The Dagda

How indeed avi, but it seems a rhetorical question given the posts so far.

We need someone to prove that something doesn't exist. This is history not science.

avi

Agree with you that Abe's post was very interesting, but, I disagree that it was a "thread killer", because, so far as I am aware, Constantine, whose influence obviously included North Africa, was the one who assigned the two birthdates.

What I have always been puzzled by, is why the most powerful person in the western half of the planet, would assign to Jesus the SECOND most important holiday of his religion, saving preciously the single most important holiday date of the pagan calendar, to commemorate the birthdate of John the Baptist, unless, unlike the last 1500 years, at that time, John, not Jesus, was the single most important person in the nascent Christian religion.

The Dagda

I know I liked it because it was derivative and trite, not because it was axiomatic or correct.

OneInFundieville

Naturalistically (as earth-dwellers and as humans) we have these key cycles (among others):

- The length of a human lifespan
- Yearly seasonal cycle due to the earth's revolution around the sun
- Human nine-month gestational period
- Twice a year solstices and equinoxes
- Monthly cycle due to the moon's revolution around the earth
- Monthly human menstrual cycle
- Daily cycle due to the earth's rotation
- Twice a day tidal cycle
- Human respiration tidal cycle and human heart rate

Each of these have profoundly influenced human cermonies, human rites, human liturgies, human sacrifices to the Gods, human prayer, human music, etc. (One would think so obviously...)

The Church calendar serves ritual and pedagogical functions that most moderns have lost relationship with. We now live in a built environment that is less connected to natural cycles such as the ones listed above that were more fundamental in an agrarian culture. (Imagine the boon of discovering those cycles.)

I think the setting of the December 25 date needs to be seen within the monastic (and quite mystical) tradition that has resulted in this:



For the monks, it likely just caused the yearly and monthly and daily prayer and Scripture reading rites to flow better with a December 25 than any other.

And the reason it (theologically and mystically) "flowed better" is likely the same as why the above natural cycles caused other story lines to "flow better" for Pagan traditions as well.

Of course, a Saviour of the monomyth type gets born in darkest darkness...

And of course He's the Light of the World. The above mentioned cycles are cycles most significantly of the sense of sight. Solar revolution doesn't affect our senses of hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling as distinctively as that of seeing.

Of course, a Saviour and God will be mystically correlated with Light. I wouldn't expect it to be otherwise across the cosmos.

Worship of the Unconquerable Sun and a the birth of a Savior born on the Winter Solstice of the planet seems highly predictable.

For our specific planet with a one year rotational cycle and for our specific species with a 3/4 year gestational cycle it coincidentally fits well put the Saviour's birth around the darkest dark and the Saviour's conception and death around spring's growth. It fits a neat liturgical yearly cycle where naturalistic yearly life/death/rebirth can be mystically tied to its celebration through myth.

In Advent, the monks (and me too now) read much of Isaiah, Luke, John, and Revelation.

I don't think all of this is unrelated to St. John's Revelation making it into the canon either.

It was good seeing Violet in church Sunday.

As for John the Baptist, I wonder if monomyth-style astronomical polarity affected the need for setting his birthdate in opposition with that of the hero, given his archetypal role in the story of the Saviour.

The Dagda

In that case I blame the Kabbalah.

The only thing that is correlated with light is e=mc^2.

Everything else is just arm waving.

Minimalist

So why then did they not adjust it when they switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar?

Someone asleep at the switch?

OneInFundieville

I suspect more likely the interplay between the mystics and the clerics as all religion seems to grapple with.

squiz

Although this sounds reasonable, I was just wondering if you had some evidence to support this claim. The fourth century is rather late.

ApostateAbe

Fourth century is late, and I made a mistake. The fourth century is within the claimed time range that Christians would adopt pagan practices (Constantine and onward). The author claims that the evidence for the dating of Jesus' birth goes back to 200 CE, which I missed. He says,
The evidence from the fourth-century writing On Solstices and Equinoxes seems to be just a corroboration.

Montgomery Scott

The "born again" crowd is gearing up for another celebration of the birth of Christ, although Xmas started out as a pagan holiday that was co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church.

Many Protestants thinks that Roman Catholic theology is wrong and unbiblical, but refuse to see that Christmas is unbiblical. Many Christians, especially Protestants believe there is a conspiracy by Jews and Atheists to somehow discredit Xmas because in their minds, Jews and Atheists hate the baby Jesus. Most Xmas lovers either do not understand the origins of the holiday or refuse to see it for what it is and what it truly represents.

If these dunderhead "Christians" ever bothered to read the Bible instead of accepting traditions of man, they can see how Xmas, in the words of the Bible is a negative thing.

In the Bible in the Book of Jeremiah 10:2-4, this passage.....

Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen.... For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest ... with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold."

Jeremiah is from the Old Testament, about a dude named Jeremiah who lived about 600 years before the birth of Christ. This is one of the favorite books of bible thumpers everywhere, so there is no real excuse for those who take the Bible literally to just gloss over this. Many apologetics will say things like "the tree is a representation of the Cross." or other things. The passage about is not convoluted but fairly straight forward. The pagans chop down a tree. They deck it with silver and gold (decoration) they nail it down to keep it level.

The Bible is very clear about symbolism. God doesn't like symbols, and He has directed his followers not to make symbols representing Him. No crosses, trees tri-circles or any of that crap. What is funny is that people from all over the World, even people from different religions and non religious people will celebrate Xmas. How many of you atheists have or will have a tree up in a few weeks? How many of you will go through the motions of the holiday? Doesn't it seem funny to Christians that so many "heathens" celebrate the day and attach no religious significance to it whatsoever?

In my city of Memphis, Tennessee (Elvisville) the largest Baptist Church in the city (called Bellevue) has a huge stage show called The Singing Christmas Tree. There is this huge multi layered platformed tree with choir singers on each level. The tree itself is huge and can hold about 100 singers or more. This thing has gone on for so long that TICKETS are being sold for it. (so much for Jesus being angry at the merchants making money at His temple.)

http://www.bellevue.org/data/sct/gallery07/index.html (picture of the famous Memphis tree)

The leaders of this church have Masters in Divinity (contrary to popular opinion, it is not an easy degree to get), so I am sure that they have read Jeremiah, and the passages concerning graven images and symbols.

Personally for me, I like Xmas somewhat. I like Halloween more. Halloween has no pretensions, and a lack of hypocracy. Halloween is a pagan holiday and a feast day. So is Xmas. I plan on drinking a lot of alcohol the 23rd, rest of the 24th and then go out for a good dinner on the 25th. I have no kids so I wont do a tree. The wife doesn't care about the holiday except for me. Maybe one of the few things about the economy being pure shit is that people are going to scale back their spending and get back to the roots of the day. Which is days off, drinking, eating and sleeping til noon. Just like Jesus did not intend.