Pretty sure this is universal for ex-Christians during this time of year…..
You’re gonna lose your mind when you find out where Christmas comes from
The appropriation of a pagan celebration of the winter solstice by the catholic church because they were too lazy to figure out when jesus was born and too stubborn to change it once they were told.
Tell me you’ve never researched how December 25th was decided without saying it
Please, inform me.
Sure thing.
The claim that Christmas is pagan never came from pagans originally, it first comes from a Moravian Protestant named Paul Ernst Jablonski in the 17th century, who made the claim simply because he was mad at the Vatican due to effects of the Thirty Years War, and was reinforced by a Scottish Presbyterian named Alexander Hislip in his book The Two Babylons where he claimed Roman Catholicism was just Babylonian paganism with Christian dressings. So it wasn’t even pagans making the claim that Christians stole or appropriated their festivals, it was Protestants fighting against the Vatican and they said Roman Catholics gave December 25th as the date of Christ’s birth arbitrarily. Also, pagan simply means non-Christian, and pagan beliefs varied wildly between countries, cities, and ethnic groups, so to claim that Christian has some pagan cultural influences is pointless, because we know that early Christians baptized pagans and any practices they had that weren’t in service of demons or idols could be retained as long as they were turned towards God, so something like the yule log, might have originated in Norse pagan cultures, but there isn’t anything inherently satanic about burning wood, and they could keep that activity in celebration if they wanted, so whats the problem?
As for December 25th, it goes back to 45BC when Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar, where December 25th was intended to be the shortest day of the year, which has funny parallels with the Incarnation (the sun and the Son being their weakest on Dec25). In 274AD, Emperor Aurelian established a new empire feast named the Feast of the Unconquerable Sun and set it on December 25th, to symbolize the sun coming back from weakness and becoming stronger. The earliest evidence for liturgical celebration of Christmas is 336AD in Rome, so this is why people say Christmas ripped off a pagan festival. Problem is is that Latin Christians were celebrating Christmas on December 25th fifty years before Aurelian’s feast. Aurelian, who didn’t like Christians and sentenced them to death, likely did this to further persecute Christians in Rome.
So why did Christians choose December 25th? After Judaism split off of Christianity, the idea of when to celebrate the Christian Passover became an important question. It was the common belief in the early church that the Last Supper was not a Passover meal, but He was crucified on the day the Passover meal would be held. Greek Christians needed to know when to celebrate the Christian Passover, and they decided on the 14th of Artemision (spring) in the second century. In the fourth century the Greeks adopted the Roman calendar and the 14th of Artemision becomes April 6th. Eastern Christians end up with April 6th, Latin Christians wanted the historical death of Christs death, and came up with March 25th.
There is an ancient Jewish rabbinical idea of important Biblical figures (martyrs and prophets) dying on the same date they were either born or conceived on. So if you apply that to the above dates, and you add nine months. If Christ died on March 25th, then He was conceived on March 25th, nine months later is December 25th (the date of Christs incarnation according to the flesh). If Christ died on April 6th, add nine months, and you get January 6th, Theophany, Christs birth of water and the Holy Spirit. So ironically, both dates are correct “birth dates” for the Lord.
So if you’re going to call the same people who regularly fast, walked across the world to spread the Gospel, preached daily for years on end, did baptisms and liturgies and homilies regularly, if you’re gonna call THOSE people lazy, you need to explain why they would go through all this trouble to establish a date of celebration.
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