The Plain Truth About December 25th

Have you ever wondered about the dating of Christmas? I wanted to know how Christmas came about. So that’s just what I studied. I won’t mince words – this was one of the single most eye-opening studies I have ever done. If I were to post everything I’ve learned, this would definitely take more than one post.

You don’t need to study it because you already know that it’s pagan, right? Well, there are so many theories floating around out there, so many claims. Co-opting pagan festivals is not the only one. Which is correct?

Certainly the people who are familiar with this blog should also be familiar with what Herbert Armstrong taught on the subject. Was he correct? It is a staple feature of the COG groups that yearly they send out a barrage of material about Christmas. Is any of that correct? Did Christians copy Christmas from the pagans? Where does Sol Invictus fit in? Or how about Saturnalia, or Brumalia? Well, today I hope to straighten out the claims and separate truth from tale. The subject is pretty large, so I’m going to stick to the dating. I am not going to dwell on the traditions of Christmas like the tree or the mistletoe; just the dating. I am attempting to discover why Christmas is on December 25^th. I’ve already heard one side of the story, so I’m going to flesh out the opposing view.

In case you’re new here, it is taught within Armstrongism (and elsewhere) that December 25^th was chosen because the Church in Rome [Roman Catholic Church] are a group of pagans, and not very Christian at all. The three main pagan festivals mentioned as sources for the December 25^th date are Brumalia, Saturnalia, and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. I would like to start by reviewing what was claimed about these three festivals, what is true about them, and when they really were celebrated. Afterward, I will explore a few other related claims.

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, was celebrated anywhere from November 24th to December 25^th, 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.

According to Roger Pearse “A Review of Crawford on the Bruma and Brumalia”, (I will summarize here) bruma is the Roman name for the winter solstice, and Bruma is the name of a completely separate ancient celebration, which later became known as Brumalia.

The word bruma comes from the superlative form of the Latin word for “brief”. The days grow shorter in winter so “bruma” came to mean the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. 
Bruma was also the name of a festival on November 24^th that marked a kind of unofficial start of winter, and this led up to the winter solstice. You can read more about this in Roger Pearse’s review of De Mensibus. 
It is important to keep in mind that bruma was the name of the winter solstice, and Bruma was the name of a winter festival, but they were not the same thing. The festival of Bruma was celebrated a month earlier than the solstice, on November 24th, lasted only one day, and was not observed on December 25^th at any time.

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 sixth century is long after Christmas became popular in Rome and the Roman Empire ceased to exist. Brumalia was a twenty four day festival lasting from November 24^th through December 17^th. It was not celebrated for twenty four straight days, 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.

**UPDATE: Roger Pearse left a comment and informs us that it would appear that in the course of time Bruma was combined with Saturnalia to become Brumalia. Keep in mind this was still after Christmas became popular, and far to the east of Rome. Not allowing groups to opportunistically distort time is crucial to getting the truth.
Thanks for the excellent research and timely help, Roger!

Also, a tenth century lexicon called “the Suda” tells us that Bruma began as a secular festival, not a religious one. Brumalia did come to honor Dionysus, Cronos, and Demeter. There were dinner parties, games, and the slaughtering of a pigs and goats.

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 ancient Rome, “bruma” was the winter solstice while “Bruma” was the winter festival. Bruma wasn’t celebrated in the same month as Christmas. As lengthy as the Byzantine celebration “Brumalia” eventually became, it was popular in the East long after Christmas caught on in the West and was never observed on the 25^th. Neither had any bearing on the dating of Christmas.

Saturnalia

The claims:

The wildest and most inane claims are reserved for Saturnalia. Mainly, I have heard claims that Saturnalia was on December 17^th and December 25^th, that it was celebrated for one day, three days, and as many as eight days, 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 (with the exception of mistletoe and the Yule log) came from Saturnalia. 

The facts: 

Saturnalia honored Saturn the god of vegetation. Tom 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 14^th day before the Kalends of January ("Kalends of January" is the first day of January).
Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar in 45 BC and added two days to December (he took Rome from a lunar calendar to a solar calendar which is called the “Julian calendar”, and took December from 29 days to 31 days). The original date of Saturnalia now fell on the 16^th day before the Kalends of January (and that's how we see it in the Philocalian Calendar), while the new date remained on the 14^th day before the Kalends of January.
Filocalus, writing in 336 AD, agrees that Saturnalia was the 16th day before the Kalends of January.
Confused? Let me explain.

The Romans had a very messy calendar system; the details of which are still under much debate. But they never dated their days. They wouldn't ever say, "December 25." Instead, they divided each month into three parts, called the Kalends, Nones, and Ides, then counted their days from that. For example, Saturnalia was 16 days before the Kalends of January, and Christmas was 8 days before the Kalends of January.
The calendar was a general mess. I quote Wikipedia again to show that this information is readily available to anyone who is interested:

"Nevertheless, we do know that the pre-Julian calendar could be substantially out of alignment with the Julian calendar. Two precise astronomical synchronisms given by Livy show that in 168 BC the two calendars were misaligned by more than two months, and in 190 BC they were four months out of alignment."
Wikipedia.com, "Roman Calendar." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar#Converting_pre-Julian_dates

Isn't it obvious why Julius Caesar had to reform it? But reforming a calendar would necessarily create some issues.
I'll just put this in plain language for you:

Saturnalia was on December 17^th. Julius Caesar comes along, adds two days to December, and now it's on the 19^th.
Most people kept it on the old date, some on the new date, with the result becoming a multi-day festival.

I have heard much about the shouting of “Io, Saturnalia!” but Macrobius says this was on the 17^th only.
Macrubius also mentioned a decree by Augustus Caesar officially making the Saturnalia a three-day festival from 17^th to the 19^th. He mentions it was eventually blended together with other festivals (eg. “Ops” and “Sigillaria”) and then became treated as a seven day celebration, between the 17^th and the 23^rd.
We know from history that Caligula limited it to five days, from the 17^th to 21^st.

As mentioned above, Roger Pearse suspects Bruma and Saturnalia eventually joined to become Brumalia. Notice how we're moving away from the dating of Christmas, however, not towards.

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, there aren't 12 days between Saturnalia and Christmas. 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 very recently, most people who celebrated Christmas didn’t start festivities until Christmas Eve, then they would celebrate for 12 days until Epiphany.

Summary:

Saturnalia was never celebrated on December 25^th, ever. The official day of the Saturnalia was on the 17^th. It has no bearing on the dating of Christmas.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

The claims:

I have heard people state with absolute conviction that Christmas is the Sol Invictus 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 on December 25^th, and in August and October.

The facts:                  

Here is a quote straight from Dave Pack’s own 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…”

Even though Mr. Pack gets the year right, the rest is simply not correct. 

Sun worship was part and parcel of Roman religion since the earliest days. That is not to be confused with Sol Invictus, however. Sol Invictus was a sun god, to be sure, but a specific sun god, not a general, generic worshiping of the sun.
I've read historians such as Michael Grant and Jack Finegan who appear to blend generic sun worship and Sol Invictus worship together as if there is no distinction whatsoever. In my view, this is not proper. Some people would like to say that every time the sun is mentioned, that was Sol Invictus. History disagrees.

According to the Historia Augusta, it was  Emperor Elagabalus (218-222 AD) who first introduced Sol Invictus (aka. "Deus Sol Elagabalus", & "Heliogabalus" in the Greek) to Rome around 219AD. Elagabalus replaced Jupiter with Sol, and generally went around angering everyone he could. He was murdered three years later and the worship of Sol was suppressed for the next half century. Sol Invictus was not ingrained into the Roman psyche as some would have us believe.

The next time we hear from Sol is nearly 50 years and 16 emperors later, during the reign of Aurelian (270-275 AD). Notice that Aurelian only reigns 5 years.

Museumstuff.com has an article about this entitled “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Aurelian.” They list some of the most common errors about what Aurelian did. 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.”

[Update... I just checked the link to Museumstuff, and point #3 is missing. 1, 2, and 4 are there. 3? Not so much. Well, WikiPedia still has the quote on their article about Sol Invictus. Look under the section "Aurelian".]
 
To help you get a better picture, here is the timeline of events:
222 AD - Elagabalus dies. Sol is repressed.
274 AD - Aurelian reintroduces Sol worship. Dies 1 year later.
336 AD - The first mention of "Natalis Invicti" on December 25^th (notice Sol is not mentioned; more in a bit).
363 AD -  Emperor Julian “the Apostate,” who despised Christianity and tried to turn Rome back to paganism, gives us the first explicit reference to a celebration of Sol in December.

Well, isn’t that interesting! Time for Dave Pack to review his information, no? 

The Chronography

I need to introduce something to you at this point to help explain a few things.

The above mention of Natalis Invicti 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.
Edwin Yamauchi, in his "Persia and the Bible" p. 521, says the calendar was actually composed in 336 AD, but that it was written for the year 354. That is why you see me placing the year 336 on some things.

The Chronography is not just a calendar; there are several other parts to it, sixteen in all. 

Part six of the Chronography is called the Philocalian Calendar and it lists only the words “Natalis Invicti” on December 25^th.  
It also lists Bruma on November 25^th and Saturnalia on December 17^th. Thus ends any possibility that either were on December 25^th.

Now notice this, it does not list “Dies Natalis Solis Invicti” nor any mention of Sol at all on December 25^th. It simply says "Natalis Invicti."

Part twelve of the Cronography is called the “Commemoration of the Martyrs” which lists the important dates of prominent Christian martyrs. Who do you suppose is the first martyr listed? That would be Jesus Christ - listed as being born on December 25^th.

So now we have a very important problem! Same document, two mentions of December 25^th, neither associated with Sol at all, one clearly associated with Christ. Does "Natalis Invicti" refer to Christ or to Sol? 
This is heavily debated.

Nearly everyone who claims December 25th is sun worship gets their claim from this debate.

Most speculate that "Natalis Invicti" refers to Sol because the rest of the calendar's dates are all pagan or secular. On the other hand the author was a Christian during the time of Constantine, and Sol festivals are clearly listed on other dates, so it could refer to Christ. (Oh, how I wish it was definite either way!)
Some historians, like J. Noiville, claim that Aurelian dedicated a temple to Sol on December 25th and held games every 4 years in his honor. That claim, however, has been convincingly rejected by many. We have ample evidence that Aurelian held solar festivals and games in August and October. Without the base assumption that Aurelian did anything of note on December 25th, the weight shifts against Natalis Invicti as pointing to Sol. 
And remember, Aurelian died the next year. That's not a lot of time to champion anything.

As a side note, I want to mention that I have heard many people blame Constantine for changing the December 25th festival from Sol to Christ. We do not know that is what happened! We have no proof that Constantine did this. But let's think about this for a second.
The claim is that all of Rome so loved the Sol festival that Constantine and the Catholic Church had little choice but to adopt it and paste Christ over Sol. (The claim confuses Sol with Saturnalia, but let's overlook this for now.)
If Aurelian in the last months of his life declared a Sol festival in December 274 as some claim, and if Constantine converted at the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD, then that leaves 38 years of Sol's prominence in Rome. But let's just say we count from the Edict of Milan where Christianity was officially legalized. This Edict was written in 313 AD. That leaves 39 years. The last coins depicting Sol were minted in 313 AD, so Sol most definitely fell out of prominence around this time. 
So what did we see? If December 25th did honor Sol, it only did so for less than 50 years. That's not very long.
It has honored Christ for 1,675 years!

Don't forget - it wasn't until decades later, in a poem by Julian the Apostate, that the first solid connection between Sol and December 25th arrives. So, was it Constantine changing the Sol festival to a Christ festival? Or was it Julian the Apostate changing the Christ festival to a Sol festival? 

Is there anything we can know or sure? Yes. And that is that speculation is the name of the game. People claim with fervency that December 25th is a pagan day. Not so fast! That is not only not proven, it isn't even the most compelling explanation for the facts. It is only speculation. We don't know for absolutely certain either way.
Are we willing to be so bold in accusing billions of Christians of paganism when we simply do not know that?

One note - I want to briefly mention how Filocalus counted.
When we read the Calendar, we see December 25th called "8 days before the kalends of January." That means that Filocalus counts inclusively, meaning he includes January 1st in his count. We might perhaps see December 25 as "7 days before January 1". Filocalus included January 1 in his count, so that's why it's 8 days before the kalends.

Conclusion:

Christianity was permeating Rome. In 273, Emperor Aurelian attempted to stamp out Christianity. The very next year he digs up and reinvents Sol Invicti (I suspect he was trying glorify himself). His solar festivals were in August and October. We have no record of a “birthday of the sun” until 90 years later. 
After Constantine was dead, on the scene comes Julian the Apostate, enemy to Christ. He wrote about a sun festival in 362-363 AD. This is a 26 years after the Philocalian Calendar records Jesus’ birth on December 25^th, and over 160+ years after the first records of Jesus’ birth being calculated.

Christ is clearly listed in association with December 25th well before Sol is.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti is still our best bet if the date comes from paganism, but from what I see, I am increasingly convinced that it has little if anything to do with the dating of Christmas. The best bet is a bad bet.

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:

Well, our first records of Yule come from around 700 AD. No one knows where Yule came from, but we should all know it is no longer with us. As far as I can determine, it comes from an old Germanic winter/new-year festival. Yule was not really on any fixed date, and was celebrated anywhere from mid November to mid January.

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

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?

It was only much later, when Christianity was widely accepted throughout Germania, that a certain tradition from Yule was associated with Christmas. The tradition we generally are referring to is the Yule Log. 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.

Winter Solstice

Touching again on the solstice, people often wonder how the solstice could have been celebrated on the 25^th and not the 21^st 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. You might wonder why that matters, but over time those eleven or so minutes add up to one day lost roughly every 128 years. 
So, in 1582 AD, Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar again. He made the calendar more accurate, but the Gregorian calendar still loses 27 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.

By the time Gregory XIII reformed the calendar in 1582, the solstice was on December 16^th. He 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. Oops! Therefore today we see the solstice on December 21^st or December 22^nd, which is where it would have been in 325 AD

Christmas is on December 25^th regardless of when the solstice occurs. But the solstice is no longer on the same calendar date as it used to be. You can imagine what all of these calendar changes can do to a date. While the actual winter solstice may or may not have literally been on December 25^th, that is the date when the Romans observed it as late as the first century AD. Time was being lost under their very noses, and we know that if Christmas was instituted after the first century then it was not actually on the winter solstice but as many as three days after.

I am also having no luck finding any credible information regarding solstice celebrations in Rome. (No, I do not consider About.com to be a reliable/credible source of information.) It would appear there were none. As a matter of fact, most places claim Saturnalia was the closest thing Rome had to a solstice celebration, and we've already eliminated Saturnalia. So the date of the solstice might have no special festive importance.

In other words, Christmas has never been on the date of the actual winter solstice.

Calculating December 25^th

Around 200 AD (162 years before the first unmistakable association between Sol and December 25th), many Christians were trying to deduce the dates of Christ’s birth and death. At that time, Clement of Alexandria mentioned that the Egyptian churches were calculating the date of Christ's birth as May 20^th and others at April 25^th. See how the 25^th keeps appearing over and over? This can only mean that Christians were working on this since the second century.

But here’s the real kicker - around 202-211 AD, a man by the name of Hippolytus of Rome, in his “Commentary on Daniel,” calculated the date of Jesus’ birth to be December 25^th. This is well before Aurelian, and well before the Chronography of 354. 

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, there becomes very good reason to believe that the December 25^th date is exactly what Hippolytus believed. Tom Schmidt at Chronicon.net explains this in far greater detail in his article “Hippolytus and the Original Date of Christmas”

People will no doubt be curious to know how people like Hippolytus came up with the December 25^th date if it was not taken from any of the preceding festivals.

The date of the birth of Christ is not known. Speculation on when He was born started very early on, long before December 25th was settled on. The earliest known widely accepted date was January 6^th, otherwise known as Epiphany. The Bible does not tell us on what day or year Jesus was born. Oh, how I wish it did!

But what most people overlook is that the Bible also leaves out the year of Jesus’ death. We may know that Passover is on the 14^th of Nissan, but how that translates to 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 Friday in April.

Hippolytus determined the year of the crucifixion, then the 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 25^th.

To understand a little more about why Hippolytus thought as he did, we can draw an example from Armstrongist tradition.
I can’t tell how very many times I have heard people speculate that Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles. The people who claim He was born during the Feast of Tabernacles have no more fact to draw upon than anyone else, but at least they are on to something. You see, the people who claim He was born during Tabernacles 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.
Well, 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 in a certain year, then He must also have been conceived on that same day. Hippolitus calculated the date of His conception/death to be March 25th. There probably was some trouble converting the Hebrew calendar to the Julian calendar, but it is what it is. From conception to birth is 9 months, normally. So, 9 months from March 25^th is.... December 25^th!

This appears to be the same reasoning used when Clement of Alexandria calculated the date of Jesus’ birth.

Even WikiPedia recognizes this 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...”

Once again, I quote WikiPedia here only to demonstrate that there are valid alternatives to the dating of Christmas, and that this information is readily available to anyone who is interested. Many people treat it as if the Christians stole the date from pagans, and that is that, case closed. This is simply not so.

This calculation was in no way influenced by paganism, but by Jewish tradition. The calculation did not depend on pagan festivals, but back-dating from Christ’s death/conception, which is based on the Biblical remembrance of Passover.

It is possible that the March 25th date was influenced by a Jewish tradition that the world was created on March 25th.
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.)

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 Armstrongists 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 and ignoring what they don’t like. 

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 25^th 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 25^th from the pagans. 

And I am supposed to take “no direct evidence” as an excuse for condemning over a billion people, especially when we have direct evidence that things are not so definite as we were led to believe? 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, the Armstrongists aren’t nearly as convinced about their authority, but when they air a program that goes against Christmas, “It’s the truth!!” 

One might say, "I am not condemning anyone" to which I would reply "Very good!" 
However, I know from experience that there are many who condemn others over this. I mean condemn in a very literal sense. People are called "worldly", "non-Christian", "pagan", "Nimrod worshipers", "rebellious", "cursed by God", "anti-Christ", "Satanic" and etc. So good for you in that you aren't condemning anyone - yourself or others - over this. But keep in mind some people take this quite seriously (and not in a good way). And I know from first-hand experience that many of these both do not know the truth, nor do they care when they are presented with it. 

In case you are interested in more, here is a fine article on this subject from William Tighe at Touchstone Archives, called "Calculating Christmas".

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 Armstrongist 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 day we still hear Hislop’s garbage from all quarters of Armstrongism. 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 25^th 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 25^th] 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 25^th before Sol was, and our first record of Sol being associated with December 25^th comes two decades after Christ was shown to be associated with it (and if Hippolytus can be believed, more than a century after).

Here is a fine link to KingDavid8.com for more information on any Christ/Mithra similarities: http://kingdavid8.com/Copycat/JesusMithra.html

You may want to check his other similarities pages as well.

Such mistaken information was widely accepted during HWA’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. How many times have you seen reference to the Catholic Encyclopedia 1911 edition? Well, now you know why.

In HWA’s defense (yes, we defend HWA when we the situation warrants it), not everything that HWA said was an outright lie, even if it was incorrect. He did what he thought was right with the information available at the time. We simply have far better information 100 years later. What a difference a day makes!

This doesn’t excuse the modern purveyors of what has been long known to be false. People like Dave Pack and Gerald Flurry simply have no desire to let go of the errors of the past. Too much of their reputation and income rides on tickling the itching ear with their self-serving lies. They teach people to judge and condemn based on false information for their own gain.

So, in my opinion, no, HWA was not necessarily lying when he was telling the world the only information available at the time, he was simply in error – but today people really should know better, and often do, so yes they are lying to us now.

Conclusion

So what have we seen about December 25^th? We have “no direct evidence” that Christians co-opted December 25^th from the pagans.

• Bruma has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it wasn’t even celebrated in the same month. *Brumalia has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it is a Byzantine celebration from after the time of Christmas. 

• Saturnalia has no bearing on the dating of Christmas; it was a week before Christmas and was never observed on December 25^th.

• Yule has no bearing on the dating of Christmas. Yule was apparently not a solstice celebration, as is often claimed. Our first records come too late and too far away to influence the beginning of Christmas. And the Yule Log was a minor aberration anyway.

• The winter solstice has no bearing on the dating. The Romans counted the solstice on December 25^th before Christ was born, but due to inaccurate calendar issues, Christmas has never once been on the winter solstice. 

• And what of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti? We have good reason to believe Christ's birth was celebrated previous to the creation of this holiday.
  We know that Christians were calculating and celebrating the birth of Christ since before 200 AD. There are good reasons to believe that Hippolytus of Rome calculated Christ’s birth to be December 25^th between 202-211 AD - that’s some 63 years before Aurelian pulled Sol Invictus from the trash heap. People at that time were counting forward from Christ’s conception/death, not borrowing from paganism. Aurelian reinvented Sol Invictus the year after he started the Ninth Persecution of the Christians. Did Aurelian recruit Sol Invictus to help him stamp out the threat of Christianity? Aurelian’s Sol festivals were in August and October, not December. The first mention of a Sol celebration in late December comes a decade after the first guaranteed record of Christ's burth on December 25^th. The same Chronography that tells us Christ was born on December 25^th also places Dies Natalis on December 25^th but never mentions Sol Invictus. Was Dies Natalis in reference to Christ, then, and not Sol Invictus at all? Julian the Apostate, the last of Constantine’s dynasty, mentions a sun celebration on December 25^th, but he was trying his level best to replace Christianity with sun worship. Did the pagans co-opt Christmas from the Christians, then? Religious historians used to believe that Christianity borrowed from Mithraism and other pagan cults like Attis, but we now know that was completely wrong and those groups took their traditions from Christianity.

Important things to ponder!


**UPDATE: 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"? 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

As a gift for making it this far, dear reader, you may wonder if I have any recommendations about the origins of some of the traditions, like Santa or the Christmas Tree. Turns out I do!

Origin of the Christmas Tree at ORLutheran:
     O Christmas Tree: The Origin and Meaning of the Christmas Tree

Origin of Santa Claus at St. Nicholas Center:
      St. Nicholas and the Origins of Santa Claus

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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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Psychology of the Spirit

I was watching a presentation given by a neurologist, Vilayanur Ramachandran. What he had to say regarding the mind was fascinating. I saw in what he was talking about parallels regarding spirituality and our relationship with God.

I have often wondered about the mental condition of angels who sinned by abandoning faith in God for faith in Satan, and what happened to Adam and Eve from a mental health perspective when they abandoned faith in favor of listening to Satan and their subsequent belief they could be, or were, self-sufficient. This may be describing the issue in a somewhat overly simplistic way, but the reader should get the idea.

Something happened to the minds of the angels who sinned. Something happened to the minds of Adam and Eve when they sinned. Something happened to me and others when they bought into the legalistic false gospel of sabbatarianism. Something happens to people in general who buy into false religion. All mankind suffers from a mental illness that defies diagnosis. But, because all mankind suffers from this mental illness, to one degree or another, it goes unnoticed, for if everyone suffers from the same neurological disorder, the disorder is perceived as the norm. This disorder is described in Scripture, and uses blindness as an analogy for this disorder. The sufferer of this disorder is blind to the fact they have this disorder. They do not perceive there is a disorder, therefore they conclude there is no disorder.

But something is definitely missing. Something is deficient.

Scripture diagnoses the problem in general terms, and Scripture relates the cure.

Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. – Isaiah 1:4-6

And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh: That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. – Ezekiel 11:19-20

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses: and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen. Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations. – Ezekiel 36:25-31

And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them. – Matthew 13:14-15

But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. – John 12:37-40

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. – Matthew 9:12-13

The cure is this new heart. We understand this to be God's Holy Spirit. But this is only part of the equation of the cure.

The fallen angels had the Holy Spirit, and their sin resulted in mental disorders we would recognize as severe.

We also have the example from Scripture where king Saul of Israel was given God's Spirit, and he too succumbed to severe mental disorders.

The rest of the equation for a healthy individual is faith; faith in God. The cure then is twofold; faith in God in conjunction with being in possession of God's Holy Spirit. Faith is total reliance in God.

There's a category of people who refuse the cure because they think they have already gone through the therapy. These are those who have put their faith in the “quack” physicians who impersonate Christ and His ministers. Their cure is a placebo. The basis of their cure is the old covenant law they teach to be of faith, when in fact the apostle Paul stated that the law was not of faith. Their substitute Holy Spirit is also the law, for they teach that it is that law placed within the believer, and not a Spiritual “law” that Scripture shows to be God's Holy Spirit.

The result of this bogus cure is self-righteousness, arrogance, boasting, bragging, and other symptoms of an inflated Id and Ego. From this position, there is no perception of needing to be cured; there is no need of a physician. Their “righteousness” is embedded in the law and not Christ. Christ is given lip service. They have compounded their illness with a blindness now that cannot recognize the real Christ from their contrived one that is actually the law. Christ and the law become blurred. Paul recognizes this compounded illness in II Corinthians chapter 3.

When I was undergoing the process of throwing off the teachings of the old Worldwide Church of God, there was a day where I was grasping concepts of the new covenant, but the very next day, when I went to explain some aspect of it to another member, I couldn't do it. I couldn't remember what I understood so well the day before. That is when I started writing down everything. In time, I got to the point where I looked back on the beliefs of the WCG and could hardly believe that I believed that whole web of confusion. What then really happened to my mind?

It was rewired. God intervened and fixed the mind so that it was freed up from the circularly locked rationale common with those who accepted the wrong therapy.

I and others who have escaped sabbatarian legalism are now amazed when dealing with those who are still ensconced in that legalism how tenacious their minds hold on to those beliefs and reject any and all information contrary to that belief system. Why? They have a blindness we cannot cure. Like a horse, we can “lead them to water” but we can't make them drink.

When Paul preached to Jew and Gentile, some Jews believed the message of the gospel, and many did not. What was the common denominator regarding those who rejected the gospel message and thus rejected Jesus Christ? Their reliance on the law and the righteousness they believed they derived from it.

You can't drag a sick man to the doctor if he thinks he is well. They won't even admit to the symptoms they display, for the ego refuses to recognize itself as being a “hard heart.”

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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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