Why December 25? The origin of Christmas had nothing to do with paganism

According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into the Christian celebration. But this view is apparently a historical myth—like the stories of a church council debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or that medieval folks believed the earth is flat—often repeated, even in classrooms, but not true.

William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article "Calculating Christmas," published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.

True, the Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, "The Birth of the Unconquered Sun," on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian's new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ. According to Mr. Tighe, the Birth of the Unconquered Sun "was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians." Christians were not imitating the pagans. The pagans were imitating the Christians.

The early church tried to ascertain the actual time of Christ's birth. It was all tied up with the second-century controversies over setting the date of Easter, the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection. That date should have been an easy one. Though Easter is also charged with having its origins in pagan equinox festivals, we know from Scripture that Christ's death was at the time of the Jewish Passover. That time of year is known with precision.

But differences in the Jewish, Greek, and Latin calendars and the inconsistency between lunar and solar date-keeping caused intense debate over when to observe Easter. Another question was whether to fix one date for the Feast of the Resurrection no matter what day it fell on or to ensure that it always fell on Sunday, "the first day of the week," as in the Gospels.

This discussion also had a bearing on fixing the day of Christ's birth. Mr. Tighe, drawing on the in-depth research of Thomas J. Talley's The Origins of the Liturgical Year, cites the ancient Jewish belief (not supported in Scripture) that God appointed for the great prophets an "integral age," meaning that they died on the same day as either their birth or their conception.

Jesus was certainly considered a great prophet, so those church fathers who wanted a Christmas holiday reasoned that He must have been either born or conceived on the same date as the first Easter. There are hints that some Christians originally celebrated the birth of Christ in March or April. But then a consensus arose to celebrate Christ's conception on March 25, as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking when the angel first appeared to Mary.

Note the pro-life point: According to both the ancient Jews and the early Christians, life begins at conception. So if Christ was conceived on March 25, nine months later, he would have been born on Dec. 25.

This celebrates Christ's birth in the darkest time of the year. 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).

Regardless of whether this was Christ's actual birthday, the symbolism works. And Christ's birth is inextricably linked to His resurrection.

December 25 was the birthday of Mithras, who was also born of a virgin, in a cave, died for mankind and ascended into heaven about two centuries before Christ.

Nice try. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

A similarity between Mithra and Christ struck even early observers, such as Justin, Tertullian, and other Fathers, and in recent times has been urged to prove that Christianity is but an adaptation of Mithraism, or at most the outcome of the same religious ideas and aspirations (e.g. Robertson, "Pagan Christs", 1903). Against this erroneous and unscientific procedure, which is not endorsed by the greatest living authority on Mithraism, the following considerations must be brought forward. (1) Our knowledge regarding Mithraism is very imperfect; some 600 brief inscriptions, mostly dedicatory, some 300 often fragmentary, exiguous, almost identical monuments, a few casual references in the Fathers or Acts of the Martyrs, and a brief polemic against Mithraism which the Armenian Eznig about 450 probably copied from Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) who lived when Mithraism was almost a thing of the past -- these are our only sources, unless we include the Avesta in which Mithra is indeed mentioned, but which cannot be an authority for Roman Mithraism with which Christianity is compared. Our knowledge is mostly ingenious guess-work; of the real inner working of Mithraism and the sense in which it was understood by those who professed it at the advent of Christianity, we know nothing. (2) Some apparent similarities exist; but in a number of details it is quite probable that Mithraism was the borrower from Christianity.

"The two statements are very different. While the Greek phrase in John does mean 'I am,' the Hebrew phrase in Exodus actually means “to be” or “to become.” In other words God is saying, 'I will be what I will be.' Thus the 'I am' in Exodus is actually a mistranslation of the Hebrew text, so the fact that Jesus said 'I am' did not make him God."

You're doing something here that's comparing apples to oranges. I don't know whether you are doing it intentionally or not, so I will just highlight it.

I didn't ask what the Old Testament said in Hebrew. My question was: What does it say IN GREEK.

The New Testament was written in Greek, which does not mean that Jesus was actually speaking Greek when he said what he said. We know that he spoke Aramaic, because there is some Aramaic directly in the text, and it was the general language of his region. We don't know whether or not he spoke Greek, although he was educated (at one point he reads from a scroll in the Temple) and a tradesman from a town near a Greek amphora, so it is not a bit unreasonable to assume that he did speak koine Greek. Hebrew wasn't a spoken tongue in the First Century, but it was certainly a literary tongue of the Jews, and just as there were many people who spoke Latin in the 1500s, there were probably Jews who could speak Hebrew, at least on religious subjects. The bottom line is that Jesus could have said "Before Abraham was, I AM" in any number of languages, with greater or lesser effect, and we don't know which one he was speaking, because the only record we have was Greek.

Now, the popular Bible of the Jews of the time, the first translation and the only one that was used across the whole Jewish diaspora and Roman Empire was the Greek Septuagint. We know that the early Christians used the Septuagint as their canon of Old Testament Scriptures, and we know that Jesus and the Apostles, when they referred to the Scriptures, preferred the Septuagint. We know this because there are certain Old Testament passages used by Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament which have different wording between the Hebrew canon and the Septuagint Greek canon, and about two out of three times, Jesus and the Apostles used the GREEK version of the Old Testament text, and NOT the Hebrew version. Indeed, there was no popular Hebrew version of the Jewish Scriptures circulating in the ancient world; the Greek Septuagint was THE version of the Scriptures most knew and had seen.

So, when Jesus preached to them, he may have been speaking Aramaic or Greek, or even Hebrew, but we know that the Greek Old Testament contains the versions of the stories he used.

When the Apostle John wrote Jesus saying "I AM", the LANGUAGE Jesus said that in matters, and we don't know from the Greek text what language that is.

We CAN look at the Greek text of the Septuagint Old Testament to see what word it gives us, IN GREEK, for the name of God. If Jesus used the same word in John's New Testament Gospel as appeared in the Greek Septuagint Old Testament, the use of that same word in the NT Greek text would get a reaction from everybody of the era who was familiar with the Greek OT text, which was most people (including the Apostles and other Jews).

That's why that "I AM" is important, and why it's recorded not just that Jesus said it, but the reaction of the Jewish officials hearing him was to immediately want his death. Why? The verb to be, general expressed, isn't sacred in Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew. But the name of God, which is translated as "I AM" into Greek (the relavent language here, not Hebrew) - that is significant.

As a blank statement "Before Abraham was, I am" is not blasphemous. It's just strange. It doesn't mean anything. It's gramatically incorrect to boot, in Greek.
And a statement like that does not seem likely to provoke an instant desire to stone the man...unless there was something about that I AM which was enormously inflammatory to the listeners.

WE all see the "I AM" parallel between the Old Testament conversation between Moses and God, and what Jesus said, and the ancients who heard Jesus were not obtuse. The only explanation that really works for the story as described is that Jesus used the Great I Am, and pronounced the unspeakable name of God, applied to himself, thereby scandalizing his hearers. And thereby giving us the direct assertion by Jesus of his unity with his Father.

"This is the catholic faith which, except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved" (Athanasian Creed)."

"Ironic coming from a Lutheran pastor."

You DO realize, I presume, that traditionalist Lutherans and Roman Catholics today are quite close, and moving closer all the time. The Reformation was a long, long time ago, my friend, and all of the murder and foul deeds and excesses of both sides have been long forgiven between these two, if never to be completely forgotten. Lutherans and Catholics no longer teach that each other are going to Hell. They recognize the Christian faith in each other. And they recognize that in a world utterly awash in sin and besieged by the Devil, they they have to hang together or they will certainly hang separately.

Now, there are still some sects out there who make a profession out of Catholic bashing, just as there are some fringes of Catholicism who haven't gotten the word or bothered with the actual cathechism who still howl from the woodshed that all Protestants are going to Hell.

But the old hatreds are most certainly NOT the doctrines of either Rome or the Lutheran clergy anymore. Christian unity is broken, the Lutherans and the Catholics broke it together, a long time ago, they were both responsible for it, they both know it, they were neither both wholly in the wrong nor wholly in the right - even Luther himself acknowledged that back then in a private and sincere letter to Pope Leo. Today, the brokenness of the faith is still a scandal to all Christians. Putting it back together again directly does not appear possible, but flying in very close formation certainly is, and given the recent outbreak of utter insanity in the North American Episcopal Church, the truth is that there is no Christian denomination flying in closer formation with Catholicism (big "C") than faithful Lutheranism.

It's not a bit ironic that a faithful Lutheran pastor cites the Athanasian creed, and the Nicene Creed too, with the reference to the catholic (little "c") church.

The old enmity is not there anymore between those two.
They sing "A Mighty Fortress" in the Catholic Church too now. If you think it is, you need to update your understanding.

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