Hello,
It is a common saying this days that Christmas is a pagan celebration and this and that. And I must admit, I’ve been there, but since I’m not a huge Christmas fan, I never gave it much taught. Cut to Christmas 2021 and I’ve looked a bit into. And I’m about to share it with you.
Let's get something out of the way. What we now do in most of the world at Christmas, is quite different from the original Christmas. It has received, many alterations and additions in the last 2000 years, like the figure of Santa Claus. I’m going to focus on the genesis of the Holiday.
Granted we live in a predominately atheist society, but Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. And that’s what we’ll be looking into.
There are two main “versions” of "Christmas is pagan.” The first: Jesus was not born on that day. The second: It comes from the Roman “Saturnelia” festival. (There is a third strong version, that says it comes from other pagan cultures, mainly northern European. We won’t get to this third version, right now. I’ll just say, most pagan cultures had a sun worship in some capacity)
Jesus was not born on that day. - Well, the correct sentence would be: “ We are not sure when Jesus was born” - So honestly, this topic is over. heheheh Not trying to be funny, but if we don’t know the birthday it does not mean, it wasn’t on the one we think. The Bibe does not make it clear, that’s true. There is no concrete birthday stated. And the main argument for this point of view is because there is a description of the animals being outside and that usually happens in spring.
I think I’m being fair when I say the argument does not hold to the level of the claim An extraordinary claim, backed but a weak argument. And if you consider that we are dealing with a miracle birth… the mundane nature of the argument, becomes even more obvious.
I’ll repeat, the Bible does not tell us, Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th and the Bible was not written during the life of Jesus and no one had books, even a piece of paper was a luxury back then, there were other means of passing information. Like oral, like the Christ himself did.
There is also a school of taught which states, that according to Jewish tradition the Messiah, would die on his birthday. And the birthday includes the nine months in his mother’s womb (Like many cultures still do today). Putting it, on December 25.
Going to end it for now, trying o make this an easy read. But I’ll be back tomorrow, forepart 2, when things start getting really interesting, with the Roman feast.
All photos from Pexels.com