Las fiestas solemnes tienen un lugar escogido: JERUSALÉN, pero las observamos en todas partes. Bíblicamente Jerusalén es “el Reloj del Mundo”, lo que sucede espiritualmente en Israel tiene un efecto en el resto del mundo.
Podemos observar 7 fiestas solemnes en el calendario Judío, divididas en 2 grupos:
FIESTAS DE PRIMAVERA
1. La Pascua
2. Los Panes sin Levadura
3. Las Primicias
4. Pentecostés
FIESTAS DE OTOÑO
5. Las Trompetas
6. El Perdón/Expiación
7. Los Tabernáculos
Conocer mejor a Cristo a través de las fiestas judías: la sorpresa de «profundizar en un tesoro infinito»
The main thrust of charging the Catholic Church with pagan influence started in the nineteenth century. Here is an article showing how it came about, and why it is a logical fallacy:
What Does it Mean to be No Part of the World? – Tom Cabeen
At one time I believed that I was a member of the only true religious organization on earth. I believed all other religious organizations to be false, even those claiming to be Christian. I now see that my former view was narrow, based on a peculiar perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The WT approach to what they call “paganism” assumes that God is reacting to the actions of his enemy the devil. After Satan influenced Adam and Eve to sin, “Jehovah” reacted by setting up the ransom arrangement, which included bringing 144,000 from earth to live in heaven. The implication is that if there had been no sin, no humans would have been called to heavenly life, but would have lived forever on earth. In this perspective, the devil is “in the driver’s seat”, calling the shots as it were, which attributes to him much more power than he actually has. God is infinitely more powerful than any creature. He can never be surprised, for he knows everything. The sin of Adam and Eve was not unexpected, which is why Jesus (the name given to God’s Incarnate Son) was known before the founding of the world. (1 Pet 1:20) Since Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, whatever power the devil had over mankind has been severely limited, for he has been completely conquered, and mankind has been set free if they want to be free. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, all who do not explicitly worship “Jehovah” are considered by default to be worshipers of Satan, therefore anything done by these “pagans” (even including Jews or traditional Christians) is often considered to be false worship, especially if the same actions are performed by Christians. Therefore, there is a very strong tendency among JWs to reject anything that comes from a non-Christian (or even a non-JW) source as “pagan corruption”. That approach makes it very easy to condemn as “pagan” just about any practice that someone at Bethel doesn’t like. Since JWs reject most Christian traditions, too, “true Christianity”, in their view, consists only of the meager stable of distinctly JW practices (door to door literature distribution, attending meetings and conventions, reading and studying WT publications and strict obedience to WT laws). Only those who practice these things are considered by many JWs to be truly “pure”. In contrast, early Christians (perhaps most notably Justin, who lived in the first half of the second century) recognized and respected those pagan philosophers who had searched for truth using only their natural powers and found some of it, at least. Perhaps the three most famous are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Thomas Aquinas, very highly regarded by the Catholic Church, harmonized Aristotelian philosophy with Christian teaching in his writings. Catholics teach that all humans are God’s children, and that any who seek truth will find it, for God gave us intelligence that we might use it to find him. During the course of human history, many have lived by their conscience, to the best of their ability, as attested to by the apostle Paul in his letter to Roman Christians. “That which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made…” (Rom 1:19-20) Paul recognized the religious attributes of the Athenians, as witnessed to by their actions, and an altar “TO AN UNKNOWN GOD” (that altar may have been erected by Socrates). Some Greek poets recognized that “we also are His children.” (Acts 17:28)
Still, Jesus’ followers are to be different from the world around them. About his disciples, he prayed, “They are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.” (John 17:14-16) James said that true religion means keeping ourselves “without spot from the world.” I was taught from my youth up that the way to do that was by strict non-participation in a whole list of practices and activities which I believed could contaminate me, including celebrating any birthday or holiday, saluting any nation’s flag, or standing for the singing of the national anthem. Such practices, I was taught, had pagan connections, and participation in them was false worship. As time went on, I began to question the meaning and validity of that view. What, exactly, makes some act or perspective “pagan”? If I perform some act which a pagan also performs, does that also make me a pagan? Can an act or celebration be pagan in itself, so that any practice of it would make one a pagan? I needed to address these questions as I began to associate with Christians who did participate in celebrations with possible pagan connections. To begin, I needed a definition of what constitutes being a “pagan”. “Paganism, in the broadest sense includes all religions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism. The term is also used as the equivalent of Polytheism. It is derived from the Latin pagus, whence pagani (i.e. those who live in the country), a name given to the country folk who remained heathen after the cities had become Christian.
So the term itself dates from the period when Christianity began expanding outside of Palestine. Can we, need we, rid ourselves of anything even remotely connected with pagans? What constitutes a meaningful or significant connection? Much of the culture of the whole world has been shaped by pagans in one way or another. In many Western countries, the days of the week and months of the year are named for pagan deities. Money may have symbols on it first used by pagans. Even practices like shaking hands and wearing wedding rings originated among pagans. In a similar vein, an item such as a statue of Buddha, for example may be viewed by some as art but worshiped by others. Do these things constitute a danger to Christians? If so, what is it? To answer that question, I went in search of indications as to how early Christians handled that issue. Their world, especially outside Palestine, was thoroughly pagan. According to A History of Pagan Europe, pagans hold three characteristics in common: They believe that in multiple divine beings or gods. They believe that there is both a male and female divine principle; both God and Goddess. They believe that all nature is a theophany or manifestation of divinity; that all things, living and nonliving, are divine within themselves, not by virtue of having been created by a divine being. With this in mind, I began to think less in terms of things being Christian or pagan, and more about the beliefs and behavior of people; in particular how and what they worshiped, what they did and why, especially things done to please or appease their gods. Pagan worship took many forms, including the ritual sacrifice of animals or humans, performing various types of sexual acts, or eating and drinking to excess.
Most pagans did not have a specific moral code such as the one in the Jewish law. In the ancient pagan world, immoral behavior (from a Judeo-Christian perspective) was common. Not only were there few sanctions against it, there was often not even a sense among the general pagan populace that doing such things would in any way affect their standing with their gods. In pagan myths, their gods themselves did the same kinds of things. According to one historian, “In heathen times, a man would have been regarded as of exceptional goodness if he practiced those homely duties which an ordinary Christian gentleman would now count himself disgraced if he failed in. When Pliny [a first century Roman] set himself to inquire what was the sacramentum [oath, sacraments or sacred rites] administered to Christians at their meetings before daylight, [he learned] that the disciples then pledged themselves to what seems to us very elementary morality, that is, that they were not to rob or steal, not to commit adultery, not to break their word, and if the money of others were entrusted to them, not to appropriate it themselves.” From very ancient times, Jews were rightly proud of the high moral standards taught in their Law. Their prophets, from Moses on, spoke out against worship of idols (very often connected to such things as child sacrifice), sexual immorality, murder and such things. Christianity had an even higher standard, for the love taught by Jesus demands that we put the interests of others ahead of our own, even if we suffer inconvenience or loss as a result. That is what comes into focus when Paul considers the issue of contamination by paganism. One way in which first century Romans worshiped their gods was to bring an animal such as a goat or bull to the temple of a particular god, dedicate it to that deity, then kill and eat it. According to Albert Barnes, “When those sacrifices were made to pagan gods, a part of the animal was given to the priest that officiated, a part was consumed on the altar, and a part (probably the principal part) was the property of him who offered it. This part was either eaten by him at home, as food which had been in some sense consecrated or blessed by having been offered to an idol; or it was partaken of at a feast in honor of the idol; or it was in some instances exposed for sale in the market in the same way as other meat.” —Barnes’ Notes on the New Testament for 1 Cor 10:27-33 Was there a possibility that a Christian could purchase and eat such meat without contamination? Yes, Paul says, for in itself, the mere act of eating meat is not out of harmony with God’s revealed will nor does it require disobedience to any of God’s direct commands. That was not the issue Paul raises. Instead it was an issue rarely considered by either Jews or pagans—putting others’ rights ahead of our own. Paul does not tell the Corinthians to avoid being contaminated by contact with an object directly involved in pagan worship or even performing some act also performed by pagans. Instead, he focuses on a Christian’s responsibility to avoid wounding the conscience of another. How could this happen? To a person who considers an idol to be nothing, the meat was in reality not contaminated at all. If an idol or a false god is nothing, meat cannot by either purified or influenced by it. But if someone had often eaten meat consecrated in that very way, the person might still consider eating such meat to be an act of worship to a pagan god. Paul showed that we ought to consider the consciences of others. But he left the decision about eating to the conscience of each individual. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible” —but not everything is constructive. Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others. Eat anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience, for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” If some unbeliever invites you to a meal and you want to go, eat whatever is put before you without raising questions of conscience. But if anyone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, both for the sake of the man who told you and for conscience’ sake — the other man’s conscience, I mean, not yours. … So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. —1 Corinthians 10:23-31 What is the point here? A person does not become a sharer in paganism either through contact with items used in pagan worship nor by performing some act also performed by pagans (even if the pagans regard that act to be worship), as long as the activity itself is not in violation of God’s expressed will in regard to the conduct of his servants. What really distinguishes the Christian from the unbeliever is the willingness to put the needs of others ahead of his or her own. Jesus’ teachings ought to have such an influence on us that, not only do we avoid conduct that violates the rights of others (1 Thess 4:1-7), but our attitude changes so much that we take a positive stance, actively looking out for the good of others and putting their needs ahead of our own. (Phil 2:3, 4) The importance of unselfish interest in others, even at great cost to ourselves, is one of the basic lessons of Jesus’ entire life, death and resurrection. So separation from the world does not mean avoiding any act that “worldly” people do. It means practicing a new kind of behavior, seeking to imitate the unselfishness of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. God’s Spirit at work in us produces fruits that are appropriate under all circumstances (Gal 5:22, 23). Our whole focus changes from “ourselves” to “others” as a result of our belief in Jesus Christ. That change, lived out in our lives, makes us very different from the world of ungodly people in which we live. I once believed that the command to “come out” of Babylon the Great in the Revelation given at the very end of the first century meant avoiding all connections with any “false religion.” But, as explained above, I learned that early Christians did not view “religion” in that way. So what did Babylon represent, and how could we get out of her? The command was addressed to Christians, most of whom were either Jews or closely associated with Jews. They did not interpret Babylon to be a “world empire of false religion.” Nor did they view Judaism as a false religion which they had to abandon when they became Christians, or Jews who still had not accepted Jesus as false worshipers (Rom 3:1, 2). Early Christians understood Babylon to mean Rome; not just the city, but the empire, which included religious, political and commercial elements. It represented “the world” of which Jesus’ kingdom was no part (Jn 18:36). Jesus’ true followers abandon worldly conduct and attitudes, as Paul explains: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”—Rom 12:2
No destruyas la Navidad
¿Por qué se originaron los Carnavales?
Capilotes are not the same as Ku Klux Klan hoods and do nit have Satanic origins This is proof the Church is performing Satanic ritual? Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi explains – Minute 11’39
ABSOLUTE MUST SEE: What Do Catholics Believe About Christmas? Part 1
What Do Catholics Believe About Christmas? | Part 2
Dr. Michael Barber on The True Meaning of Christmas | The Augustine Institute Show with Dr. Tim Gray
OUTRIGHT LIES ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIAN FEASTS IN ALL LITERATURE AND EVEN OFFICIAL WEBSITES
PURAS MENTIRAS EN CUANTO A LOS ORIGENES DE LAS FIESTAS EN LA LITERATURA Y AUN EN SITIOS OFICIALES
EXAMPLE / EJEMPLO: La galette des rois, une tradition bien française
“Comme beaucoup de fêtes chrétiennes, la date de l’Epiphanie correspond, à l’origine, à une fête païenne. Car autrefois, les Romains fêtaient les Saturnales, fêtes du solstice d’hiver, qui consistaient à désigner le roi ou la reine d’un jour, au moyen d’une fève blanche ou noire cachée dans une galette. “
NOTE THAT THE SATURNALES WERE ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DATE: La célébration des Saturnales a lieu dans le cadre des «saturnales» qui, du 17 au 23 décembre, commémorent le règne paradisiaque de Saturne, où les hommes vivaient dans l’égalité et l’abondance, sans avoir à travailler la terre.
La primera imagen de la natividad. Siglo III. Catacumbas de Priscila. Roma.
Aquí tienes la representación más antigua de *la Natividad*, de *principios del s. III*. Como no, en Roma, *en las catacumbas de Priscila,* así llamadas por la propietaria del terreno, *la noble Priscila*. En la Via Saleria, alejadas, pues, de las famosas catacumbas de la Via Apia. Se dice que el personaje a la izquierda sea el profeta *Balaam* (Nú. 24,17). *Yo no veo ninguna dificultad en aceptar que se trate de San José*. Señala hacia la estrella de la que nos habla Mateo (y sólo Mateo) en su Evangelio, *representada aquí con 12 puntas*. En las mismas catacumbas se halla también la representación más antigua de *los Reyes Magos*, en número de tres, como se los imagina hoy (aunque Mateo, único que los menciona, no nos diga su número).
Everybody knows that Christmas is really just a warmed-over Celebration of the Feast of the Sol Invictus by Mark Shea Guess what? Everybody’s wrong! Another little excerpt from my book(s?) on Mary, Behold Your Mother (sans footnotes, but trust me, the citations are all in order): Pseudo-Knowledge and “Pagan Christmas” Time was when I, like most people, took it for granted the winter solstice and, in particular, the Roman Feast of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun were simply pagan celebrations that hung around into Christian times. In fact, when I set out to write this book I still thought this. But I discovered the reality is far more complicated and interesting. Indeed, it turns out this widely assumed “fact” that “everybody knows” is probably another sample of pseudo-knowledge. For according to William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College, “the pagan festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ 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.” For the fact is, our records of a tradition associating Jesus’ birth with December 25 are decades older than any records concerning a pagan feast on that day. [T]he definitive Handbook of Biblical Chronology by professor Jack Finegan (Hendrickson, 1998 revised edition) cites an important reference in the Chronicle written by Hippolytus of Rome three decades before Aurelian launched his festival. Hippolytus said Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25. Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendar—long before Christmas also became a festival. To make a long and complicated story short, there was agitation in the early Church concerning, not Jesus’ birthday, but the day upon which the historical Good Friday and Easter fell. It finally ended up that, in the Eastern Church, the tradition focused on April 6 as the date for the original Good Friday, while in the Western Church it was widely held that the date was March 25. Why does this matter? Tighe continues: At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception. This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed. It is to this day commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany. And because these traditional, albeit competing, birth dates were already being revered in the rapidly growing Church, the emperor of a failing pagan empire instituted the Feast of the Unconquered Sun not only as an “effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly [as] an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians.” In addition to this there’s another small, but telling, point. We also find St. John Chrysostom (a patriarch of Constantinople who died in 407 A.D.) noted that Christians had celebrated December 25 from the Church’s early days. Chrysostom reinforced his point with an argument that used Scripture, not pagan mythology, for corroboration: Luke 1 says Zechariah was performing priestly duty in the Temple when an angel told his wife Elizabeth she would bear John the Baptist. During the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary learned about her conception of Jesus and visited Elizabeth “with haste.” The 24 classes of Jewish priests served one week in the Temple, and Zechariah was in the eighth class. Rabbinical tradition fixed the class on duty when the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70 and, calculating backward from that, Zechariah’s class would have been serving Oct. 2-9 in 5 B.C. So Mary’s conception visit six months later might have occurred the following March and Jesus’ birth nine months afterward. So how did it become “common knowledge” that Christmas is really just a warmed-over pagan festival? It happened through a series of ironies capped by yet another example of pseudo-knowledge. The first irony is the reaction of the Christians of the late Roman Empire to Aurelian’s attempt to co-opt Christmas and make it a pagan day of celebration. Instead of fighting with Sun-worshipers who were trying to rip off their feast, early Christians simply “re-appropriate[d] the pagan ‘Birth of the Unconquered Sun’ to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the ‘Sun of Salvation’ or the ‘Sun of Justice.’” Mark that, because we shall return to it. The next irony happens in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the myth of “pagan Christmas” really took hold.
Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the Gospel. In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. Note that: Jablonski began, not with evidence, but with an assumption that the winter solstice must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. In other words, Jablonski simply noticed a correspondence between the Julian calendar’s solstice and Christmas and assumed the pagan feast must have been the prior one even though he had no proof for his theory. Meanwhile, Hardouin, rather than challenge that assumption, simply went along with it. And it’s upon these two authors that the entire myth about Christmas being a warmed-over pagan Sun-worshiping feast is based. But in fact, the date [December 25] had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him. There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes. What Can We Learn From This? It is vital we not get bogged down in minutiae and miss the blazingly obvious. So, for instance, we must not get distracted by the irrelevant question of whether Roman Christians were right to place Jesus’ birthday on December 25. Nor should we waste time saying, “Ah ha! Some early Christians relied on the unbiblical Jewish tradition of ‘integral age’ or Chrysostom’s ‘rabbinic tradition’!” Again, granted: the date of Christmas isn’t found in Scripture. But that isn’t what matters. The crucial thing is not, “Did the early Christians get the date of Christmas right?” It is, rather, “What mattered to them as they determined the date of Christmas?” And when you look at that, you again immediately realize that what dominates their minds is not Diana, Isis, sun worship, or anything else in the pagan religious world. What interests them is, from our modern multicultural perspective, stunningly insular. Their debates are consumed, not by longing for goddess worship, or pagan mythology, or a desire to import Isis and Diana into the Faith, but the exact details of the New Testament record of Jesus’ death, alloyed with a Jewish—-not pagan—-theory about when Jewish—-not pagan—-prophets die. They don’t care a bit how pagan priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. They care intensely about how Levitical priests ordered their worship in the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. These Christians are completely riveted on Scripture and details of Jewish and Christian history and tradition. They don’t give a hoot what sun worshipers, Osiris devotees, or Isis fans might think. A Common Objection At this point some people object, “But you yourself acknowledge the early Christians ‘re-appropriated the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun”’ to refer to the birth of Christ”. True. That is, I’m willing to grant that when Aurelian tried to co-opt a Christian holy day by designating it as the date for a pagan festival, Christians checkmated Aurelius by refusing to allow him to claim a sort of copyright on the Sun for paganism. Instead, they insisted on returning the Sun to the service of God its Creator—Whom Scripture calls the True Light of the World and a Sun and a Shield—and did not make the blunder of worshiping the creature. They behaved rather like modern Christians who offer punning riffs on current cultural phenomena (“Jesus: He’s the Real Thing” “Christ: Don’t Leave Earth Without Him,” etc.). Exactly what they did not do is take passages of Scripture which referred to Jesus and apply them to Apollo or some other pagan deity. Nor did they look to Apollo or some other pagan deity to tell them about Jesus; they knew perfectly well Jesus could be represented as the Sun of Justice and Light of the World long before Aurelius invented his pagan festival. That’s because early Christians were behaving in a way perfectly consistent with Scripture, becoming “all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22), not “holding the form of religion while denying the power of it” (2 Timothy 3:5). This matters immensely because it bears directly on the first moment when the early Catholic Church really did borrow something from pagans. And not just any pagans, mind you, but actual adherents of Babylonian Mystery Religion. And most amazingly, the early Catholics’ decision to do so receives the complete approval of, and even hearty defense by… Evangelicals.
HOW DECEMBER 25th BECAME CHRISTMAS
by Andrew McGowan
On December 25, Christians around the world will gather to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Joyful carols, special liturgies, brightly wrapped gifts, festive foods—these all characterize the feast today, at least in the northern hemisphere. But just how did the Christmas festival originate? How did December 25 come to be associated with Jesus’ birthday? The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical. The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.1 As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point. This stands in sharp contrast to the very early traditions surrounding Jesus’ last days. Each of the Four Gospels provides detailed information about the time of Jesus’ death. According to John, Jesus is crucified just as the Passover lambs are being sacrificed. This would have occurred on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Nisan, just before the Jewish holiday began at sundown (considered the beginning of the 15th day because in the Hebrew calendar, days begin at sundown). In Matthew, Mark and Luke, however, the Last Supper is held after sundown, on the beginning of the 15th. Jesus is crucified the next morning—still, the 15th.a Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival…”); it was certainly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century C.E., when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.” Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were often of most interest to first- and early-second-century C.E. Christian writers. But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing concern. We can begin to see this shift already in the New Testament. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century C.E., further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood are related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James.b These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education—but not the date of his birth. Finally, in about 200 C.E., a Christian teacher in Egypt makes reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all. Clement writes: “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20 in our calendar]…And treating of His Passion, with very great accuracy, some say that it took place in the 16th year of Tiberius, on the 25th of Phamenoth [March 21]; and others on the 25th of Pharmuthi [April 21] and others say that on the 19th of Pharmuthi [April 15] the Savior suffered. Further, others say that He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].”2 Clearly there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth in the late second century. By the fourth century, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6; for most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem. The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas. The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”3 In about 400 C.E., Augustine of Hippo mentions a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25, but refused to celebrate the Epiphany on January 6, regarding it as an innovation. Since the Donatist group only emerged during the persecution under Diocletian in 312 C.E. and then remained stubbornly attached to the practices of that moment in time, they seem to represent an older North African Christian tradition. In the East, January 6 was at first not associated with the magi alone, but with the Christmas story as a whole. So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in midwinter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6? There are two theories today: one extremely popular, the other less often heard outside scholarly circles (though far more ancient).4 The most loudly touted theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 C.E., the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated. Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods. It’s not until the 12th century that we find the first suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set at the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.5 In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.6 They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly. More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs borrowed much later, as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern audiences to assume that the date, too, must be pagan. There are problems with this popular theory, however, as many scholars recognize. Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas (c. 200) and the earliest celebrations that we know about (c. 250–300) come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character. Granted, Christian belief and practice were not formed in isolation. Many early elements of Christian worship—including eucharistic meals, meals honoring martyrs and much early Christian funerary art—would have been quite comprehensible to pagan observers. Yet, in the first few centuries C.E., the persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E. This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals. The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have know it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.7 There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years.8 But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth. Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus diedc was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar.9 March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception.10 Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.d This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.”11 Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice. Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”12 In the East, too, the dates of Jesus’ conception and death were linked. But instead of working from the 14th of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, the easterners used the 14th of the first spring month (Artemisios) in their local Greek calendar—April 6 to us. April 6 is, of course, exactly nine months before January 6—the eastern date for Christmas. In the East too, we have evidence that April was associated with Jesus’ conception and crucifixion. Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis writes that on April 6, “The lamb was shut up in the spotless womb of the holy virgin, he who took away and takes away in perpetual sacrifice the sins of the world.”13 Even today, the Armenian Church celebrates the Annunciation in early April (on the 7th, not the 6th) and Christmas on January 6.e Thus, we have Christians in two parts of the world calculating Jesus’ birth on the basis that his death and conception took place on the same day (March 25 or April 6) and coming up with two close but different results (December 25 and January 6). Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together. One of the most poignant expressions of this belief is found in Christian art. In numerous paintings of the angel’s Annunciation to Mary—the moment of Jesus’ conception—the baby Jesus is shown gliding down from heaven on or with a small cross (see photo of detail from Master Bertram’s Annunciation scene); a visual reminder that the conception brings the promise of salvation through Jesus’ death. The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born…and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.)14 Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later.15 In the end we are left with a question: How did December 25 become Christmas? We cannot be entirely sure. Elements of the festival that developed from the fourth century until modern times may well derive from pagan traditions. Yet the actual date might really derive more from Judaism—from Jesus’ death at Passover, and from the rabbinic notion that great things might be expected, again and again, at the same time of the year—than from paganism. Then again, in this notion of cycles and the return of God’s redemption, we may perhaps also be touching upon something that the pagan Romans who celebrated Sol Invictus, and many other peoples since, would have understood and claimed for their own too.16
Notes
1. Origen, Homily on Leviticus 8.
2. Clement, Stromateis 1.21.145. In addition, Christians in Clement’s native Egypt seem to have known a commemoration of Jesus’ baptism—sometimes understood as the moment of his divine choice, and hence as an alternate “incarnation” story—on the same date (Stromateis 1.21.146). See further on this point Thomas J. Talley, Origins of the Liturgical Year, 2nd ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), pp. 118–120, drawing on Roland H. Bainton, “Basilidian Chronology and New Testament Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature 42 (1923), pp. 81–134; and now especially Gabriele Winkler, “The Appearance of the Light at the Baptism of Jesus and the Origins of the Feast of the Epiphany,” in Maxwell Johnson, ed., Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 291–347.
3. The Philocalian Calendar.
4. Scholars of liturgical history in the English-speaking world are particularly skeptical of the “solstice” connection; see Susan K. Roll, “The Origins of Christmas: The State of the Question,” in Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), pp. 273–290, especially pp. 289–290.
5. A gloss on a manuscript of Dionysius Bar Salibi, d. 1171; see Talley, Origins, pp. 101–102.
6. Prominent among these was Paul Ernst Jablonski; on the history of scholarship see especially Roll, “The Origins of Christmas,” pp. 277–283.
7. For example, Gregory of Nazianzen, Oratio 38; John Chrysostom, In Diem Natalem.
8. Louis Duchesne, Origines du culte Chrétien, 5th ed. (Paris: Thorin et Fontemoing, 1925), pp. 275–279; and Talley, Origins.
9. Tertullian, Adversus Iudaeos 8.
10. There are other relevant texts for this element of argument, including Hippolytus and the (pseudo-Cyprianic) De pascha computus; see Talley, Origins, pp. 86, 90–91.
11. De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis domini nostri iesu christi et iohannis baptistae.
12. Augustine, Sermon 202.
13. Epiphanius is quoted in Talley, Origins, p. 98.
14. b. Rosh Hashanah 10b–11a.
15. Talley, Origins, pp. 81–82.
16. On the two theories as false alternatives, see Roll, “Origins of Christmas.” a. See Jonathan Klawans, “Was Jesus’ Last Supper a Seder?” BR 17:05. b. See the following BR articles: David R. Cartlidge, “The Christian Apocrypha: Preserved in Art,” BR 13:03; Ronald F. Hock, “The Favored One,” BR 17:03; and Charles W. Hedrick, “The 34 Gospels,” BR 18:03. c. For more on dating the year of Jesus’ birth, see Leonara Neville, “Fixing the Millennium,&rd; AO 03:01. d. The ancients were familiar with the 9-month gestation period based on the observance of women’s menstrual cycles, pregnancies and miscarriages. e. In the West (and eventually everywhere), the Easter celebration was later shifted from the actual day to the following Sunday. The insistence of the eastern Christians in keeping Easter on the actual 14th day caused a major debate within the church, with the easterners sometimes referred to as the Quartodecimans, or “Fourteenthers.” About the Author, Andrew McGowan Warden and President of Trinity College at the University of Melbourne, Australia, Andrew McGowan’s work on early Christianity includes God in Early Christian Thought (Brill, 2009) and Ascetic Eucharists: Food and Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (Oxford, 1999). Source: http://www.bib-arch.org/e-features/christmas.asp
