Was Christmas originally a pagan holiday? Nope.

[TER]

So let's see... The latitude of Bethlehem is 31.7. This is closer to the equator than Dallas. How are the Decembers in Dallas?

We are not talking about London, or Stockholm, or NYC (although I tell you, I have been wearing t shirts in NY so far this month).

We are talking about Palestine in the Middle East where the average highs and lows in Bethlehem during December is 58 and 42 degrees respectively according to this site. Shepherds can't work in such weather?! Tell that to a Scottish man! Interestingly, the site adds "in December, for the nearest coastal location, the temperature of the sea averages around 21°C, that's 70° Fahrenheit. Our index indicates for swimming this is considered fairly warm and should be enjoyed by most, though some people may still find it a little too cool for their liking." So not only is it warm enough for shepherds to shepherd, the water at the beaches are warm enough for most to swim in comfortably!

Making a biblical objection of Christ's birth being born on December because shepherds were out in the fields has to be one of the worst objections one can think of, and it certainly does not 'rule out a December birth at the outset'.

Are there any other biblical proofs you would like to add Theo which 'rules out a December birth at the outset', because so far you have not presented a compelling case.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Those are a nice collection of platitudes, you have there.

Truth is often how they become platitudes in the first place. BTW, I have many more.

 

[TER]

Let us now turn to the biblical evidence Christ was born on December 25th. Let's go by the steps provided by this website which I have paraphrased:

Step One: Determine the Birthday of John the Baptist

We can discover that Christ was born in late December by observing first the time of year in which Saint Luke describes Saint Zacharias in the temple. This provides us with the approximate conception date of Saint John the Baptist. From there we can follow the chronology that Saint Luke gives and that lands us right smack at the end of December.

Saint Luke reports that Zacharias served in the “course of Abias” (Lk 1:5) which Scripture records as the eighth course among the twenty-four priestly courses (see Neh 12:17). Each course served one week in the temple for two times each year. The course of Abias served during the eighth week and the thirty-second week in the annual cycle. However, when did the cycle of courses begin?

By consulting the scholarly research of Friedlieb (Leben J. Christi des Erlösers, Münster, 1887, p. 312), we discover that the first priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the destruction of Jerusalem on the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av. Thus the priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the second week of Av. This means that without a doubt, the priestly course of Abias (the course of Saint Zacharias) was serving during the second week of the Jewish month of Tishri – the very week of the Day of Atonement on the 10th of Tishri. In our calendar, the Day of Atonement on 10th Tishri lands anywhere from September 22 to October 8.

Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist immediately after Zacharias served his course. This entails that Saint John the Baptist would have been conceived somewhere around the end of September, placing John’s birth at the end of June, confirming the Church’s celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24.

The second-century Protoevangelium of James also confirms a late September conception of the Baptist since the work depicts Saint Zacharias as High Priest and as entering the Holy of Holies—not merely the holy place with the altar of incense. The Protoevangelium regards Zecharias as a high priest and this associates him with the Day of Atonement, which lands on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri (roughly the end of our September). Immediately after this entry into the temple and message of the angel Gabriel, Zacharias and Elizabeth conceive John the Baptist. Allowing for forty weeks of gestation, this places the birth of John the Baptist at the end of June—once again corresponding to the date for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June 24.

Step Two: Determine the Birthday of Christ

The rest of the dating is rather simple. We read that just after the Virgin Mary conceived Christ, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. This means that John the Baptist was six months older that our Lord Jesus Christ (Lk 1:24-27, 36). Add six months to June 24 and it reveals December 24-25 as the birthday of Christ. Subtract nine months from December 25 and it reveals that the annunciation was March 25. All the dates match up perfectly.

So then, if John the Baptist was conceived shortly after the Jewish Day of the Atonement, then the traditional dates are essentially correct. The birth of Christ would be about or on December 25

 

[Ronin Truth]

Then let us start with this presumption.

What in the Gospel record rules out a December birth at the outset?

Or the existence of dinosaurs?

 

[TER]

So, actually, the real biblical evidence points to Christ being born in late December.

 

[Ronin Truth]

Ignore him.

That works!

 

[Ronin Truth]

That's riddled with fallcies and false facts. Not much more accurate than the silly stuff Ronin posts.

Are you including and counting those scriptural ones extracted verbatim from your Bible?

Keep on whistling as you pass by that graveyard. That'll save you.

 

[TER]

Also, according to ancient Jewish Tradition (as well as Christian Tradition), the first day of creation was on March 25th, (the day of the vernal equinox), as the day and the night were equally halved. This important date in JudeoChristian history is also the day it is believed that the Passover happened, as well as the date when the end of the world might happen. It is also the date of the Incarnation of Christ, and the date Christ was crucified (as calculated by Church historians and scholars), as documented as early as Saint Hippolytus.

If Christ's incarnation was on March 25th as it has believed to have been going back to the first centuries, then that makes His birthdate to be December 25th if He was born exactly nine months later.

The truth is, had the Feast of Tabernacles had anything to do with the birthdate of Christ, the Christians of those days would not have rejected such a truth, but instead, they would have proclaimed it and co-opted it into its newly revealed Christian understanding. But the reason they didn't was because Christ was not in fact born then, but in later December, as the Bible points to, as the early Christians affirmed, and as the Christian Church has proclaimed for many many centuries.

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles instead corresponds to the new covenant Feast of the Transfiguation of Christ. The old covenant Jewish Feast was not celebrated by itself apart from the new covenant understanding of the Church until the 17th century by certain Protestant splinter groups. It certainly was not a Feast practiced by Christians in the interim except perhaps by some Judaizing sects in the first centuries who were apart from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of the Holy Councils.

Church historians attribute this feast as having eschatological connotations, namely that the feast will be the celebration in the Kingdom of Heaven. As for its liturgical form, the shadows have been supplanted and instead Christ's Transfiguation is what is celebrated, as a fulfillment of this older feast of the old covenant.

 

[Todd]

This entire thread is based on the wrong question.

The question should be: Should Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus?

The answer is no. Christians don't celebrate the birth of Christ, they celebrate His death. This is called the Lord's Supper.

That was my point as well. It's fine if Christians want to do it...just don't say it's biblical.

 

[TER]

That was my point as well. It's fine if Christians want to do it...just don't say it's biblical.

No one would claim that the celebration of Christmas is biblical. I don't think this was ever said in this thread. That doesn't mean, however, that God is not pleased when we celebrate the birthday of His Son by coming together to celebrate Divine Liturgy and worship the Holy Trinity. That is the point I have tried to express to you Todd. Just because it was not in the Bible does not necessarily mean the Feast of the Nativity of Christ was not initiated and completed by the work of the Holy Spirit.

But I appreciate your statement that it is fine if Christians want to do it. That is better than what some other 'Christians' would say.

 

[fisharmor]

That was my point as well. It's fine if Christians want to do [ celebrate Christmas ]...just don't say it's biblical.

Searching for signs, particularly in the stars, absolutely is Biblical. I understand this makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but it's definitely in there. Starting from Genesis 1, where God specifically creates the stars to be used as signs for time.

The celestial signs TER mentioned earlier are totally compatible with this Biblical practice.

Again, I know that this is a touchy subject because it gets misused so often, and so obviously. But (and BTW is this spin-off thread started yet?) so is the Lord's Supper. Misused and abused on a daily basis and without shame, and yet the practice itself completely Biblical.

The conservative approach is to foreswear all of it, and the most conservative nominal Christians have done this.

I do not subscribe to the idea that we should not do things that have Biblical - or even historical, within the Church - precedent strictly because some unknown number of people don't understand it. As a libertarian, I think it's up to the individual and his priest and his friends and family to figure out whether it's a problem and then the individual (ideally counseled by the aforementioned) should refrain from doing it.

Seeking signs is, I would posit, much more problematic than celebrating Christ's birth in that respect. But as TER pointed out, seeking signs is how we got to the date.

Again, I think historical Church practice should be treated similarly to Biblical precedent and I know this is a hard teaching for all but four of us here in this thread. But hopefully this shows why I personally don't have a problem celebrating Christmas.

On another note, I do think that people should know some basics of astrology... but only if one is able to separate the divination component from the sign-seeking component. I did not have much of an understanding of astronomy until I read some astrology pages, and then not only the physical movement of the heavens made sense to me, but also the historical mindset about those movements.



TER, HB, RJB, not sure if you guys know this bit of seemingly trivial info: the Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant from a known event. The supernova was first observed in....


....wait for it.....


July of 1054.

And it was visible during the day.

 

[TER]

TER, HB, RJB, not sure if you guys know this bit of seemingly trivial info: the Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant from a known event. The supernova was first observed in....


....wait for it.....


July of 1054.

And it was visible during the day.

That is interesting! So one of the few first observed supernova event which man has recorded occurred during the year of the Great Schism. That is interesting indeed. I found some info on it:

Supernova SN 1054 was another widely-observed event, with Arab, Chinese, and Japanese astronomers recording the star's appearance in 1054 CE. It may also have been recorded by the Anasazi as a petroglyph.[8] This explosion appeared in the constellation of Taurus, where it produced the Crab Nebula remnant. At its peak, the luminosity of SN 1054 may have been four times as bright as Venus, and it remained visible in daylight for 23 days and was visible in the night sky for 653 days.[9][10]

 

[fisharmor]

That is interesting! So one of the few first observed supernova event which man has recorded occurred during the year of the Great Schism.

In the same month.​

 

[TER]

In the same month.​

I see that! The first recording of it was on July 4th, 1054, while Cardinal Humbert was in Constantinople preparing to drop the papal bull of excommunication (it is believed the Pope by that time had died, btw). On Saturday, July 16, 1054, (12 days later!), as afternoon prayers were about to begin, and the supernova star was in the sky, the Papal legate strode into the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia, right up to the main altar, and placed on it a parchment that declared the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, to be excommunicated. He then marched out of the church, shook its dust from his feet, and left the city. A week later the patriarch solemnly condemned the cardinal and within a short time, all the other Bishops of all the Christian Patriarachates turned around and excommunicated the Pope of Rome (who was a poorly educated political hack, whose family had purchased the papacy for him.). The rogue Roman Patriarchate had separated the See of Peter from the rest of the Christian Church. Looks like the heavens too demonstrated this massive split.

What was the major disagreements theologically which created this schism? Well, among them are these two major ones:

The first was the Filioque addition to the Creed, which went against the theology of the Holy Spirit and the Trinity as handed down by the earlier Fathers (especially the great Cappadocians). It was a noncannonical addition to the Creed which other Popes had condemned but which later Popes would use for political expedient purposes with regards to the Franks.

And second, the Great Schism was because of the Bishop of Rome's increasingly self-proclaimed position as head of the Church and as prime authority in the doctrines of the faith.

 

[Ronin Truth]

In the same month.​

Were they all just waiting for a special celestial occasion, to act?

 

[Anti Federalist]

A very Merry Christmas to all my brothers in this thread.

 

[TER]

A very Merry Christmas to all my brothers in this thread.

A Merry Christmas to you too!

 

[heavenlyboy34]

TER, HB, RJB, not sure if you guys know this bit of seemingly trivial info: the Crab Nebula is a supernova remnant from a known event. The supernova was first observed in....


....wait for it.....


July of 1054.

And it was visible during the day.

Mind. Blown.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

A very Merry Christmas to all my brothers in this thread.

Merry Christmas, comrade! ~hugs~

 

[Ronin Truth]

Probably not, originally.

The various pagans undoubtedly called it a "something else entirely" holiday.