"We are not here today, marking the approach of Christmas, because the early Christians compromised with paganism. It is not the case that our fathers tried to sanitize some pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As it turns out, the Romans did not celebrate the solstice, and their Saturnalia was on a different day entirely. There was one brief abortive attempt by a pagan emperor to start celebrating the solstice (with a feast to the Unconquerable Sun), which was almost certainly a response to the Christian celebration of this day. This day is ours, so unbelievers may be cordially invited to keep their hands off it."-Pastor Doug Wilson, here.
(he also wrote an excellent post titled "Merry Christmas" As Insurrection)
"Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.
Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance."
- Quote from the December 2003 issue of Touchstone Magazine, hat tip to Cognizant Discourse, who blogged it here.
Merry Christmas!
3 comments:
Thank you Natalie for sharing that. I had heard that years ago, but could not find the info. to back it up. Now I have some links to go investigate. Thank you!
God Bless you as you continue to share the truth. :)
Hey Natalie, I like your blog!
About Christmas, I'd do a little more research. My family has in fact been looking at the origins all month, and through google I have found many articles about the subject (and they mostly agree). It was the Catholic Church (before the reformation) that chose the 25th of December, and it was chosen because of two other popular holidays celebrated at that time (the 21st and the 23rd)- one for a Roman fertility god, and another for the equinox ( if I remember correctly). There were huge fertility celebrations, a bit like Mardi Gras in New Orleans used to be.
Anyway, this is what I found in a few different articles, so it seems as though no one can agree. Surely the earliest Christians woudn't come to the conclusion that Christ was born in the snow. Mary and Joseph wouldn't have been able to travel through all the snow, nor would the shepards be out in the fields...
A. Victoria: You're welcome! I thought these quotes were interesting and I'm glad you found them helpful.
Bonnie: Thanks! I'm glad you stopped by and interacted with this post. :-)
This isn’t a topic I’d researched before, and I didn’t find anything on our shelves pertaining to the history of the church celebrating Christmas. However, I found the full article quite persuasive. Mr. Tighe, who is an Associate Professor of History, seemed to unpack how and when the opposing viewpoint took root, and to explain his position very convincingly. Both the quotes I posted were part of larger original pieces, and I encourage you to read each of those if you haven’t.
Both Pastor Wilson and Mr. Schweppe, whose posting of the second quote brought it to my attention, are men I respect offline as well as in their blog writing. While neither of them are professional historians, their word has more weight with me than pages written by people I don’t know anything about that are brought up by google. And although it does mean something if the majority are of the opposing opinion, the majority view isn’t necessarily right.
I researched why the 25th was chosen, and I came up with this:
"Our Christian era, which was introduced by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and came into general use two centuries later, during the reign of Charlemagne, puts the Nativity Dec. 25th, 754 Anno Urbis, that is, after the founding of the city of Rome...”
- Shaff’s History of the Christian Church, volume I
However, I don't think that December 25th is necessarily the day that Christ was actually born. In fact, Mr. Tighe says in his article, "It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death." Although celebration of December 25th isn’t documented until A.D. 336, deciding on the date apparently came before that and before the dating system introduced in the sixth century.
[Actually, there probably won’t be any snow for Bethlehem this Christmas, so would there have been any when Christ was born? (Weather.com here)]
Gene Edward Veith makes the point (http://www.worldmag.com/subscriber/displayarticle.cfm?id=11344) that ‘The Celtic and Germanic tribes, who would be evangelized later, did mark this time in their "Yule" festivals, a frightening season when only the light from the Yule log kept the darkness at bay. Christianity swallowed up that season of depression with the opposite message of joy: "The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (John 1:5).’
The Germanic tribes were evangelized by Boniface in the seventh century, according to Richard M. Hannula’s book, Trial and Triumph: Stories from Church History. This was after the day was determined, so the German celebrations couldn’t have affected it. I have yet to see proof that there were pre-existing pagan festivals, or that if there were, that they were the reason that the early Latin Christians chose that date. My encyclopedia (World Book) won't go farther than to say that the choosing of the date was "probably influenced" by pagan celebrations.
And, as a note to my other readers as well as to Bonnie, if I discover that I am wrong on this, I'm not going to start objecting to Christmas. If this is true, which I think it is, its great, but if it isn't I don't have a problem with appropriating this day as a day of feasting and celebration.
Either way, I hope you and your family have a very Merry Christmas! :-)
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