.
SATURNALIA
The claims:
The wildest and most inane claims are reserved for Saturnalia. Mainly, I have heard claims that Saturnalia was on December 17th and December 25th, that it was celebrated for one day, three days, eight days, nine days, twelve days, and as long as a month, that it was in honor of Bacchus and Saturn, and that it was the most vile celebration imaginable. I have heard that from Saturnalia comes the tradition of the “twelve days of Christmas.” I have probably heard more claims about Saturnalia than any other ancient festival. If you believe the stories, every last portion of Christmas, including the mistletoe and the Yule log, came from Saturnalia.
The facts:
Saturnalia honored Saturn the god of vegetation. Tom C. Schmidt at Chronicon.net, in his article "The dates of Saturnalia (and Sigillaria!) and Christmas," reviews an account from an ancient author named Macrobius.
Macrobius claims Saturnalia was originally celebrated on the 14th day before the Kalends of January. This equates to December 17th. We can corroborate this on ancient calendars such as the Faste and the Philocalian. That is the one and only date of Saturnalia - December 17th.
Before we go any further, we need to learn something about the Roman calendar. I apologize, but things will make so much more sense after this.
The Romans had a unique calendar system. They didn't recon dates as we do. They would never say, "Christmas is on December 25." It's not that they didn't know the concept. There were peg calendars that counted dates from 1 to 31. They just didn't describe days that way. Instead, each month had three time-markers, called the Kalends, Nones, and Ides. The Kalends were the first day of each month. The Nones and Ides were later in the month. I would explain it, but we don't need that right now. Days were counted from those three markers.
For example, Saturnalia was 14 days before the Kalends of January, ie., 14 days before the first of January. That means Romans would start at January 1 and count back 14 days. (Bear in mind they counted inclusively - you count both the first and the last in the series. So, include January 1 in your count. To our minds, it looks like you count back 13 days. That's wrong, because we're counting like a modern, not like an ancient.)
Now that we know more about how the Roman calendar worked, let's see why we needed to know that in the first place.
When Caesar reformed the calendar in 46 BC, he added two days to the end of December. December used to have 29 days, but now it has 31. Do you see how that made somewhat of an issue? Before, you could count back 14 days and get to the 17th day of December. Now, you count back 14 days and land on the 19th day of December. Adding days changed things.
Some people insisted on the old date, and some people preferred the old calculation. Same holiday, two different dates. The celebrating now lasted three days.
In case you are wondering, this same calendar issue does not affect any possible birth date for Jesus since He was born after Caesar's calendar reforms.
The official date of Saturnalia remained on the 17th. We know this from several sources including old calendars. I have heard much about the shouting of “Io, Saturnalia!” but Macrobius says this was on the 17th only.
Macrubius also mentioned a decree by Augustus Caesar officially making the Saturnalia a three-day festival from 17th to the 19th. But why stop at three days when you can have even more? Macrobius mentions it was eventually blended together with other festivals (eg. “Ops” and “Sigillaria”) and then became treated as a seven-day celebration, between the 17th and the 23rd. We know from history that Caligula limited it to five days, from the 17th to 21st.
Regardless of how long the holiday season lasts, December 25th is the one and only date of Christmas. Regardless of how long the fun lasted, December 17th is the one and only date of Saturnalia. Period. End of sentence. The date of Christmas does not come from Saturnalia.
Chronicon.net gives us a great deal more information on Saturnalia in their article "The Origins of Saturnalia and Christmas."
For another fine article, I would direct you to Crisis Magazine's "Christmas, Pagan Romans, and Frodo Baggins".
As for the twelve days of Christmas, they have nothing to do with Saturnalia. Fact is, those are the twelve days after Christmas, between Christmas and the feast of Epiphany. This was set officially in the second Council of Tours.
Epiphany was the original celebration of the major events in Jesus’ life (mainly His baptism). Until the late 1900s, most people who celebrated Christmas didn’t start festivities until Christmas Eve, then they would celebrate for 12 days until Epiphany.
Summary:
Saturnalia was on the 17th. Saturnalia festivities never lasted to December 24th or 25th at any point. It has no bearing on the dating of Christmas.
NATALIS INVICTI
The claims:
I have heard this day called many things. Mostly, some variant of "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti". I have heard people state with absolute conviction that Christmas is the Sol festival (but if it is, then it can’t be Bruma, Saturnalia, or Brumalia). I have heard that the birthday of the sun was celebrated every year on December 25th, and every four years.
I am going to pull a quote from a person who should be familiar with the readers of this blog, but might not be. This person is the head of a church group that splintered off of Armsrtongism, which makes them vehemently anti-Christmas. The quote is quite typical of others you might find. This quote is from Dave Pack’s article on Christmas:
“The Dec. 25 festival of natalis solis invicti, the birth of the unconquered sun, was ordered by the emperor Aurelian in A.D. 274 as a Winter Solstice celebration…”-Dave Pack, "The True Origins of Christmas", 2017, p.9
A definite claim stated adamantly. Is it true?
The facts:
All of this talk about Natalis Invicti comes from one place and one place only: a single mention in one Roman calendar created in 354 AD. We have only copies left. The original is lost. I will go into much greater detail on this calendar in the next section. Anything and everything about Natalis Invicti is nothing but people speculating about two words in a calendar, what they mean, and where they come from.
We've heard from Dave Pack. Now let's take a quote from the other side of the debate, to make it fair.
Steven Ernst Hijmans is currently a faculty member at the University of Alberta’s History and Classics department. He wrote a book titled “Sol – the Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome”. In Volume I, chapter 9, page 588, he has this to say:
“The contention that December 25th was an especially popular festival for Sol in late antiquity is equally unfounded, as is as the notion that this festival was established by Aurelian when he supposedly instituted a new cult of the sun. Aurelian did of course build the sun a magnificent new temple and he raised the priests of Sol to the level of pontifices. A new festival on December 25th would not have been out-of-place in this context, but it must be stressed, pace Usener, that there is no evidence that Aurelian instituted a celebration of Sol on that day. A feast day for Sol on December 25th is not mentioned until eighty years later, in the Calendar of 354 and, subsequently, in 362 by Julian in his Oration to King Helios.”-Steven Hijmans, “Sol – the Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome”, Volume I, chapter 9, page 588
Well, isn’t that interesting!
Out of nowhere, Hijmans has become a lightning rod in the Christmas debate due to his knowledge on Sol and views on Sol festivals. In the past, most people would just quote 19th century German scholar Hermann Usener and call it a day. This is the Usener from the above quote. Hermann Usener is the one and only source for the claim Natalis Invicti was started by Aurelian in 274 AD. Usener belonged to the German History of Religions school, which produced quite a bit of material claiming most of Christianity, including Jesus Himself, is a plagiarized version of paganism. The views of the History of Religions school have been mostly abandoned. We simply have access to more and better material now. Even so, people who remain strictly anti-Christmas will still quote Usener, apparently because of confirmation bias.
Back in December 2010, Museumstuff.com had an article about this entitled “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Aurelian.” They listed some of the most common errors about what Aurelian did. WikiPedia still has the quote on their article about Sol Invictus. Look under the section "Aurelian". The third error is:
“Aurelian inaugurated his new temple dedicated to Sol Invictus and held the first games for Sol on December 25, 274, on the supposed day of the winter solstice and day of rebirth of the Sun.”
Please carefully read, and re-read if necessary, what they say in correction of the error:
“This is not only pure conjecture, but goes against the best evidence available. There is no record of celebrating Sol on December 25 prior to CE 354/362. Hijmans lists the known festivals of Sol as August 8 and/or 9, August 28, and December 11. There are no sources that indicate on which day Aurelian inaugurated his temple and held the first games for Sol, but we do know that these games were held every four years from CE 274 onwards. This means that they were presumably held in CE 354, a year for which perchance a Roman calendar, the Chronography of 354 or calendar of Filocalus, has survived. This calendar lists a festival for Sol and Luna on August 28, Ludi Solis games for Sol for October 19–22, and a Natalis Invicti birthday of the invincible one on December 25. While it is widely assumed that the invictus of December 25 is Sol, the calendar does not state this explicitly. The only explicit reference to a celebration of Sol in late December is made by Julian the Apostate in his hymn to King Helios written immediately afterwards in early CE 363. Julian explicitly differentiates between the one-day, annual celebration of late December 362 and the multi-day quadrennial games of Sol which, of course, had also been held in 362, but clearly at a different time. Taken together, the evidence of the Calendar of Filocalus and Julian's hymn to Helios clearly shows, according to Hijmans and others, that the ludi of October 19–22 were the Solar Games instituted by Aurelian. They presumably coincided with the dedication of his new temple for Sol.”
Well, isn't that also interesting!
Steven Hijmans, writing directly to Roger Pearse, which Pearse generously provides for us on his blog, explicitly states the games held every four years were on the Ludi Solis from October 19-22. You can read this on Pearse's blog post "Was there no festival of Sol on 25 December before 324 AD?".
All of this indicates claims about Emperor Aurelian are nothing but a best guess. Anyone who stands definitely on it as if it were some set in stone truth is misrepresenting the facts. It might be reasonable, but it's nowhere near definite.
Now we need to get a little information about another emperor of Rome, Emperor Julian the Apostate, a descendant of Constantine and devout sun worshipper who tried to turn Rome back to paganism.
Emperor Julian, in his Ode to King Helios, written in 362 AD, describes two December 25 celebrations: one every year, and one every four years. You can find this hymn online in several places and read it for yourself, if you wish, but prepare to have your head spin. We here are only concerned with these two celebrations.
As for the annual festival -
We find this spurious because what Julius did to tie the sun god to an annual festival was to reach back to Roman King Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, who lived in the 700s BC. Julian said the ancient Romans honored Helios after the solstice, when the sun became evidently stronger. It isn't possible that this should be on December 25 since, in the 700s BC, the solstice wasn't in December. December was an autumn month and Rome had no winter months at all. Julian also claimed the new year in Numa's time was January 1. That is not possible since, in the 700s BC, the new year was March 1. The year started in March, ended in December - which was in autumn - there was a long monthless gap in the winter, and there were no months of January or February at all. It was Julius Caesar who set the new year to January 1. When we look at old calendars, like the Fausti, there were no festivals on December 25 at all. It seems Julian, who was obviously quite intelligent, was simply misinformed about Rome's ancient calendar. So, we reject Julian's claims about an ancient December 25 festival. The Natalis Invicti feast on December 25 was very recent to Emperor Julian, not ancient, and likely originated but a few short decades before Julian wrote that poem. But this is yet another mystery. Why did Julian try to pawn it off as ancient? Hijmans speculates he made it up to give the festival bona fides. Makes sense.
As for the games every four years -
Julian claimed the games were around the time of the winter solstice, "before the beginning of the year, at the end of the month which is called after Kronos [December]." According to Steven Hijmans, these games were not in December at all but on the Ludi Solis from October 19-22 (“Sol – the Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome”. In Volume I, chapter 9, page 588,). So, we also find Julian's claims about the quadrennial games to be problematic.
This leaves us with several very large questions that have no answers. What exactly was the Natalis Invicti? Why is Invicti plural? Whom did it honor? Who started it? When did it start? And when did it end?
The answer: no one knows! All we have are questions and best guesses.
To help you get a better picture, here is the timeline of events:
·150-190 AD - Christians begin celebrating Jesus' birth, eventually as Epiphany.
·190-200 AD - Clement of Alexandria calculates Jesus' birth to late in the year.
·200 AD - Tertullian sets Jesus' crucifixion on March 25.
·202-211 AD - Hippolytus uses the March 25 date to calculate Jesus’ birth as December 25.
·221 AD - Sextus Julius Africanus agrees with the March 25 date for the conception.
·200 AD - Tertullian sets Jesus' crucifixion on March 25.
·202-211 AD - Hippolytus uses the March 25 date to calculate Jesus’ birth as December 25.
·221 AD - Sextus Julius Africanus agrees with the March 25 date for the conception.
·243 AD - Pseudo-Cyprian concludes the birth and the death are linked (demonstrating the idea really was popular in Christian scholarly thinking in that time).
·245 AD - Origen takes a stand against birthdays.
·274 AD - Aurelian elevates Sol worship. Dies the next year.
·354 AD - The first mention of "Natalis Invicti" on December 25th. Same document mentions Jesus born on December 25.
·362 AD - Emperor Julian “the Apostate”, who despised Christianity and tried to replace Christianity with paganism, gives us the first explicit reference to a celebration of Sol on December 25th, in the form of games every four years.
·245 AD - Origen takes a stand against birthdays.
·274 AD - Aurelian elevates Sol worship. Dies the next year.
·354 AD - The first mention of "Natalis Invicti" on December 25th. Same document mentions Jesus born on December 25.
·362 AD - Emperor Julian “the Apostate”, who despised Christianity and tried to replace Christianity with paganism, gives us the first explicit reference to a celebration of Sol on December 25th, in the form of games every four years.
Time for Dave Pack and others to review their information, no?
THE CHRONOGRAPHY
We now circle back to the calendar mentioned earlier, because you cannot talk about Natalis Invicti without talking about that calendar. I want you to see how deep this rabbit hole goes.
This whole Natalis Invicti discussion comes from a document known as the “Chronography of 354” (that’s 354 AD; well after Aurelian). The Chronography was compiled by Furious Dionysus Filocalus, a renowned calligrapher… and Christian. Filocalus created it for another Christian named Valentinus.
The Chronography is not just a calendar; there are several other parts to it, sixteen in all.
The Philocalian Calendar
Part six of the Chronography is called the Philocalian Calendar and it lists only the words “Natalis Invicti” on December 25th. It does not say "Dies Natalis Sol Invicti", or anything like that. Sol is not mentioned. Only Invicti.
It also lists Bruma on November 24th and Saturnalia on December 17th. Thus ends any possibility that either were on December 25th.
Here is exactly what it says for December 25th:
N INVICTI CM XXX
The “N” is short for “Natalis”. This is a term that can mean birthday, or it can refer to the dedication of a temple. Hence the conflict between people who wonder if some emperor (they assume Aurelian) initiated a new holiday or if he dedicated a temple. Invicti means “invincible”. The “CM” is short for “Circenses Misses” and it means “Games Ordered”. “XXX” is thirty and means 30 games were ordered. Generally this refers to horse races run on that day.
Do you see why this is so hotly debated? Invicti is here, but Sol is not. It is invicti, not invictus, making it plural. Sol was called Sol Invictus. Yet, there were several other things called Invictus, including Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Hercules, and Sylvanus. Natalis is here, which might be a birthday but could indicate a temple was dedicated. Yet there is no known temple to Sol dedicated on this date. Temples are known to be dedicated on other dates. Games are mentioned, which likely would not have happened for Jesus. But 30 games, specifically. Older festivals get games in multiples of 12. That this day has 30 means it was very recently added and not an ancient day, like Saturnalia. Aurelian's birthday is on the calendar, too. He only gets 24 games. If it started with Aurelian, why would Aurelian himself get but 24 games while this date gets 30? So, was it started after Aurelian? We don't know!
No one can deny something happened. Something definitely happened! But what?
And it only gets worse!
The Commemoration of the Martyrs
Part twelve of the Chronography is called the “Commemoration of the Martyrs” which lists the important dates of prominent Christian martyrs. Edwin Yamauchi, in his book "Persia and the Bible" p. 521, says the Commemoration was actually composed in 336 AD. That makes it 18 years older than the calendar! Who do you suppose is the first martyr listed? That would be Jesus Christ - listed as being born on December 25th.
Here is exactly what it says:
VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae
“VIII” is the roman numeral 8. “Kal” is short for kalends, which is the first day of any month. “Ian” is January. So now we know it refers to the kalends of January. "Natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae" means "birthday of Christ in Bethlehem, Judea."
When we put this section together we get, “Eight days before the first day of January birthday of Christ in Bethlehem, Judea.”
And what date is eight days before the first of January? That is their way of saying December 25.
So now we have a very important problem! Same Chronography, two mentions of December 25th, one somewhat ambiguous, one clearly associated with Christ, and the one associated with Christ is 18 years older than the one supposedly about Sol.
Some people say Natalis Invicti refers to Christ. Some people say it refers to Sol. Some people say they can't know what it refers to, so it refers to nothing. Maybe it's a later add, or a mistake. Another group believes that it does not refer to Christ or Sol, but to the sun specifically, in an astronomical way rather than a religious way. That does go along with how Rome usually honored the sun. With December 25 being the traditional date of the solstice, this mention in the Calendar could be purely astronomical. But why would that be, since the summer solstice and equinoxes are not mentioned? (Oh, how I wish it was definite!)
Let's pause and think about this for a second.
The claim is that all of Rome so loved the Natalis Invicti festival that Constantine and the Catholic Church had little choice but to adopt it and paste Christ over Sol.
If Aurelian, in the last months of his life, declared a Sol festival in December 274, which may or may not be the case, and if Constantine converted at the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, then that leaves 38 years of Sol's prominence in Rome. The last coins depicting Sol were minted in 313 AD, so Sol most definitely fell out of prominence around this time. That's not very long. IF December 25th did honor Sol, then it only did so for less than 50 years. Can you create a holiday and get it to be so popular you simply cannot get Romans to abandon it in that short a span? I doubt it. Especially since there is absolutely no other evidence for this day anywhere. It was such a popular day that if it wasn't for one calendar we would never even know it existed at all. We have detailed records of all sorts of holidays, but not this one. I am not at in any way convinced it was such a popular day that Christians felt threatened and had to adopt it.
Is there anything we can know or sure? Yes. And that is that speculation is the name of the game. People claim this or that or the other thing with fervency, but you've seen the facts and what their claims are built on. There is little to go on here.
We know this too: it has honored Christ for 1,675+ years!
Conclusion:
So, was it Aurelian who pasted a Sol festival over a Christian date? Or was it Constantine changing the Sol festival back to a Christ festival? Or was it Julian the Apostate changing the Christ festival back to a Sol festival again? Or all of the above? We don't know!
The phrase is "Natalis Invicti" not "Dies Natalis Sol Invicti" or anything like that. So why put those extra words in there? The better to lead you on with, my dear!
Something apparently non-Christian and not terribly popular, called Natalis Invicti, happened on that date, but we don't really know anything about it.
Christ is clearly listed in association with December 25th well before Sol is.
YULE
The claims:
Yule was a pagan winter solstice celebration from which Christmas borrowed heavily. Christmas is just a continuation of Yule, and a pagan holiday that should be returned to the pagans.
The facts:
Our first records of Yule come from around 700 AD by our old friend the Venerable Bede in his work "De Temporum Ratione". (See page 54 of that link.)
“Nor is it irrelevant if we take the trouble to translate the names of the other months. The months of Guili derive their name from the day when the Sun turns back [and begins] to increase, because of one of [these months] precedes [this day] and the other follows.”
Roughly, Bede records that Yule was the name of two months that roughly correspond to December and January. Yes, two months with the same name. The Germans had other double-months. Bede is speaking in rough terms, since he is trying to translate the German lunar calendar into the standard Julian solar calendar. He says the first month was before the winter solstice and the second month was after.
In searching for other things, I happened across this quote from "Christmas in Ritual and Tradition" by Clement A. Miles:
“One more name yet remains to be considered, Yule (Danish Jul), the ordinary word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages, and not extinct among ourselves. Its derivation has been widely discussed, but so far no satisfactory explanation of it has been found. Professor Skeat in the last edition of his Etymological Dictionary (1910) has to admit that its origin is unknown. Whatever its source may be, it is clearly the name of a Germanic season—probably a two-month tide covering the second half of November, the whole of December, and the first half of January. 1-26 It may well suggest to us the element added to Christmas by the barbarian peoples who began to learn Christianity about the time when the festival was founded. Modern research has tended to disprove the idea that the old Germans held a Yule feast at the winter solstice, and it is probable, as we shall see, that the specifically Teutonic Christmas customs come from a New Year and beginning-of-winter festival kept about the middle of November. These customs transferred to Christmas are to a great extent religious or magical rites intended to secure prosperity during the coming year, and there is also the familiar Christmas feasting, apparently derived in part from the sacrificial banquets that marked the beginning of winter.”-Miles, Clement A., "Christmas in Ritual and Tradition", chapter 1 section IV, p.25 [emphasis mine]
Some interesting things there. Yule had become the name for Christmas. Yule wasn't a solstice festival. Very interesting indeed!
There were many attempts by kings and emperors to Christianize the pagans of northern Europe. Charlemagne (768-814) was one such king. Charlemagne was a scourge of German paganism and fought bitterly to wipe it out. He changed their entire method of reckoning time, renamed months, altered the beginning and ending points of months, and otherwise “Romanized” their reckoning of time. Haakon I of Norway (934-961) is another. Haakon rearranged pagan holidays to make them more like Christian holidays, in order to make Christianity more acceptable to pagans in the hopes of converting them in time. He had to balance his desire to introduce Christianity to Norway with the political expediency necessary to unite the realm. The following is a quote from "The Saga of Haakon the Good" by Snorri Sturluson:
“King Haakon was a good Christian when he came to Norway; but as the whole country was heathen, with much heathenish sacrifice, and as many great people, as well as the favor of the common people, were to be conciliated, he resolved to practice his Christianity in private. But he kept Sundays, and the Friday fasts, and some token of the greatest holy-days. He made a law that the festival of Yule should begin at the same time as Christian people held it, and that every man, under penalty, should brew a meal of malt into ale, and therewith keep the Yule holy as long as it lasted. Before him, the beginning of Yule, or the slaughter night, was the night of mid-winter, and Yule was kept for three days thereafter. It was his intent, as soon as he had set himself fast in the land, and had subjected the whole to his power, to introduce Christianity.”
The point of this quote is to show that an effort was made to bring the timing of Yule into line with Christmas in order to make Christianity more palatable to the pagan Norse. If the timing had to be brought into alignment, then it was not aligned at first. Yule was not on December 25 originally, despite what every single pagan website out there tells you. Sturluson mentions "the night of mid-winter", which is generally thought to be close to mid-January.
So historians have known for decades that Yule was not a solstice celebration falling on 25 December, as many people are to this day led to believe. I have just recently received email urging me to heed this very false information. Perhaps we all need to blow the dust off of our history books, eh?
In both of the above quotes, we see hints that Christmas was called Yule in those areas. The Germans of that time had a peculiar habit of naming things after the month in which they fell. Christmas falls in the double months named Yule, so it was given the name Yule. This is the same thing that happened when Germans renamed Paschal Fast to Lent, and Pashca itself to Easter/Ostar. It was natural for Germanic people to do this. Since Christianity gained the forefront in the region, the name Yuletide has not referred to the original Yule at all. For example, see the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1912) article on "Yuletide." The article has almost nothing to do with Yule but is entirely about Christmas. It seems apparent that the terms Yule and Christmas were simply interchangeable, not because of the celebrations merging, but because that is how Germans named holidays. The Saxons, being German, followed those same patterns. These German names made their way west into the British Isles and on into the Americas. When we hear the name Yuletide, our natural reaction is to think of Yule, not Christmas. This simply betrays our lack of familiarity with the peculiarities of the old German and English cultures.
Which leads us to that particular log.
The earliest written record of a Yule Log is from the 1620-30s by a man named Robert Herrick, but he used the term "Christmas Log." There are no older records. We saw a quote from Bede earlier, so, yes, we have older records of a pagan Yule festival. But we do not have older records of a Yule log. All older claims of the log tradition are unsupported speculation and conjecture. Is it possible the Yule log is a pagan carryover? Maybe. Definite? No. It is equally possible that the log is entirely a Christian log which was simply called by the name Yule by convention.
But that tradition has gone the way of the wood-burning fireplace. It was oddity anyway; never central to Christmas at any time or place.
Conclusion:
That the now practically defunct Yule Log tradition was adopted for a time in in some places in no way indicates the entire Christmas day is associated with paganism. Any way you slice it, there is no way a Germanic festival from the 600's AD influenced the Romans of the 200-300's AD.
ZAGMUK / AKITA
I have heard a little about an ancient Mesopotamian new year festival called "Zagmuk" (which is blended with a longer Babylonian festival called "Akita"). Some pretty inane claims are made about this festival, so I figured I would address it.
The claims:
Christmas comes from Saturnalia which comes from Zagmuk. Zagmuk was an ancient winter solstice festival nearly identical to Saturnalia. It started on the winter solstice and was celebrated for twelve days. Thus the origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
The facts:
Most people have never heard of Zagmuk/Akita. Details are utterly confused when you go looking for them. Here is a direct quote from an Encyclo.com article on Zagmuk to illustrate my point (underlining mine):
"Zagmuk is a Mesopotamian festival celebrated around the winter solstice, which literally means ‘beginning of the year’. The feast fell in March or April and lasted about 12 days."
Around the winter solstice in March or April, huh? OK. If you insist!
Zagmuk was the first day of the 12-day Akitu celebration, so it seems. So the 12-days similarity claim appears accurate, albeit superficial.
However, Zagmuk/Akita was not a winter solstice festival (neither is Christmas, nor was Saturnalia for that matter). In fact, it wasn't in the winter at all. I know Encyclo.com would like us to believe the winter solstice is in March, but that's obviously bad editing, and I'm just having some fun with it.
Truth is the exacting details of course are unknown since so much information has been lost these past 4,000 years, but we know more than enough to say that Zagmuk/Akita appears to have two main components: harvest and New Years.
It was a harvest-oriented festival.
Akita is derived the Sumerian word for barley. The base idea of Akita was to celebrate the crop-cycle; more specifically the sewing of barley in the fall and the cutting of barley in the spring. As we see in many other ancient cultures, the notions of life, death, and rebirth (in other words, the crop-cycle) appear in the symbolism of the day. Take the Isis & Osiris myths for example.
Christmas in contrast is about birth, not death and rebirth.
It was also a calendar-oriented festival.
Zagmuk is the Sumerian word for "beginning of the year". When was the beginning of the Mesopotamian/Babylonian year? Why, check your Hebrew calendar and find out for yourself. Since the Babylonian captivity, the Babylonian calendar and the Hebrew calendar are pretty much the same thing! And we should see that the beginning of the year for the Mesopotamians and Hebrews falls in the month of Nissan/Abib, which is usually March or April. Ancientworlds.net tells us that Zagmuk was the first new moon after the spring equinox.
Toss in a few traditions about Enlil/Marduk vs. Tiamat, and order vs. chaos, and you have a regular religious festival. Opa!
I can't tell you how many websites I've checked that assert something like "Zagmuk was a new year festival celebrated around the winter solstice." It is not wise to see "new year" and automatically assume January 1. The Mesopotamian/Hebrew New Year was not in winter it was in the spring! Anciently, even the Romans began their year in March when they used a lunar calendar.
It was also a harvest festival. Guess what's not going to be happening in late December at the start of the rainy season. That's right.. harvesting!
It is even less wise to see a holiday and simply assign it as a winter solstice festival. As we've seen so many, many times in this study most holidays that are commonly called winter solstice festivals were no such thing. Are people really that desperate to smear Christmas?
It has been speculated that the festival is 12 days long because they used a lunar calendar, and certain intercalations had to be made. These days are added days that help reconcile the lunar and solar calendars. It takes 11 extra days to reconcile the calendars. The twelfth day of Akitu was one where order had defeated chaos and life returned to normal, so it would seem incredibly logical that the "twelve days of Akitu" were eleven "leap days" plus one.
The idea isn't unreasonable. The Jews anciently added "leap months" every so often to reconcile their calendar. And the Egyptians had the 5 “heriu renpet” days to reconcile their 360-day year with a 365-day solar year. This is that same idea.
So far as Zagmuk/Akita being identical to Saturnalia, I cannot find any credible evidence that this is true. All such claims that Saturnalia is Zagmuk come from websites that insist Zagmuk was a winter solstice festival, therefore I give them very little weight. The twelve days of Zagmuk/Akita have defined meanings and ceremonies. They definitely do not match the symbolism of Saturnalia. As you recall, Macrobius recorded that the origin of Saturnalia was secular, and it was originally a one-day festival until Julius Caesar changed the calendar.
Conclusion:
Zagmuk wasn't a winter solstice festival after all. It was a spring festival, recalling New Years and the barley harvest. There is no good reason to believe it is the precursor to Saturnalia. It would seem that the only similarity that Zagmuk has with Christmas is the notion of twelve days. Unfortunately for this claim, we have seen where the 12 days of Christmas come from, and they aren't intercalary days. The similarity is a false cognate at best. As if anything with 12 days couldn't possibly be anything other than Zagmuk.
WINTER SOLSTICE
Touching again on the solstice, I feel it would be irresponsible to omit mentioning that the solstice is not on December 25th. People might even wonder how the solstice could have been celebrated on the 25th and not the 21st where we usually find it today (it varies somewhat). Well, it has to do with three separate calendars.
Prior to the Julian calendar, the Romans used a lunar calendar. Its accuracy was not the best.
Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in 44-45 BC. He made a solar calendar with years of 365.25 days, and leap-years every four years. It wasn’t perfect because years aren’t exactly 365.25 days long, so it still lost around 11 minutes of time each year. Over time those eleven or so minutes add up to one day lost roughly every 130 years.
So, in 1582 AD, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar again. He made the calendar more accurate, but the Gregorian calendar still loses 26 seconds each year, or one day every three thousand years. This latest calendar took centuries to catch on across the globe and for a while people in various places had all sorts of dating issues.
As the story goes, by the time Gregory XIII reformed the calendar in 1582, the solstice was on December 11th. They accounted for the 10 lost days between the Council of Nicea in 325 AD and his own time, and he corrected that loss. He did not account for the 3 days lost from Julius Caesar’s time and the Council of Nicea. Therefore today we see the solstice on December 21st or December 22nd, which is where it would have been in 325 AD.
All of that back story leads to these two facts:
1) The first absolutely indisputable mention of Jesus’ birth on December 25th was in 336 AD, in the Commemoration of the Martyrs. December 25th was not on the solstice in that century or the prior. There are earlier mentions, and we'll get to those, but I want to emphasize the indisputability of this one.
1) The first absolutely indisputable mention of Jesus’ birth on December 25th was in 336 AD, in the Commemoration of the Martyrs. December 25th was not on the solstice in that century or the prior. There are earlier mentions, and we'll get to those, but I want to emphasize the indisputability of this one.
2) The first indisputable mention of a non-Christian festival in Rome on December 25 was in 362 AD, in the Ode to King Helios. Rome had no ancient solstice celebration at all. There are other mentions, for example Natalis Invicti, and no doubt sun worshippers held the solstice to be of some kind of importance, but this mention is indisputable.
This information becomes important whenever someone argues that December 25th was a popular solstice festival. It wasn't. Never has been.
It also becomes important when people try to match the Roman calendar to that of other cultures, for example the Teutons, and they try to find the origin of Christmas in Yule. December 25th wasn’t the literal solstice at all. Other cultures that watched for a solstice would have no reason to arrive at the date of December 25th. Therefore I find it important to point out how December 25th was not the literal solstice.
Now I feel I would be remiss to omit that the Romans certainly did see December 25th as being the date of the solstice. The Romans tended to be less accurate than other cultures in that they focused more on the days after the solstice, when the sun begins to increase in strength.
The first reference we have to this comes from Pliny the Elder in his work “Natural History”. Pliny says this:
“The bruma begins at the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth day before the calends of January.”
As we saw at the start of this post, “bruma” is not in reference to the festival Bruma/Brumalia, but merely the shortest day of the year. Pliny says, "bruma begins," and by this he means the return of the sun begins at the solstice. The return of the sun was more important to Romans than the actual solstice. This is confirmed by Emperor Julian in his Ode To King Helios, where he said,
"For it was not, I think, the time when the god turns [the solstice], but the time when he becomes visible to all men, as he travels from south to north, that they appointed for the festival [New Year]. For still unknown to them was the nicety of those laws which the Chaldaeans and Egyptians discovered, and which Hipparchus and Ptolemy perfected: but they judged simply by sense-perception, and were limited to what they could actually see."
So, we know the solstice had traditional significance to the Romans, and some astronomical significance, but no popular public religious or festive significance until very late.
Just because the Romans thought anything of the day does not mean the Christians did.
In 243 AD, a work was written that is claimed to have been authored by Cyprian. That claim is most likely false. The work is known as "The Pseudo-Cyprianic De Pascha Computus" or just "De Pascha Computus" (“The Calculation of Passover”). I quote this selection from Tom C. Schmidt at Chronicon.net in his article “Cyprian, Christmas, and the Birth of the Sun”:
“O! The splendid and divine Providence of the Lord, that on that day, even at the very day, on which the Sun was made, 28 March, a Wednesday, Christ should be born. For this reason Malachi the prophet, speaking about him to the people, fittingly said: ‘Unto you shall the sun of righteousness arise, and healing is in his wings.’”
Many people have used a shortened version of this quote to demonstrate that the birth of the sun was on December 25th. Problem is when we see the entire quote that breaks down. But one thing De Pascha Computus does in spades is demonstrate that, in the mid-200’s, Christians could care less about the Roman view of the solstice. They were more interested in the Jewish tradition of the creation of the Sun in late March.
Some people argue that "born" here does not refer to birth, but conception. It's possible. I don't want to sidetrack on that, though.
Christians in the mid 200’s didn’t seem to care what the Romans felt about the sun. Nor either did the Romans, for that matter. The evidence is that there really was nothing of great note happening on December 25th in Rome at this time. Why is it that 100 years later we see the Christians celebrating the birth of Christ on the same date as the Romans solstice? The answer is not found in some Roman solstice celebration.
If we stopped here, the evidence would be severely wanting, but we still have to view one more bit of critical material. You see, there is a second thing De Pascha Computus does in spades: it demonstrate that Christians in this era were calculating dates.
CALCULATING DECEMBER 25th
In the second century AD, many Christians began trying to deduce the dates of Christ’s birth and death. We have records from such names as Hippolytus, Tertullian, Sextus Julianus Africanus, and others. All of these were using date calculation methods to determine when Christ lived and died.
Late in the second century, Clement of Alexandria, Egypt, in his book “Stromata”, gives us details on how the Egyptian churches were calculating the date of Christ's birth. I will quote from Tom C. Schmidt’s translation at Chronicon.net in his article “Clement of Alexandria and the Original date of Christmas as December 25th”:
“From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, 194 years, 1 month, 13 days. And there are those who have determined not only the year of our Savior’s genesis, but even the day, which they say took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus on the 25th of Pachon…”"And treating of His passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the sixteenth year of Tiberius, on the twenty-fifth of Phamenoth; and others the twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi and others say that on the nineteenth of Pharmuthi the Saviour suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi."-Stromata, book 1, chapter 21
When Clement says, "there are those", I take this to mean he was building on other works completed perhaps by the late second century. What this means is that in the 100’s AD, perhaps even as early as the mid 100’s AD, Christians were calculating and honoring the timing of Jesus’ life and death.
Clement tells us these Egyptians concluded Jesus was either born or conceived (Clement uses the word ‘genesis’ which, oddly, can mean either) on the 25th day of the Egyptian month of Pachon. He then goes on to say yet another group believed he was born on the 25th day of Pharmuthi.
Here is a difficult spot. We have to wrestle with two things: months and genesis.
As for the months --
First, Clement tells of the month of Pachon. Pachon is the ninth Egyptian month, is most often said to correlate roughly to May. Most people understand Clement means to say that Jesus was born May 20. If you've read anything here before, you know what I say about matching the Egyptian calendar to our Gregorian calendar - it can't be done easily. So, is it May 20? I say, it's as good a match as any I can think of. Let's not strive over the date. May 20 it is! However, I want to direct your attention away from the translation and back to what Clement originally said - the 25th. These Egyptians arrived at the 25th day of the month. It takes a later English speaker to convert that to the 20th date. The Egyptians didn't do that. They didn't have 20th in mind. They had the 25th in mind.
Later, Clement tells of the month of Pharmuthi. Parmouti is the eighth month, and is said to correlate roughly to April. Again, they believed Jesus was born on the 24th or 25th day of the month.
Lastly, Clement also tells of the month of Phamenoth. Phamenoth is the seventh month, and is said to correlate roughly to March. Yet another group of people believed Jesus was crucified on the 25th day of the month.
Three different groups of people with three different ideas all centered around the 25th day. Notice how the 25th does seem to keep reemerging.
As for genesis --
We don't know which meaning of genesis Clement is using here. Genesis could be birth, as the translators choose, or it could be conception. Let's see one more thing. I think it matters.
Clement gives the time between Christ’s genesis and the death of Emperor Commodus: 194 years, 1 month, and 13 days.
Any basic check will show that Commodus died on December 31st 192 AD. Subtract 1 month and 13 days from December 31st, and we get the date November 19th. (I counted inclusively, just to be safe. If you don't count inclusively, you arrive at November 18.)
Isn't that odd, now? Pachon leads us to May 20, but the calculation leads us to November 18-19 in 2 BC. Could Clement mean to say that Jesus was not born but conceived on May 20?
If you do the math, He couldn't have been conceived in November and born in May. But there is a slight chance He could have been conceived in May and born in November. The birth would be quite premature, but viable. Let's not grumble over that, though. It doesn't really matter. They weren't natal scientists, and we aren't claiming they had nailed the correct date.
As a final detail, I want to sidebar for just a moment.
I was unaware of an interesting tidbit until I read Philip Nothaft's "Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the 'Calculation Theory'" (2013). On page 11, Nothaft is reviewing Clement. He makes mention that it isn't clear which calendar the Egyptians, specifically the Bassalidians, were using. Apparently, it makes a difference. Look:
"Another fascinating calendrical coincidence can be obtained if the Basilidean dates are instead interpreted as days in the Egyptian calendar, in which each year was uniformly 365 days in length. In this case, 11 Tybi would have corresponded to 24/25 December for the years 29/30 CE, i.e. the period in which the Passion is often thought to have occurred."-Philip Nothaft "Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the 'Calculation Theory'" (2013), pp.11-12
I wouldn't die on this hill, but it is interesting. Once again, we can find ties to December 25.
Why do we care what these old people thought? Because it establishes a bigger point: from perhaps even the mid-to-late 100’s AD, there were Christians calculating and honoring the conception and birth of Jesus, and believing that Jesus was born on the 25th day of a month, and using numbers that point to a time late in the year. This has nothing to do with Roman holidays. At this time, Christians didn’t care about Roman solstice traditions. That is why we start with Clement.
Not only that, but going through this information sets up a precedence for our next bit of information.
Not much later comes a writing from Hippolytus of Rome, who was a disciple of Irenaeus who was himself a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John. Around 202-211, in his work “Commentary on Daniel,” he calculated the date of Jesus’ birth. Hippolytus did not come to the month of November, but December. December 25th, to be exact. This is well before Sol became a thing in Rome, well before Aurelian, well before Constantine, well before the Chronography of 354, and a century and a half before Emperor Julian.
DISCLAIMER: I would be remiss if I didn't plainly state there are many people who doubt that this manuscript of Hippolytus is genuine. You need to know that I am not saying we can utterly rely on Hippolytus. This article does not stand on Hippolytus alone.
BUT!
We feel if one takes all of Hippolytus’ works together with the works of Clement and the later writers of that period, many of whom appear to draw from Hippolytus, there emerges very good reason to believe that the December 25th date is exactly what Hippolytus believed.
Tom C. Schmidt at Chronicon.net explains this in far greater detail in his article “Hippolytus and the Original Date of Christmas”. Schmidt's claims were also published in his article, "Calculating Christmas: Hippolytus and December 25th", on Biblical Archaeology Review.
No doubt someone will accuse us of relying entirely on Hippolytus and use that do dismiss everything we've said. Now you know, dear reader, that such protestations - honest as they may be - are based on a less than full understanding of what all we are doing here.
But I digress.
I mentioned Julius Africanus, but it would be rude of me not to elaborate. I expect my readers to follow my tracks and verify what I've written, so I give you this note about Africanus to help you along lest you give up from sheer frustration. Most every source will tell you Africanus puts Jesus' conception on March 25, just like Hippolytus, but few will tell you how they know this. Most don't cite a source at all. Some cite the fragments of Africanus' writings. Check those, and you'll be unable to find what you're looking for. If all the experts agree, there has to be something to it, but how?
Africanus never comes straight out and says, "Jesus was conceived on March 25". Philip Northraft gives the best explanation I've found. In summary, Africanus tried to figure out the time between the creation of the world and Jesus. He ties ties creation day 4 and Jesus' conception together, because of the sun. He puts creation day 4 on March 25. That is how we know Africanus agrees with the March 25 date.
Here is the relevant quote from Northraft:
"The fact that Africanus began a new cosmic year from the resurrection therefore indicates that he counted the years of the world from 25 March, which was a Wednesday in 5501 BCE, Africanus' year of creation. It would hence seem that he structured his chronicle around the date 25 March, because he was pleased with the correspondence of the resurrection with the fourth day of creation, on which the sun and moon began their course (making this day the beginning of calendrical time). If he counted exactly 5500 years between the creation and the divine incarnation, this would mean that 25 March was also the exact date of the latter event, referred to as the 'sarkosis' in the text, by which he likely meant the conception in the womb. If this is the case, then Africanus implicitly dated the birth of Jesus to the following winter, perhaps to 25 December."-Philip Northraft, "Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the 'Calculation Theory'", 263.
Got all that? Get his book and read the rest of that section for a whole lot more.
Moving on.
The date of the birth of Christ is not known. Speculation on when He was born started very early on. The Bible does not tell us on what day or year Jesus was born. Oh, how I wish it did!
People say, "If the date of Jesus' birth were important, the Bible would have recorded it." These people overlook that the Gospels also leave out the day and year of Jesus’ death. We may know that Passover is on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Abib/Nissan, but how do we know that? Because the Gospels say so, or because we went back to Exodus and figured it out on our own? What date Nissan 15 translates to on the Roman calendar varies greatly depending on what year it is. In one year, it could be a Thursday in March. In another year, it could be on a Saturday in April. In 33 AD, Passover began Friday night at sundown, which means Jesus could very well have been crucified on Friday in that year. See what we all are doing here? Calculating! Everyone in this debate is calculating dates, just like the Christians of old. The Bible did describe when Jesus was born, it just did so in a way that we couldn't go elsewhere in the Bible for other clues. That leaves us trying to figure it out on our own. We do it now and they did it then.
Apparently following in the footsteps of material from Clement, Hippolytus determined a year for the crucifixion, then a day. He figured that since Christ was crucified on this day, he must also have been conceived on it. Then he counted forward 9 months from conception and arrived at December 25th.
All of this in the early 200’s AD.
You might ask yourself why on earth would any sane person believe you died on the date of your conception. To understand a little more about why Hippolytus thought as he did, we can draw an example from modern claims about Jesus’ birth.
I can’t tell how very many times I have heard people speculate that Jesus was born in the Fall. “We can prove it from the Bible,” they exclaim! During the Feast of Tabernacles or Trumpets is their favorite target. (If you can prove it from the Bible you would know exactly when it was, and not give a choice of dates.) The people who claim He was born during the Jewish holy days have no more fact to draw upon than anyone else who comes to a different conclusion, but at least they are on to something.
You see, the people who claim He was born during the Jewish holidays believe that important things happen over and over on certain days of the year. Turns out this belief comes from the Jews.
For example, the Jews hold the 9th day of the month of Av (Tisha b'Av) to be a day on which repeated calamities have fallen on the Jewish people. Or again, the Jews believed the date on which a person was conceived or born is tied to the date on which they will die. Tradition states that King David was born and died on Pentecost.
As we saw earlier with De Pascha Computus, at this time Christian’s didn’t care about Roman traditions. They were, however, enamored with Jewish ones. It seems reasonable that the Jewish belief that things happen repeatedly on certain days of the year influenced the early Christians' speculation on the birth of Christ, too. They speculated that since Jesus died on a certain day, then He must also have been conceived on that same day. Hippolytus calculated the date of His conception/death to be March 25th. From conception to birth is 9 months, normally. So, 9 months from March 25th is.... December 25th!
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in his book “The Spirit of the Liturgy” argues this exact same thing. Even WikiPedia recognizes this phenomenon in their article on Christmas. In the very first paragraph (as of 12/20/2010) it says this:
“The date is not known to be the actual birthday of Jesus, and may have initially been chosen to correspond with either the day exactly nine months after Christians believe Jesus to have been conceived...”
When I refer to WikiPedia, it's usually to demonstrate the information is readily available. It's easy to find that there are valid alternatives to the dating of Christmas.
Know this – these people didn’t set out to find December 25th at all. There is no way that anyone can accuse Hippolytus or Clement or any of these people of trying to co-opt a pagan December holiday that according to record didn’t exist for another several decades to come. Finding Jesus’ birth date was secondary. They primarily cared about finding the date of His death. If they weren’t trying to adopt paganism, then the roots of Christmas on December 25th are not pagan.
Apparently Hippolytus’ dating lasted. Augustine wrote his work “On the Trinity” between 400 and 412 AD. Pay attention to the dating here; this is now well after Filocalus and well after December 25th was established. In chapter V of book IV, Augusting writes this:
“For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered…”
Hippolytus apparently started this, and two centuries later Augustine confirms the notion was widely accepted. I would also have you know that, to this very day, March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation in the Catholic Church, where the Catholics celebrate the conception of Jesus Christ. We now have book-ended evidence that the Christians calculated Jesus’ birth from a date given for His death, that date was March 25th. Nine months later is December 25th. Here is the story of how Christmas got its date.
Many people treat it as if the Christians stole the date from pagans, and that is that, case closed. This is simply not so. If you still must reject the holiday, please do. Just leave the grossly speculative story of pagan origins behind.
In addition, some people have theorized that December 25th was borrowed from the Jews in another way. Some people think it was influenced by the Jews keeping Hanukkah on the 25th of the month of Kislev, and Kislev usually falls in December. So when the Gentiles moved towards December as the date of Christ's birth, the 25th as a date may have been a natural choice as it already held significance. (Notice my use of words like "may". I'm only speculating here.)
I disagree with this assertion. Just mentioning it to tie up loose ends. But since we are talking about the Jews anyway, let's return to Philip Northaft.
Nothaft, on page 12, goes on to describe how even Tertullian can be understood to support an early January birth. He says this:
"[Tertullian's "Against the Jews"] mentions a calendrical interval of 6 months between Christ’s birth and the destruction of Jerusalem. Since the latter is traditionally assigned to the 9th day of the Jewish summer month of Av (July/August), this points to a birth in January."-Philip Nothaft "Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the 'Calculation Theory'" (2013), pp.11-12
Again, very interesting! Again and again and again we see a winter birth calculated in the second and third centuries.
Hopefully you see that there is ample evidence that Christians were calculating the date of Jesus’ birth and death, and that many of those calculations lead us to late in the year, and even on December 25th, long before Diocletian. Should the 30 games ordered on December 25th truly indicate a late date of that festival, or even if indeed it does have something to do with Aurelian, we can see that the Christians beat him to it by half a century or more.
I conclude that it is impossible to say with any conviction that December 25th was only adopted because of the Natalis Invicti celebration. That claim appears to be anachronistic.
MISCALCULATING DECEMBER 25th
The more I learned about Christmas, the more I was astounded that it seems to be a genuinely Christian phenomenon – at least where the dating is concerned. People mention that, “Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church." Then they leave out any mention of Epiphany. Most Sabbatarians, the group of my background and the ones most likely to reject Christmas, wouldn’t even know what Epiphany is.
Yet, people who aren’t quite as interested in finding what is actually true persist in finding what they wanted to find in the first place and ignoring what they don’t want to see.
Within the past week, someone has told me how they saw this or that television program on the Discovery Channel or some such place that reinforced what Herbert Armstrong taught. Did they search as long and as hard for the other side of the story?
In a video called “Christmas Elements Have Pagan Roots” the Discovery Channel interviewed Joseph Wallace, Chair of the Department of Classics at Loyola.
If you start watching at 2:00 though 2:07, you will hear Mr. Wallace say this, “How did December 25th win out? Well, we don’t know exactly, but most likely what’s going on is…”
If you watch at 2:33 though 2:36, you will hear Mr. Wallace say this, "What we think happened, though we have no direct evidence..."
Those are some incredibly speculative statements for a video with such a definite title.
Though they have “no direct evidence”, they proclaim “most likely what’s going on is” Christmas definitely has pagan origins. This should illustrate how ingrained the idea is that Christians took December 25th from the pagans.
But they saw it on the Discovery Channel, and that’s good enough for them. Funny how when the Discovery Channel is airing a program on Evolution, people aren’t nearly as convinced about their authority, but when they air a program that goes against Christmas, “It’s the truth!! I saw it on Discovery Channel!”
In case you are interested in more about calculating Christmas, here is a fine article on this subject from William Tighe at Touchstone Archives, called "Calculating Christmas".
Here's another fine article from Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D on Tradition In Action called "Christmas Was Never A Pagan Holiday".
Here's another fine article from Marian T. Horvat, Ph.D on Tradition In Action called "Christmas Was Never A Pagan Holiday".
GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE OUT
How did this happen? How did we come to this state? Why didn’t we know about these things earlier? Were we lied to? Did Herbert Armstrong et al bury this information and feed us only what they wanted to believe? I believe the answer is yes and no.
Here's a quote from Ronald Nash's book "The Gospel and the Greeks" page 1:
"During the period of time running roughly from 1890 to 1940, scholars often alleged that primitive Christianity had been heavily influenced by Platonism, Stoicism, the pagan mystery religions, or other movements in the Helenistic world [by this he means the entire Roman Empire]. ... Today most Bible scholars regard the question as a dead issue."
Nash wasn’t talking about Christmas in that quote; he was talking about Christianity itself. But it goes to demonstrate something about evidence and how false information tends to persist.
Nash and most other modern historians have patently rejected the once widely accepted scholarship by groups such as the Religionsgeschichtliche schule (which in English is “History of Religions School”) and people like Richard Reitzenstein, Sir James Frazer, Franz Cumont, and Albert Schweitzer. And it was these people who influenced Herbert Armstrong.
In Lee Strobel’s book, “The Case for the Real Jesus”, Mr. Strobel interviews Edwin Yamauchi, professor at Miami University of Ohio and recognized authority on Persian religions. On page 168, Mr. Yamauchi has this to say,
“Much of what has been circulated on Mithraism has been based on the theories of a Belgium scholar named Franz Cumont. He was the leading scholar on Mithraism in his day, and he published his famous work “Mysteries of Mithras”, in 1903. His work led to speculation by the History of Religion School that Mithraism influenced nascent Christianity. Much of what Cumont suggested, however, turned out to be quite unfounded.”
“Dead issue”? “Unfounded”? Well, that’s rather important to know, wouldn’t you think?
Yet these unfounded dead issues are continuously promoted as “God’s truth” in anti-Christmas literature. This is exactly the same as when Ralph Woodrow wrote "The Babylon Connection" and proved Alexander Hislop to be a dead issue, yet to this very hour we still hear Hislop’s garbage from all quarters of Protestant fundamentalism. Hislop is still quoted throughout the Living Church of God's booklet on how to tell a false church from a true one. How can one use false information to find a true church? I'll guarantee you, someone out there is going to read this post and call me a Nimrod worshipper. Why? Because they still hold as true something that was long ago proven beyond a doubt to be false!
Then where does Mithra fit in to all of this? When I hear over and over again, including in the aforementioned Discovery Channel video, that December 25th was chosen as the birthday of Christ because that was the birthday of Mithra, based on no direct evidence mind you, I simply think of another quote from Edwin Yamauchi on page 171 of “The Case for the Real Jesus” where he said,
“[December 25th] was the date chosen by the emperor Aurelian for the dedication of his temple to Sol Invictus, the god called the ‘Unconquerable Sun.’ Mithras was closely associated with Sol Invictus; sometimes they’re depicted shaking hands. This is apparently how Mithras became associated with December 25.”
So, in other words, Mithras became associated with Sol post facto, after Aurelian recreated his Sol Invictus. From this, we can also conclude that Mithra could not be associated with December 25th before Sol was.
And Sol was associated with the date after Christ as.
Here is a fine link to KingDavid8.com for more information on any Christ/Mithra similarities: “Jesus & Mithra Parallels – A Christian Response”
Here is a fine link to KingDavid8.com for more information on any Christ/Mithra similarities: “Jesus & Mithra Parallels – A Christian Response”
You may also want to check his other similarities pages as well.
Such mistaken information was widely accepted during Herbert Armstrong's formative years. This is why when we read Armstrongist literature even to this day we see so many references to works over 100 years old. Before you came to AsBereansDid, how many times have you seen reference to the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge 1911 edition? Well, now you know why.
In Armstrong’s defense (yes, we defend him when we the situation warrants it), not everything that he said was an outright lie, even if it was incorrect. He did what he thought was right with the information available at the time. As the saying goes - garbage in, garbage out.
We simply have far better information 100 years later. What a difference a day makes!
This doesn’t excuse the current purveyors of what has been long known to be false. These ones simply have no desire to let go of the errors of the past. Too much of their income rides on tickling the itching ear with their self-serving lies. They make $MONEY$ off teaching people to judge and condemn based on false information.
So, in my opinion, no, Herbert Armstrong was not necessarily lying when he was telling the world the only information available at the time, he was sometimes simply in error – but today people really should know better, and often do, so yes they are lying to us now.
I started this section by asking 'why didn’t we know about these things earlier?' Now you know.
CONCLUSION
So what have we seen about December 25th? We have “no direct evidence” that Christians co-opted December 25th from the pagans.
· Bruma has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it wasn’t even celebrated in the same month. Christians ignored it.
· Brumalia has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it is a Byzantine celebration in November from after the time of Christmas.
· Saturnalia has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it was on December 17th, a week before Christmas, and was never observed on December 25th even at its longest.
· Yule has no bearing on the dating of Christmas. Yule was apparently not a a solstice celebration, as is often claimed. Our first records come too late and too far away to influence the beginning of Christmas.
· Zagmuk Akita has no bearing on the dating since this was a spring festival.
· The literal winter solstice (which is bruma) has no bearing on the dating. Christmas has never once been on the literal winter solstice. The date is a Roman tradition, so there is no reason to tie December 25th to solstice celebrations of non-Roman cultures.
· And what of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti? What “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti”?? People can’t even decide what the real name is. Why call it so many different things if that’s its name? Properly it should be called “Natalis Invicti”. And Natalis Invicti appears to be a late addition. We are missing more data than we have. The calculation of the December 25th predates this and was not dependent upon it.
If December 25 wasn't adopted from pagans, it must have been calculated. There are good reasons to believe traditional Christians became interested in the conception, birth, and death in response to Gnostics denying the human nature of Jesus. Over and over we see the number 25, a death in March, and a birth in winter. We have Clement telling us of three different Egyptian groups put the crucifixion on the 25th day of the month. Epiphany, which appears to have started in Egypt, puts the birth early in January. Clement himself puts the crucifixion on March 25, with the birth in late November. Tertullian puts the crucifixion on March 25. Hippolytus puts the crucifixion on March 25 and the birth on December 25. Julius Africanus puts the crucifixion on March 25. Pseudo Cyprian links the death and the birth. All from 150 to 250 AD. This is decades before any Roman festival on December 25. Christians ignored Roman mythology. They preferred these dates because they meshed with Jewish (and in their minds this meant Biblical) traditions.
We didn't get into this, but there is in fact a third theory to the origin of Christmas: tourism. A man by the name of Hans Forster wrote a book back in 2007 which postulates Christmas comes from fourth-century tourism trade in the Holy Land. Essentially, after Constantine legalized Christianity, his mother toured the region looking for holy sites. This made tourism popular. A festival full of traditional and symbolic ideas started, and tourists brought it back to Rome, where it replaced Epiphany.
This theory is outside of the scope of this study. See Hans Forster's book "Die Anfänge von Weihnachten und Epiphanias: Eine Anfrage an die Entstehungshypothesen" (The Beginnings of Christmas and Epiphany: An Inquiry Into the Hypotheses of Their Origins) if you are interested in more. I only mention it to demonstrate there are so many more things to consider than just, "It's all pagan, so be sure to pay your tithes".
What else did we see in this study? It all boils down to this - speculation. And here’s mine:
Christians calculated the day in a completely natural way. It may not make a whole lot of sense to us, it may rely on Jewish superstition, and it may not be correct, but that's how it happened. Tourism might even play a supporting role. Who knows? A series of games every four years may or may not have existed on December 25, but whatever Natalis Invicti was it clearly wasn't very popular with anyone, and the Christians ignored that in their search for the correct birth date.
Important things to ponder!
The fine people at Biblical Archaeology Review have posted an article titled "How December 25 Became Christmas" that agrees with what I've told you here. Thanks to Teresa Beem for this gem!
Is the information in today’s post news to you? Do we really suppose that the self-proclaimed apostles and leaders of their own church movements would tell you about information that exonerates the dating of Christmas and proves them wrong? Do we really suppose that they forgot to tell us these things?
You want the truth, right? Any group who still at this late date would reference Alexander Hislop’s “Two Babylons” and his nonsense ideas about Nimrod obviously have no interest in genuine truth. How much more ridiculous are childish anagrams like “SANTA = SATAN”, or blatantly misleading comparisons of Saint Nicholas, whose history is known, with recent English nicknames for Satan like “Old Nick”. Have we not considered that Santa means "saint"? You're saying saint means Satan. You realize that, I hope. They proclaim how they only want “the truth” and “proven fact” yet they give us anything but. They teach as truth that Jeremiah 10 is speaking of Christmas trees, when it is speaking of no such thing!
It is far past time to demand better.
Look, I’m not telling you that you have to run out and start celebrating Christmas. Perhaps if we can clear the old misinformation we might even see that the birth of Christ is in every way Biblical. Maybe if you don’t like the idea of decorations, you could still see that Jesus couldn’t have died for our sins if He wasn’t first born into this world. Maybe that will spark some acts of charity in your heart.
I would like everyone to stop the judging and condemning each other over something that clearly isn’t as simple as they had been led to believe. At the very least, consider giving people the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t pagans for celebrating Christmas. Then go do the research for yourself. Ask the tough questions. The attaining to truth is apparently going to have to start with you.
Post Script
I have created a companion document which greatly expands the information here. I'll leave this post here, and update it as best as I can as a summary of the larger study document, but if you really want to understand December 25th, please download and read the whole study. Click here to access the document. Note that if you click this link you will be directed away from this site, and it will take a short while for the document to pop up in the browser window.
Also, we have created a Christmas FAQ. That list of frequently asked questions was designed to put information into more of a "sound byte" style. Sometimes people don't want to read a huge study, so we tried to make it easier to digest.
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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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[last updated: 1/14/2024]
I am wondering where the information came from then, about Nimrod dying on Dec.25th, and he announced that people would put up a tree and decorate it every year on the day he died.
ReplyDeleteHello Anon,
ReplyDeleteThe short answer is Alexander Hislop made it up completely. There is absolutely no valid evidence or proof behind it.
On page 44 of Ralph Woodrow's book "The Babylon Connection", Mr. Woodrow gives us this tidbit, "According to Hislop, by changing one letter, Baal-berith, "Lord of the Covenant," becomes Baal-bereth, signifying "Lord of the fir-tree," supposedly linking Christmas trees with Baal worship!"
Hislop called Nimrod by many names, one being Baal. And that is how he created the connection between Christmas trees and Nimrod.
On pages 92-93 of his book, Mr. Woodrow points out two other and entirely different ways that Hislop ties Nimrod to Christmas trees. That Hislop had a wild imagination to be certain.
Roger Pearse, you're a Godsend! It was the least I could do to link to your site. May it bring you some traffic. I know I'll be spending more time on your site.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't I consider that before? Brumalia is Saturnalia. wow I guess because I had never been told of Bruma before. You put Bruma together with Saturnalia and you get.... (drumm roll) Brumalia!
God's blessings to you. Thanks for your hard work and sharing your research.
Very good post, and perhaps the most exhaustive article I have seen on this topic! Kudos!
ReplyDeleteEven if it could be proven that Christmas had been of pagan origins, what do we do to thwart and diffuse paganism? What is the ultimate solution? Jesus Christ!
Jesus purifies everything, and is in the process of reconciling creation to Father God.
I believe that, hypothetically, pagans would consider the coopting of one of their holidays as a deep blow to, or final victory against their system of worship, and with good reason!
One very striking characteristic of Armstrongism is that we were taught a very unchristlike practice: to mock everything and everyone who was not a part of our own little group, and to unfairly call into question their sincerity and motivations. This is why all of the classic "Protestant" hymns were unceremoniously trashed without an inkling of the wonderful examples of faith which led to the writing of such hymns.
I purchased a gold cross several years ago following a re-study of this topic. I don't wear it all the time, but it is as much a wonderful symbol as is a wedding ring. One salient bit of info on crosses: The vehicle for execution was often erected in a two stage process. The stake part was embedded in the ground in advance, and the condemned would make the final walk to his execution already nailed to the crosspiece. Final assembly would take place at the site.
BB
Spectacular article x. I'd like to see this made less Armstrong specific and published as a book under you legal name.
ReplyDeleteAs you pointed out, this Christmas pagan origins presumption has been sold to the general public to a large degree (History channel etc).I'd say this is because the assault of miss information has not been challenged with any serious degree of effort.
It's interesting the pagan community laughs at the Christians because: "they keep pagan holy days and don't even know it." This is one more bit of ammunition that the enemies of Christians use which is able to be neutralized as you have demonstrated. I'll be keeping a copy of this to reread until I can make the points verbally without a written reference.
To Anon December 28,
ReplyDeleteBy God's grace, I have tried my best to answer your question. See our post "On Nimrod and Christmas Trees"
*Just a note, I fixed the link to Biblical Archaeology Review. I had the link all sorts of messed up.
ReplyDeleteSorry!
Love the post, it gladdens my heart. I am very tired of being fired upon by those who say the Christmas is pagan. I began my search along time ago for the truth, but life and kids got in the way of study, but being under fire for quite awhile now I have picked back up my studies. Thank you, for an informed, referenced, logical and totally Christian blog. May the Lord bless you daily!
ReplyDeleteHi Tess. Thanks for the compliment. Glad we could be of help to you. Thank God for the gifts He gives us.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt you know you'll still be fired upon, regardless of how much referenced fact you defend yourself with. I deal constantly with people who seem impervious to truth. The implications of Christmas being legit are simply too huge. They'll only divert to something else.
But regardless, we wish you a merry Christmas, and all the best in going forward. God bless!
I love this article, I have other articles save just in case if I need to give a defense for Christmas.
ReplyDeleteThe big question is for those who hold to christmas is pagan is this...
what do we do with david dancing before the lord and at times riping off his wears? what do we do with altars of fire? what do we do with temples> what do we do with priests? what do we do with rituals of water/baptism? pagans had all these in similar sense.
We can make anything pagan but there arguments.
Wonderful article. The more I study the history of the holiday, the more I find out what we were taught in the WCG was blatantly false. The ban on Christmas was not motivated by quest for "undefiled" religion or abstinence from paganism, rather there were 3 motives. First, segregate the followers from their family, neighbors, and coworkers. Second, free up any money used on gifts and festivities to go to Herbert's jet and lavish lifestyle, and finally and probably worst of all, stay away from any festival whose observance in Jesus. But thanks be to God for His grace and His mercy and sending His Son to save us. Peace.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Travis!
ReplyDeleteTell everyone you know about it! We need to share this information far and wide.
Ray, as sad as it makes me to think about, your 3 reasons ring true to me!
ReplyDeleteYour three reasons come far closer to explaining why people insist on rejecting the truth of history than anything else I've heard so far. And reject it they do.
I agree that this isn't about rejecting paganism. I feel this is about hating Christmas just to belligerently hate it.
Thanks for reading and participating with us. God bless!
Huh.
ReplyDeleteTurns out Armstrongists and Puritans aren't the only ones who hate Christmas. Atheists do too.
Whadda ya know.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2005/12/bah_humbug.html
Hi X
ReplyDeleteBaal was not the sun god. He was a caananite storm god. Throughout hislop's book he ties everything based on "phonetics" for example he said, "yule" is "eol" How more ridiculous does it get? "Yule" is Norse for wheel. "eol" is chaldee for child. How can a wheel be a child?
Really enjoyed this article! It should be noted that Saturn is equated with the Greek god Chronos, whose name derives from the Greek word for "time." I would imagine that the pagans associated Saturn with some sort of changing of the seasons or times. That would fit all sort of spots around the years.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, what is disturbing about the anti-Christmas gang is that they remind me of the White Witch in Lewis' first Narnia novel, who made it always winter, but never Christmas. What our Lord did was bring light into darkness and hope into despair. It seems the spirit of the organizations and movements who wish to banish Christmas and go back the Law are trying to do the same thing.
Thanks for commenting, Lon.
ReplyDeleteRe your comment about the White Witch.. Hear hear!
I hope this post has been of some help to you in battling the White Witch.
Made a huge update to the blog post. Thought I would comment on it briefly.
ReplyDeleteI have been introduced to some new information that changes my views on a few things and necessitated a huge update to the post.
In the earlier version I concluded that a Sol celebration was the most logical pagan festival that December 25th borrowed from IF it borrowed at all.
I no longer believe that. I cannot see how Sol plays into it at all, and so Sol no longer warrants that "most likely" status from me.
That the early Christians came to the December 25 date by calculation has become much stronger in my mind.
I also said that it appeared as if the Romans did nothing at all on December 25th until Julian the Apostate came around. I no longer believe that either.
There clearly was something Roman happening on December 25th.
I see no reason to believe there was a festival on December 25th in the early 200s while the Christians were calculating the date. A festival was instituted by the early 300's, however. Still there is no reason to believe it had "religious" overtones until Julian the Apostate came around.
For more details, read the post or the study.
Please explain how can shepherds watch their flocks by night in the winter? Sun worship existed before Christianity.
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteGod bless! Thanks for reading our blog.
You would like more on the shepherds in the fields at night in the winter. Funny, I debated whether or not to put that info in this post, but I decided to put it only in the full study. But since you asked, I'll paste the info here for you in my next comment.
----HAD TO BREAK THIS UP INTO 2 PARTS. HERE IS PART I ----
ReplyDelete"(LUK. 2: 8) Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.
“Shepherds would not be outside with their flocks at night in the winter, therefore Jesus could not have been born in the winter” is the conclusion many reach. OK. A valid point! This shall not be dismissed, since it makes reasonable sense.
According to geologists at PhysicalGeography.net, the global temperature peaked in 150BC. At that point, the temperature started to cool to a low in 800 AD.
Assuming that Jesus was born in 3-1 BC (we take that range from recent studies that conclude Herod the Great died in 1 BC, and Jesus was no more than 2 years old at that time) the temperature would have still been quite a bit above “normal” then.
Jerusalem has a uniquely ideal climate even today, and Bethlehem is a mere 5 miles south of Jerusalem. You would have been able to see it from a high point on the Temple. It’s a great area for flocks. Even so, we cannot possibly know what the temperature exactly was. Any temperature is possible. Still, the chances of a warm winter were unusually higher than normal.
That’s all very well and good, but what does that mean for the section in Adam Clarke Commentary, volume 5, page 370, where it says this:
"It was an ancient custom among Jews of those days to send out their sheep to the fields and deserts about the Passover (early spring), and bring them home at commencement of the first rain"
Is Adam Clarke wrong, then? Not necessarily. Adam Clarke is telling the truth so far as it goes generally. I have no reason to doubt that this is how things were overall. But every rule has an exception."
---HERE IS PART II---
ReplyDeleteI want to quote from an exceedingly well-written study written by J. Hampton Keathley, III on Bible.org, titled “Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?” [41]. In the section “Argument Number 5: Uncertainty of the Date of Christ’s Birth“, Mr. Keathley writes about the shepherds thusly:
“One of the main objections has been that sheep were usually taken into enclosures from November through March and were not out in the fields at night. However, this is not as conclusive as it sounds for the following reasons: (a) It could have been a mild winter. (b) It is not at all certain that sheep were always brought into enclosures during the winter months. (c) It is true that during the winter months sheep were brought in from the wilderness, but remember, Luke tells us the shepherds were near Bethlehem rather than in the wilderness. This indicates, if anything, the nativity was in the winter months. (d) The Mishnah tells us the shepherds around Bethlehem were outside all year and those worthy of the Passover were nearby in the fields at least 30 days before the feast which could be as early as February (one of the coldest, rainiest months of the year). So December is a very reasonable date.
James Kelso, an archaeologist who spent a number of years living in Palestine and who has done extensive research there says this:
The best season for the shepherds of Bethlehem is the winter when heavy rains bring up a luscious crop of new grass. After the rains the once-barren, brown desert earth is suddenly a field of brilliant green. One year when excavating at New Testament Jericho, I lived in Jerusalem and drove through this area twice every day. At one single point along the road, I could see at times as many as five shepherds with their flocks on one hillside. One shepherd stayed with his flock at the same point for three weeks, so lush was the grass. But as soon as the rains stopped in the spring, the land quickly took on its normal desert look once again.
Since there seem to have been a number of shepherds who came to see the Christ child, December or January would be the most likely months (James Kelso, An Archaeologist Looks At The Gospels, p. 23-24).”
Well, well. This argument isn’t rock-solid after all. Adam Clarke may be spot on for the most part, but things aren’t as inflexible as we might assume. Once again we see that speculation is the name of this game. It could easily have been either way. There is valid reason to believe December 25th is not ruled out because of shepherds in the fields."
What about wreaths? I mean didnt Tertullian write about this?
ReplyDeleteWe Christians neither cover our doorposts with wreaths, nor decorate our house like some new brothel. We do not celebrate along with you the holidays. The pagan Romans clad their doorposts with green and branching laurels. In the Saturnalia. Presents come and go.There are gifts and Banquets. yet Christians should have no acquaintance with the festivals of the pagans." - Tertullian
Tertullian, who we should know is the first on record to use the term 'Trinity' (if we agree with Tertullian on wreaths, do we agree with him on the Trinity??), was specifically referring to idolatry.
ReplyDeleteHe wrote about this in his work "De Idolatria" (On Idolatry).
Since you didn't give a reference for your question on where you get the quote, I can only assume, and I assume you are referring to chapter 15 of On Idolatry, since it best matches what you describe.
Tertullian was no fan of wreaths and lamps in doorways because the pagans placed these things in their doorways to honor the pagan gods of "entrances", and he names some for example:
"Cardea (Hinge-goddess), called after hinges, and Forculus (Door-god) after doors, and Limentinus (Threshold-god) after the threshold, and Janus himself (Gate-god) after the gate".
So, it is important to get the context of what Tertillian is speaking about, rather than to take a small, and broken quote, then run to insert our own context to it in order to use it in a way it was never intended.
I agree with Tertullian that if Christians are taking part in a pagan celebration to honor the god of thresholds then they must cease this practice post haste!
But to say "Romans some thousands of years ago, in an unrelated practice, used wreaths, therefore we should never use a wreath" is presumptuous, and implies the nature of all wreaths to be pagan where that is simply not so. I disagree that this can be transferred to Christmas simply because of the similarity of the wreath.
Christmas uses the evergreen traditionally, yet Tertullian says in chapter 15,
"You are a light of the world,286 and a tree ever green."
And do not forget that the Temple in Jerusalem was decorated wreaths and garlands of precious metals.
I find this effort at transference to be judgmental because it accuses a person who only has Jesus in their heart and mind of honoring a pagan idol which never entered their heart and mind at all, a bit superstitious because it affords spiritual power to an inanimate object, and terribly contradictory because for some unknown reason it stops at wreaths.
Pagans had doorways, too. And they had gods of thresholds, which is why the wreaths and lamps were there in doorways in the first place. We all have doorways. Yet no one says "you're honoring a pagan idol by having a doorway."
The Jews had a prohibition against doing business with pagans during periods celebration, for example when they shave their hair or return from the sea.
Well, if shaving or returning from the sea was a terrible pagan ordeal, why do we treat those with a casual attitude while condemning wreaths? It's inconsistent to say the least.
Then we must address to what length we will take this line of reasoning.
Tertullian, in On Idolatry chapter 9, argues against Christians teaching literature, because the secular teaching profession is pagan in his estimation. He says Christians can learn, but not teach, literature. Now, I personally know several upstanding Christians who are teachers in public education who would take great exception to this.
I find the whole business to be a desperate reach.
I was referencing
ReplyDeleteChristians have no acquaintance with the festivals of the Gentiles.
Tertullian (c. 198, W), 4.24.
[Addressing pagans:] On your day of gladness, we [Christians] neither cover our doorposts with wreaths, nor intrude upon the day with lamps…We are accused of lower sacrilege because we do not celebrate along with you the holidays… Tertullian (c. 197, W), 3.44.
I was not accusing other Christians of idolatry. :'(
I am NOT trying to exhibit a "holier-than-thou" attitude. I fact I am SICK of such attitudes and it's about time that it stopped. I am FED UP of Christians condemning other Christians. Has Christ been divided up?
ReplyDeleteMy apologies if my response came across to you as accusing you of being condemnatory. I certainly did not mean for that.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, what I had in my mind was that you were bringing this up here because this is what someone else said to you or perhaps you had read it somewhere and you just wanted a response. So please believe me when I say I didn't think you were being holier than thou. :)
ReplyDeleteYes I read it from an anti Christmas website.
ReplyDeleteThought so.
ReplyDeleteOdd thing is, those websites don't agree with Tertullian on most things. They're just holding this one section up, taking it completely out of context, because it seems to support their flimsy case. Problem is, when you look in to it, Tertullian isn't supporting them any more than they are supporting him.
Just keep in mind that there is nothing inherently evil about art. There is no power in an inanimate object. The evil is in idolatry; the evil is in your heart. A wreath has no more power to defile you than eating with unwashed hands does.
If your heart doesn't honor any Lord but Jesus Christ, then don't let paranoid and superstitious websites judge you and terrorize you.
Wasn't mithra born on yalda night? Doesn't Christmas come from yalda? I've read a Wikipedia article on yalda and it says that mithra was born of a virgin on that night.
ReplyDeleteI went back and forth on whether or not to publish this comment. It seemed too far-fetched to be serious. But, in the end, I elected to publish it and respond. If for no other reason than to demonstrate the lengths people will go to in the effort to smear Christmas.
ReplyDeleteChristmas does not come from Yalda at all. I'm fairly confident this article has demonstrated as much.
I have never once seen any respected historian draw any such conclusion that Christmas comes from Yalda. Not even Armstrong and Hislop make that claim.
I will quickly go over why not.
This claim has hidden within it the assumption that Jesus is Mithra. That has been more than proven false. Neither is Mithra the same as Sol. Mithra and Sol were not associated together until well after Hippolytus.
Modern historians no longer believe early Christianity borrowed from Mithraism. Rather, they find the opposite.
We must ask - which Mithra? The ancient Persian Mithra of Zoroastrianism, or the more recent Roman Mithra of the Mystery Religions? They aren't really the same.
The Romans reinvented Mithra, so we cannot just take ancient Persian Mithra and more recent Roman Mithra and just mix-and-match as we wish. If we were to care about one or the other, it would be the Roman version.
Mithra was not born of a virgin. That claim is fairly popular in some circles, but it not true. Romans believed he was born out of a rock.
Yalda was on the winter solstice. Christmas was on December 25th, not the winter solstice. The Persians would't know what a "December" was.
By the 200's AD, when Jesus was first calculated as being born on December 25th, December 25th was not the solstice any longer. December 25th wasn't the important date Hippolytus was looking for anyway - March 25th was.
After reading the article and reading all the comments, I would like to ask a question. Isn't it hypocritical to speak out against celebrating Christmas and then take the day off on that day? It is intellectually inconsistent to oppose something and purposefully reap the benefits of it. I would question the integrity of such a person, won't you?
ReplyDeleteNow I know someone reading the comment I made will say something like this:
ReplyDeleteHerbert: Taking the day off on that day doesn't mean you're celebrating the day.
Dillon: Oh really?! And according to whom?! Then why are you staying home on Dec 25th? Why not totally ignore this holiday by going to work and carrying on, as usual? Don't you think it's a bit hypocritical to join in the day off when you clearly abhor its very reason for being?
Herbert: Because there are no workplaces open on that day. Besides, who works on December 25th? We have no where else to go on that day.
Dillon: The excuses that "everybody else is doing it" or "I have no other choice because my place of employment is closed on Christmas" aren't valid. The fact is, if you in any way partake in the festivities, then you are a hypocrite because you're catering to the practices that you yourself condemn. Take action at your place of employment and INSIST on your right to work during Christian holidays, because you, by God, are an Armstrongist! Now please tell me why do you yourself stay home on Christmas day? Even the most staunch anti-Christmas Christians opposed the day off itself because they knew that taking the day off was tantamount to celebrating the day. Recall the righteous Puritans? Or did you forget about them? Why do you betray them now?
Regarding the comment on Tertullian,I would ask another question: If decorating your front door is so sinful, does that mean that I must not hang any flower vines or have any floral arrangements at my front door? Must I also get rid of those too? Yet I know of no one who would object to decorating their front door. Now I know some UCG member would say,"No, it's only sinful to decorate your door when December arrives but it becomes okay after December passes." So I'd better remove whatever is hanging on my front door as soon as December the 1st comes and when New Years Day passes I can put it back up. Ha Ha! How ridiculous! If it's wrong, it's wrong any time of year. If it's right, then there's no need to condemn it at all. If something is an abomination it's an abomination 24/7/365. For example Homosexuality is an abomination, therefore under no circumstance is it ever tolerable or excusable to God. If evergreens are so sinful, why did God use fir to beautify the place of His worship (Isaiah 60:13)? If fir is an abomination why does God compare Himself to one (Hosea 14:8)? If firs are an abomination why does God use it as a positive sign (Isaiah 55:13)? Moreover why does God decorate His firs with shimmering objects (snow) every winter? Explain that.
ReplyDeleteMaxxjadegirl left a comment which said:
ReplyDelete"Hi, Thank you so much for this post, I needed this. I am going to this year show How Christmas is not pagan, and this helps a lot."
You're welcome. Our pleasure to help.
Maxxjadegirl also asked a question about how I would respond to another website. Sorry, but I don't usually allow comments with other website's URLs in them. It's free advertisement that I don't like to give away.
I would say in response to that website's claims that, yes, the Puritans in England and America did ban Christmas. I'm not sure why they make such a huge deal about that. The Puritans banned a whole lot of things, not just Christmas. They weren't just against Christmas, and they weren't against Christmas because it was pagan. Their pagan claims were baseless and post-facto justifications of their views. (I've mentioned the Puritans in other blog posts besides this one.) The Puritans banned most festivities. The Puritans weren't the kind of people I would want to emulate. In England during the rule of Cromwell, on Christmas the government authorities were allowed to raid your house and confiscate your food if they suspected you were enjoying a meal more than you normally would have. In America, the Puritans were so rigid they actually caused the King (after Cromwell) to revoke their land charter. That they banned Christmas is not any kind of evidence against Christmas whatsoever.
The Puritan viewpoint had a strong influence on early America. Charles Spurgeon did speak out against Christmas (but Spurgeon wasn't what I would call a "Reformer" because he's a few hundred years too late for that). We must ask why he did this. Because all of America was as anti-Catholic as a people could be. Imagine how anti-Muslim most Americans are today and you have an idea on how anti-Catholic America was in the 1700's the 1800's. Read Spurgeon's words, "because we do not believe in any mass at all, but abhor it." Spurgeon wasn't unbiased. He wasn't neutral. He wasn't against Christmas for any reason particular to Christmas except that it came to us through the Catholics (so did other things, like the Bible, but he doesn't take it quite THAT far.)
As for the rest of their claims, see our other articles on Christmas. We've already addressed what they've written and then some.
I am so glad that xHWA brought up the fact that the reason the Puritans banned Christmas in America was because it was Catholic, not because it was pagan. As a COG member educated in a public school setting, I was totally ignorant of this dynamic other than "Martin Luther did his thing, the Catholics and Protestants disagreed, the end." I've had a chance to read much more on this in the past year and it's fascinating. Tragic, but fascinating.
ReplyDeleteCatholics and Protestants fought bitterly for centuries after the Reformation. Countries went to war, monarchies flip-flopped. It was ugly. Charles I, the King of England who ruled just before Cromwell, was raised Protestant but married a staunch Catholic. He imposed many restrictions on the Puritans, leading many to flee to the American colonies. He even commandeered the Army to march into Parliament and arrest his biggest Puritan opponents. This backfired and he fled London. The Puritans took over Parliament and the city of London and ruled it with a vengence, doing the kinds of intrusive raids xHWA discussed. The Puritan Parliament eventually arrested, tried and killed Charles I.
This was the backdrop for Puritan policies in America. You bet they banned anything perceived as Catholic. They hated anything and everything Catholic. Like xHWA said, this sentiment did not fade quickly. Remember that many were conflicted about voting for JFK because he was Catholic. IN 1960!!!
We must also remember this was the environment in which people like Alexander Hislop operated. When we consider the religious context, it becomes obvious that Hislop's writings were less likely to be "absolute truth" and more likely to be highly speculative propaganda that flourished at a time when it was very popular to be anti-Catholic.
And before the critics start piling on, I attend a Protestant church. But I'm also a big fan of context. And also the truth.
Hey xHWA,
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding :) I have another question though. is there other sources that say that germans didn't hold a yule feast? because it is all over the internet that "Yule heavly influenced Christmas and that's we get the idea of decorating with holly, evergreens, ivy, yule log giving gifts, 12 days of Christmas eating ham on christmas, Christmas caroling and decorating the Christmas tree comes from. and when Christians coverted the pagan they Christianized these customs that were originally pagan." how do I respond to this when almost every website says that is where Christmas came from? Thanks in advance :)
There's this from the full study:
ReplyDeleteWell, our first records of Yule come from around 700 AD by our old friend the Venerable Bede in his
work “De Temporum Ratione”
[https://books.google.com/books?id=yFsw-Vaup6sC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false]
“Nor is it irrelevant if we take the trouble to translate the names of the other months. The
months of Guili derive their name from the day when the Sun turns back [and begins] to
increase, because of one of [these months] precedes [this day] and the other follows.”
There are a few things you have to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the ancient Germans used a lunar calendar, they didn't use a solar calendar.
What difference does that make? The Muslims use a lunar calendar. Have you ever noticed how Ramadan can be at any time of the year? That's because lunar and solar calendars do not align but once every 19 years. That is, unless you correct the calendar against some other celestial event, like the rising of the star Sirius like the Egyptians did. The Muslims do not correct their calendar, so their calendar only lines up with our solar calendar once every 19 years. If the ancient Germans did not correct their calendar, there was no way for them to do anything on December 25th every year.
Some people claim that the ancient Germans would correct their calendar on the first full moon after the winter solstice. Full disclosure, I haven't studied this so I can neither confirm nor deny. It makes sense. They usually had important gatherings on full moons. But let's say it's true. Is the first full moon after the winter solstice on December 25th? Only sometimes. In 2015 it is! But the last time that happened was 1977, and the next time will be in 2034.
So ask them to tell you how on earth the peoples of those areas at those times could possibly have done anything on December 25th every year?
Another thing you need to know is there are a lot of garbage websites out there.
ReplyDeleteMost of what you should be looking for will not be found on websites, but in history books. Make sure those books are written by well respected modern authorities or by the oldest most primary sources you can find. Google Books is your friend.
A website can be made by just about anyone. Just because you come across a website that makes a claim, or a hundred websites, that doesn't mean anything. Most Americans still believe that George Washington had wooden teeth. Yet George Washington did not have wooden teeth.
When you go around, notice how the tales told by these websites are wildly different one from the other. They don't make uniform claims. They don't cite their sources. They say outrageous things that are easily dismissed. Why? Because their stuff is made up. Lots and lots of Wiccans and Neopagans are out there building websites and just making things up as they go along in a fanciful attempt to legitimize their religious views.
For example the claim about the Twelve Days of Christmas. The Twelve Days of Christmas are the days between Christmas and Epiphany. These days have been around since the 200's AD. Christianity had not spread into Germania yet. How could anything German be the source of the Twelve Days of Christmas? It cannot! Can they prove Yule was 12 days long? No. As we demonstrated earlier, they can't even demonstrate that Yule was on the 25th of December. Lots of Germanic traditions made their way into England through conquests and into America - but how do they explain the traditions through the rest of Europe? They can't. They don't even try. They just cite each other in a huge circular reference.
Don't believe every website you read.
I was thinking about this last night and this morning, and perhaps another thing to be aware of is that just because something is called Yule ... doesn't necessarily mean it is of pagan origin.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of things that we don't have any history for. Most of the things people claim about Yule simply are not based in a legitimate, documented history (as I mentioned in my earlier comments). One of the things that simply isn't based on actual historical record is that all traditions which bear the name Yule actually come from Yule. Sounds odd? But it's true.
We need to keep in mind that when German rulers converted to Christianity, they often altered native practices in an attempt to bring them closer into line with Christianity. They also changed the names of Christian celebrations to adopt native terminology. When the Germans changed the names of Christian festivals from Latin into adopted German phrases, we get such things as Pascha being called Easter or Christmas being called Yule. In particular, Charlemagne was a scourge of German paganism. He did quite a bit to suppress paganism in Germania. Yet he allowed the German names of Christian feasts to remain. It wasn't long until Yule and Christmas were absolutely synonymous. When you read the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1912) article on Yuletide [http://books.google.com/books?id=n2EhAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA491&lpg=PA491#v=onepage&q&f=false], you see the article is not at all about Yule but entirely about Christmas.
There is little reason to believe that Christmas was changed to adopt Yule, but there is every reason to believe that traditions associated with Christmas were called Yule. With no ancient source material to tell us details about such things, we simply do not know.
These things spread through that entire area, and up into England, and across the Atlantic to America.
We shouldn't be surprised by this. Most people who cry "pagan!" at this unwittingly accept the same things. Armstrongism, for example, observes their own version of Jewish Holy Days, but none of them by their Jewish names. There is absolutely nothing wrong with changing the names! It's inconsequential. Hebrew Roots would make a huge deal about this, even to the point of having us believe that if we don't pronounce Jesus' name in a particular Hebrew way (which they don't all agree on precisely what that is), then we can't be saved. Except that idea doesn't come from the Bible or the example of the early church. What does come from the Bible and the example of the early church? Names being changed into native dialects. So simply calling Christmas as "Yuletide" is absolutely not any evidence of anything at all. It isn't paganizing. It isn't heretical. It's quite unfortunate that it opens an opportunity for people who are inclined to hateful negativity to point their fingers and cry "pagan!" but that says to much less about Christmas or Easter as it does about the condition of the hearts of some people.
It's all just semantics and making a huge to-do about nothing!
Most of those claims about Christmas coming from Yule are not so, but personally I think the most laughable claim is the one about ham for Christmas dinner. That's a fairly recent tradition. Read Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." What did they eat? Goose.
ReplyDeleteGerman traditional dinners:
"The traditional German holiday meal consists of duck, goose, rabbit or a roast, accompanied by German delicacies such as apple and sausage stuffing, red cabbage, and potato dumplings. Even the American fruitcake was adapted from one of the most famous German delicacies, Stollen."
http://germanfoods.org/german-food-facts/german-christmas-traditions/
Historic Christmas dinners, the earliest do not include ham:
http://www.foodtimeline.org/christmasmenu.html
Those are great points, especially with the lunar calender. I also didn't know about the traditional German meal for holidays until you posted it. that is good, because Christmas haters and wiccans LOVE to say that "our Christmas meal is straight from Yule"
ReplyDeleteI'll also add that it seems mostly all of the websites don't say yule was on the 25th, they say that "yule is a ancient germanic and scandiavian pagan holiday that was celebrated on winter solsice on December 21st through the 22nd every year." but even that's wrong, because they were using a lunar calender, not the solar calender. wiccans and pagans will even admit on their own websites that they use a lunar calender but then in the next paragraph they say "Yule was celebrated every December 21st - 22nd." But germans and scandinavians didn't have a "December" month, because they didn't use the julian calender.
I have another question though, the anti-Christmas people will also say that "in the 1600's Puritans HAD to ban Christmas because the people who celebrating it got drunk, was violent and made riot in the streets! this is an evil holiday! there were riots and vionce in the streets during Christmas up to the 19th century! just read stephen nissenbaun's book! and, rates of violence and suicide is higher during Christmas!" How do I respond to this?
I would respond to those people that the Puritans didn't ban Christmas because of any of those things. The Puritans did not just ban Christmas, so what is their excuse for why they banned the many other things? The answer is they banned Christmas because they were ultra-conservative and anti-Catholic. The history of why the Puritans banned Christmas is known. It's documented. These anti-Christmas people can try to put words into the mouths of the Puritans, and they can try to spin the events of history, but the facts don't work that way.
ReplyDeleteAsk them what anything in the 19th century could possibly have to do with people from the 16th century. Would things people do three hundred years from now effect you? Of course not.
I would also note that I thought their point was that Christmas is pagan, not that some people somewhere at some time got drunk. If we had to get rid of holidays just because some people somewhere at some time got drunk, we wouldn't do anything. People get drunk on all days, but holidays especially. Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day... all filled with drinking. It's just how life is. When I was in Armstrongism, the Feast of Tabernacles was called "The Feast of Booze" because people drank so much.
ReplyDeleteBut let's put this into some perspective. What sense does it make to abandon a holiday because some people somewhere at some time got drunk? Did Jesus abandon drunks?
(MAT. 11: 19) The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ But wisdom is justified by her children.”
Are we not to eat and drink? Isn't the entire Eucharist a meal which includes wine? In Deuteronomy 14: 26, doesn't God condone drinking and feasting at celebrations? Aren't we supposed to be thankful? Now, I'm not condoning drunkenness or that, but what is the point of claiming that we should abandon something just because some people are drunks? Aren't we all sinners? Don't we all need the Bible? Why withdraw a religious celebration because people are sinners? Jesus came to call the lost sheep. He came to be a physician to the sick. Why abandon a holiday which is one of the only days of the year that some people go to church? Why close down the one thing they have? It makes no sense to me.
And it does nothing to demonstrate that the day is pagan.
Good Points. And I also noticed another thing. Only England and Massacusetts are known for this drunken, misrule, and promiscuity Christmas.(although Stephen nissenbaun claims that there was "misrule" in New York City but I can't find proof of that) The english were not the only ones who celebrated Christmas in the 16th-19th century! even if it were true, England and Massacusetts' bad behaviour doesn't define Christmas, there were plenty of other Countries that celebrated Christmas and they didn't do all of that.
ReplyDeletewhat is a Good source or good info to refute their claims about the drunken, misrule, and promiscuity Christmas in england and Massacusetts? because I know that they'll Say " just google it and look at the historytoday and Theweek website. it is documented that Christmas was full of immorality, robbery, murder and the men dressed up as women, and the women as men, and ritualised reversal of social norms like saturnalia! and the wassailing! people sang carols and went to people's houses forcing them to give them drinks or else they would become violent!"
I don't particularly have any links about drunkenness. I've always just taken it on faith that people got drunk and did some very stupid things at Christmas - just like they do all year around. There isn't any reason to believe that human nature would change that for whatever reason Christmas should be exempt from drunkenness.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the assumption is that if someone has ever done something sinful at Christmas then we shouldn't celebrate Christmas. I couldn't disagree with that more. It's juvenile and bears no resemblance to the world as it really is. First, prove to me that it was condoned by the church, then prove to me that it was done primarily by Christians - and do so with credible references (not just random Google searches). Aren't the same people who make these claims the very same people who say everyone who celebrated Christmas was actually pagan? They need to make up their minds.
Some things I can demonstrate is that there are a lot of misconceptions out there fueled by wives tales and bad data. For example, the claims that crime goes up at Christmas time are false claims. Also the claims that suicide rates are highest at Christmas are false claims.
According to modern statistics, crime rates are not higher in winter but lowest in winter:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/spcvt
Suicide rates are not higher in winter but spring and summer:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3315262
Thank you very much, this helped a lot. Definetly using this information when I defend Christmas :)
ReplyDeleteWe dont celebrate Christmas. Not because its pagan or not. Not because the Catholics do it. We keep the feasts of the lord from Leviticus 23. The ones that Jesus kept....
ReplyDeleteThose are the feasts of the God of the bible, and the same ones we can see in the books of acts and other writings the apostles and even Paul keeps (if you follow him).
You shall not add to or take away from the word.
Not jot or word shall pass until heaven and earth pass away.
You should drop all the made up catholic days, and the other ones. This includes Easter, Halloween, and made up Jewish day Hanukkah!
The funny part is people claiming the words on this blog are as gospel but then not investigating further.
ReplyDeleteIts NOT as clear cut and dry as this author makes to be, and you best study for yourself.
Here is a taste:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120824071532/http://www.chronicon.net/chroniconfiles/Hippolytus%20and%20December%2025th.pdf
The evidence is good that the work of Hippolytus was even corrupted and 'things' added.
"Not because the Catholics do it."
ReplyDeleteNo? Then what's this?
"You should drop all the made up catholic days"
Sounds pretty anti-Catholic to me.
Hanukkah isn't a day, it's 8 days. Jesus went all the way to Jerusalem for Hanukkah (JON. 10: 22-23). Jesus is the God of the Bible and He's keeping Hanukkah. We can be certain He observed Purim as well.
Your claim that you "keep the feasts of the lord from Leviticus 23" is nothing more than any Armstrongist would claim. I should know, I was one. But the truth is, you don't really "keep" them. You don't sacrifice animals, nor burn offerings, nor do you wave sheaves nor bake the two loaves. You don't travel to Jerusalem three times a year. All of these Leviticus 23 demands. You don't blow the shofar at Trumpets. You don't build booths out of branches at the Feast of Booths. If you're a Gentile, then you're forbidden from participating in the Passover. Probably have pot lucks and go out to restaurants on the Sabbath. You're actually doing a small fraction of what's required. That's not observing the law, that's side-stepping the law. What you're doing isn't keeping, it's pretending. You pretend to keep the feasts of Leviticus 23. And you should drop the pretense.
Some words in Hippolytus' "Commentary on Daniel" are disputed. But that doesn't mean it's useless or even wrong. Just means it's disputed. There are plenty of people who would throw out references to Jesus in Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" too. But that doesn't mean they should be thrown out. It means people should spend time doing more research. Even more people say the Bible is disputed, with claims such as Daniel and most of the Torah were written after the fact. Is it your policy to throw out everything that is disputed in those cases? No?
ReplyDeleteBut if you think this is something new you've discovered, or if it's something not as this author presents, then you've obviously not read this author's material. Here's "a taste" from our December 25 full study:
"There are many people who doubt that this manuscript is genuine, but if one takes all of Hippolutys’ works together, along with the works of other writers of that period who appear to draw from Hippolytus, and along with the work of Clement, there becomes very good reason to believe that the work is authentic and the December 25th date is exactly what Hippolytus believed. Tom Schmidt at Chronicon.net explains this in far greater detail in his article."
So what do we see here? We have you attempting to quote Tom Schmidt to cast doubt on Hippolytus in an article that Tom Schmidt defends the authenticity and accuracy of Hippolytus.
Yes, please do study. It would be nice.
Yes, let's talk about Hippolytus. Let's look at the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, one of the most-quoted resources in Armstrongism.
ReplyDeleteThis resource, which Armstrongists quote to bolster their claims about Christmas coming from pagan celebrations, goes to great lengths to demonstrate that Hippolytus CALCULATED the date, not picked it out of thin air to absorb would-be pagan converts.
So, is this resource correct credible when it discusses potential pagan influences on December 25 but incorrect when it discusses Hippolytus' systematic steps to calculate the December 25th date? You can't have it both ways.
Many have told me even if Christmas is not pagan, Jesus nowhere near told us to celebrate his birth. So should we?
ReplyDeleteMany point out that God none Jesus say to celebrate the day Jesus was born.
ReplyDeleteAngela,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and commenting.
Some have told you that you shouldn't celebrate Christmas because Jesus nowhere told us to? We once made overly simplistic arguments like that, back when we were Armstrongists. We've since thought about what we were saying.
Understand that people tend to say a lot of things if they believe it supports the conclusion they want to reach. None of us are immune to this. We want what we want. But let's think this through a bit.
Do you personally believe that you shouldn't celebrate unless God specifically tells you to celebrate? I doubt you really do. I'm going to guess that the people who have told you we shouldn't celebrate unless Jesus tells us so don't actually believe that either. Jesus never commands us to celebrate the miracle of child birth, yet most do. Jesus never commands us to celebrate a baptism, yet most do. Jesus never tells us to celebrate wedding anniversaries, yet most do. Jesus never tells us to sing at church, yet most people do. Jesus never specifically commands us to celebrate most things that we celebrate. Why is it that this only becomes important all of a sudden when holidays are involved?
You see.. These people you are hearing from celebrate a lot of things Jesus never told them to celebrate. Do they really believe their own rhetoric, then? Doesn't seem like it. If these people you hear from don't really believe what they are saying to you, then why are they saying it? Because they have something against holidays and when all of their history turns out to be false they think this is a convincing argument to fall back on. To be blunt about it - some people simply hate Christmas and make excuses.
And where did these people get this idea in the first place? Certainly not from the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible did Jesus tell us not to celebrate anything religious unless He specifically tells us to. In our article "Established and Imposed", we show how the Jews invented the holiday they call Purim. They invented this holiday because they were so thankful for what God did for them. God never told them to do this. Yet there they are, celebrating anyway, and even exchanging gifts. They still do celebrate Purim! God permitted an entire book of the Bible to be devoted to the story. But that's not the only time this happened. The books of Macabees (which you may not have read because after 1,500+ years of being included in the Bible, Martin Luther decided to remove them) tell of a tale of God saving the Jews once again. The Jews were so thankful that they created the holiday of Hanukkah. God never told them to do this. Yet there they are, celebrating anyway. They still do! John 10: 22-30 makes a special mention of Jesus walking in Jerusalem during Hanukkah. God must have accepted both of these un-commanded celebrations.
The point I'm making is that there is no Biblical or natural reason to believe that God does not want us to celebrate Him and His miracles unless He specifically commands us to.
If He accepts those two Jewish celebrations of His saving grace, then why would He not accept a Christian celebration of the second most important miracle in the history of mankind?? God set aside His glory and became man! He could not die unless He was born. Should we not be in absolute awe of this? Should we not ponder what it took to do this incredible feat? Should we not praise God for His unsearchable wisdom and selfless generosity?
Yes, I believe we may celebrate it. What's more, if our conscience is alright with it, I believe we should celebrate it.
Hey, I love this post, but I can't enter into the full study, it keeps on say "dropbox -404 not found"
ReplyDeleteThanks Maxx. I've been meaning to fix that link ever since dropbox changed their sharing. I think I've gotten it corrected now. Please try it again and let me know.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest problem that I see with your article is your reliance on the supposed writings of Hippolytus on the commentary on Daniel.
ReplyDeleteThe oldest extant manuscripts that I've been able to find online come from a 16th century manuscript.
So, just how do you know that Hippolytus concluded that Jesus' birth was Dec. 25th?
No, the manuscript couldn't have been edited could it?
So much for your proof. Hippolytus may have written in 210ad but if we only have copies of his writings from 1500ad there's no way that it can be relied upon!
Kevin !cMillen
ReplyDeleteHippolytus of Rome
http://www.talenenculturen.ugent.be/agenda/797
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteIf the Full Study was still available you would see that I address your point. But let's just focus on your comment, "Hippolytus may have written in 210ad..." Yes, he could have. And if he could have, we cannot simply ignore it. I disagree with your total dismissal.
Couldn't help but notice you seem to say there is only one manuscript. That is not the case. There are many fragments. This adds considerably more weight than your comments would lead us to believe. Textual criticism shows that the fragments do point to translations from a much older Greek source.
I don't have the time to write up a whole bit on this, so I will refer to Tom Pearse's 2010 article The text tradition of Hippolytus “Commentary on Daniel”.
If the entirety of my case on December 25 was from Hippolytus then perhaps it would be weak. That isn't the case.
For more, see Christmas FAQ