It's Christmas-time; And That Means ...

It's Christmas-time; and that means ... endless repetitions of popular "secularist" (by which I mean anti-Christian) "myths" (by which I mean lies) about Christmas.  Sometimes, these "myths" are even spread by people who claim to be Christians.

By the way, even as a "fundie" Christian, I was taught as a child -- in church -- that Christ clearly wasn't born on December 25, as there wouldn't have been "shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night" that late in the year.  But we still recognized and celebrated December 25 as Christmas.

Sometime this past summer, I had written a post covering much the same points as in the post linked below.  I can't find the post I made, so I suspect it was made as a comment to some foolish YouTube video spreading the "myth" ... and which was deleted when I decided that I'd had enough of the dishonest and dishonestly applied "community standards" of YT.  

So, anyway, I'll emphasize a couple of the points; but mostly, I refer Gentle Reader to the post linked below.

The "myth" goes something like this -- "The celebration of Christmas, and specifically its celebration on December 25, is actually an attempt by [The Catholic Church and/or Constantine following the Council of Nicaea] to co-opt the pagan festival of [Saturnalia/The Birth of Mithras/The Birth of Sol Invictus] in the popular imagination".

Now, anyone with a passing knowledge of the history of the period from 29 AD (when Christ was likely murdered .. which ultimately didn't "stick", as it turned out) to to 313 AD (the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire) to 325 AD (the First Council of Nicaea) to 380 AD (the Edict of Thessalonica, which established orthodox Nicene Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire) understands how absurd this "myth" is, in all its variants.

Rather than shooting those individual variants of "The Myth", I shall aim my guns at the root of all of them: the claim that December 25 was chosen by Constantine/"The Pope"/The Catholic Church of popular mythology as the celebration of Christ's birth so as to make it more palatable for the every-day pagan to switch to Christianity.

In 'Adversus Judaeos' (i.e. "Against the Jews" or "Answering the Jews"), believed to have been written before 200 AD, Tertullian says (Adversus Judaeos 8:18): "And the suffering of this "extermination" was perfected within the times of the lxx hebdomads, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April,¹²⁰ on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses."  That is, Tertullian places Christ's crucifixion on March 25, at the time of Passover, in the year we now designate as 29 AD. Also note that Tertullian places Christ's birth as 28 years after the death of Cleopatra, that is, about 2 BC.

There was a common belief in 1st Century Judaism -- and recall, the early Christians were mostly Jews -- that the lives of religiously significant persons began and ended on the same date; that is, that such persons both were conceived and died on the same date.  This belief is often referred to as "Integral Life" or "Integral Age". This belief is why, as is stated at the start of the linked article, the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated on March 25.  That is, according to this belief, Christ was both conceived and died on March 25.

And what date follows 9 months after March 25?

The point is, irrespective of what we moderns may think of the "Integral Life" concept, the early Christians decided to celebrate Christ's birth on December 25 for Jewish-and-Christian reasons long before it was legal to practice Christianity, when being a Christian was still officially a capital offence, long before The Catholic Church of popular mythology even existed, long before "The Pope" would have cared to import pagan holidays into Christianity so as to cajole recalcitrant pagans to pretend to be Christians.

The point is, Christmas is the celebration and commemoration of Christ's birth, not of his birthday.

Roger Pearse: "March 25 – the date of the annunciation, the crucifixion, and the origin of December 25 as the date of Christmas?"

https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2021/03/25/march-25-the-date-of-the-annunciation-the-crucifixion-and-the-origin-of-december-25-as-the-date-of-christmas/