I may have misread your post as a defence of December 25 as Jesus' birthday.
A group of wise historians got together, calculated (using what exactly?) the date Gabriel appeared, and then determined that exactly 9 months later Jesus would be born on what, coincidentally, happened to be the biggest midwinter festival celebrated throughout the Empire? That worked out well in terms of supplanting preexisting holidays.
Are you and Patrick Thistle wilfully obtuse or just bad at comprehension? I expected better from Patrick Thistle, to be fair.
no i'm pretty good at this, thanks. you wrote:
As for the date... the date for the Annunciation was dated in the early third century -- before the Sol Invictus was a thing -- as 25 March; the beginning of spring. Add nine months -- to that, and you arrive at 25 December. That this coincides with the winter equinox is has to do with the dating of the Annunciation to coincide with the spring equinox, not with pagan mid-winter feasts.
If you choose the beginning of spring for the Annunciation then the baby will be born 9 months laters- on the pagan Mid winter feast.
I may have misread your post as a defence of December 25 as Jesus' birthday.
A group of wise historians got together, calculated (using what exactly?) the date Gabriel appeared, and then determined that exactly 9 months later Jesus would be born on what, coincidentally, happened to be the biggest midwinter festival celebrated throughout the Empire? That worked out well in terms of supplanting preexisting holidays.
As I said, nobody knows when exactly Jesus was born, so the dating of the Annunciation and Christmas cannot have follow any empirical process of scholarship. Anybody who claims these dates are accurate is an idiot. I'm surprised that you think I am an idiot.
To clarify: for the purposes of the discussion of whether the date of Christmas borrowed from pagan feasts, the significance of the date of the Annunciation -- which obviously was chosen exactly because of the spring equinox for symbolic impact -- resides in it having been selected long before the date of Jesus' birth was celebrated (or dated), and before the cult of Sol Invictus was popular. So when the time came to pick a date for Christmas, the Christians didn't refer to the dates of that pagan feast, but to the simple maths of adding nine months to the already selected date for the Annunciation (which, to reassure Nefertiti, was set a century before the date of Christmas was codified).
As an aside, the date of Christmas might have been codified only in the 330s at the latest, but that doesn't mean that the birth of Christ was not celebrated on that date long before that. It means that the feast of the Nativity was entered into the Roman calendar at that time.
Also, very few scholars of any repute, if any at all, subscribe to the idea that Christmas was intended to usurp the festival of Saturnalia. It's better to leave Saturnalia out of the discussion of dating Christmas. Though, as I've said, many pagan traditions were translated to Christian feasts, consequently being invested with symbolisms of Christian significance.
As I said, nobody knows when exactly Jesus was born, so the dating of the Annunciation and Christmas cannot have follow any empirical process of scholarship. Anybody who claims these dates are accurate is an idiot. I'm surprised that you think I am an idiot.
To clarify: for the purposes of the discussion of whether the date of Christmas borrowed from pagan feasts, the significance of the date of the Annunciation -- which obviously was chosen exactly because of the spring equinox for symbolic impact -- resides in it having been selected long before the date of Jesus' birth was celebrated (or dated), and before the cult of Sol Invictus was popular. So when the time came to pick a date for Christmas, the Christians didn't refer to the dates of that pagan feast, but to the simple maths of adding nine months to the already selected date for the Annunciation (which, to reassure Nefertiti, was set a century before the date of Christmas was codified).
As an aside, the date of Christmas might have been codified only in the 330s at the latest, but that doesn't mean that the birth of Christ was not celebrated on that date long before that. It means that the feast of the Nativity was entered into the Roman calendar at that time.
.
When the date of the Annunciation at the Spring Equinox was chosen, that also determined the date of birth at the Midwinter Feast.
As I said, nobody knows when exactly Jesus was born, so the dating of the Annunciation and Christmas cannot have follow any empirical process of scholarship. Anybody who claims these dates are accurate is an idiot. I'm surprised that you think I am an idiot.
To clarify: for the purposes of the discussion of whether the date of Christmas borrowed from pagan feasts, the significance of the date of the Annunciation -- which obviously was chosen exactly because of the spring equinox for symbolic impact -- resides in it having been selected long before the date of Jesus' birth was celebrated (or dated), and before the cult of Sol Invictus was popular. So when the time came to pick a date for Christmas, the Christians didn't refer to the dates of that pagan feast, but to the simple maths of adding nine months to the already selected date for the Annunciation (which, to reassure Nefertiti, was set a century before the date of Christmas was codified).
As an aside, the date of Christmas might have been codified only in the 330s at the latest, but that doesn't mean that the birth of Christ was not celebrated on that date long before that. It means that the feast of the Nativity was entered into the Roman calendar at that time.
Also, very few scholars of any repute, if any at all, subscribe to the idea that Christmas was intended to usurp the festival of Saturnalia. It's better to leave Saturnalia out of the discussion of dating Christmas. Though, as I've said, many pagan traditions were translated to Christian feasts, consequently being invested with symbolisms of Christian significance.
GMan's version matches the scholarship I'm familiar with.
It's worth noting perhaps - as it it weren't obvious - that this process of non-Christian stuff attaching itself to Christmas is exactly what this thread and the one about films is really all about. It's a process that is still happening.
We've taken songs and films that happen to be about winter or happens to be set around that time and turned them into "Christmas" songs and films, even though they're not specifically about or for Christmas. That's not much different than how we got pine trees, snow, holly, red & green, snow, and a number of other symbols and traditions attached to Christmas. The mythology around Santa is also very winter-in-the-northern-part-of-the-northern-hemisphere-specific - the outfit, the sleigh, the reindeer, the shop in the North Pole, etc. The actual St. Nicholas was from a region of Turkey where, as far as I can tell, it has never snowed.
Charities make a big push for help around Christmas not just because they're hoping to take advantage of The Christmas Spirit but because it's the end of the fiscal year and they need to make their numbers. It's also where the notion of "the Christmas bonus" - for the shrinking few who get one - comes from. It's not because one's employer is feeling especially generous or Christian around that time. It's just about accounting.*
Dickens did a lot to secularize The Christmas Spirit, I suppose. But A Christmas Carol presupposes that there was a reasonably big push for charity around that time already. There's nothing there about Jesus' birth or advent or any of that, though, even though the overwhelming majority of the audience probably thought of themselves as Christian. It's a Wonderful Life has obvious religious undertones - the angels and all that - but it doesn't have anything to say about Jesus' birth. It's about community support and being grateful for friends, which ought to be a big part of Christianity but there's nothing specifically Christian about that.
etc.
*Indeed, the one and only time I got laid off was right before Christmas and my current employer has no qualms about not giving us a bonus because we, collectively, missed their arbitrarily set revenue goal. They even cancelled the annual Christmas Party at the London office and I was previously under the impression that a Christmas Do/Party/Piss-up was the birthright of all Britons, established in the Magna Carta.
They even cancelled the annual Christmas Party at the London office and I was previously under the impression that a Christmas Do/Party/Piss-up was the birthright of all Britons, established in the Magna Carta.
At least half the population would consider a firm promise of no Christmas party to be a considerable enticement.
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