If I had a nickel for every person who believed December the 25th is a date picked by Christians to counter pagan winter festivals, I’d be a rich man! Same thing with Easter, but that’s another story. For this post, I want to focus on the real reason December 25th is on the Christian calendar as the date of Christ’s birth, referencing an article below. Maybe it will help clear the mud a bit!

Calculating Christmas

William J. Tighe on the Story Behind December 25

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.

In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.

A By-Product

It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.

How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.

Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)

However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.

Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)

These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.

In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)

Integral Age

So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

A Christian Feast

Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

The author refers interested readers to Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year (The Liturgical Press). A draft of this article appeared on the listserve Virtuosity.

William J. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and a faculty advisor to the Catholic Campus Ministry. He is a Member of St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

As CPH is busy mailing the new Lutheran Study Bible, I’ve had many questions about it. People ask me, “Pastor, why do we have a new Lutheran Study Bible?” or “Does this mean that this Bible is from a Lutheran perspective?” Good questions to ask, but in order to glean the right answer, we must first understand what it means to be “Lutheran” by definition, and therefore, what we mean by publishing a new Lutheran Study Bible. I offer the comments below from a post from Rev. Paul McCain, that explains it really well:

“Pastor Larry Peters shared a really well done post on his blog site and I’m sharing it here.  I’d chip in here that in fact there is a Roman Catholic Study Bible and a Weslyan Study Bible and an Orthodox Study Bible and The Full Life Study Bible: An International Study Bible for Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians.…you get the picture. Here are Pastor Peters remarks:

The Lutheran Study Bible… now some folks are wondering what that means. Does every church body or tradition have its own take on things in the Bible? Should Methodists only use the Methodist Study Bible… and Roman Catholics their Study Bible… etc. Let me diffuse some of the confusion.

Lutherans do not have their own version of the Bible. We are not a sect or a cult. We do not slant Scripture to fit our theological interpretations. This Lutheran Study Bible does not Lutheranize Scripture or define it according to what Lutherans believe, teach, and confess. What is Lutheran about this Study Bible is that it has drawn deeply at the well of faithful Lutheran scholars and teachers — including Luther himself — to bring out what Scripture says. Period. What Scripture has always said. What Scripture still says. What Scripture will always say.

Unlike another so called Lutheran Study Bible published by a Lutheran body recently in the news, this one, the one published by Concordia, does not change Biblical teaching to fit cultural and philosophical trends, say, about homosexuality. Whenever someone does this, then Scripture becomes a tool toward an agenda foreign and antagonistic to Scripture’s purpose and message.

The Lutheran Study Bible produced by Concordia has ground-up with notes that are distinctively Lutheran, prepared by Lutheran contributors from over twenty Lutheran church bodies. Current Lutheran scholarship, insights from the Church Fathers, and rich devotional commentary provide meaningful perspective for both young and mature Christians. All to show and highlight Scripture’s one story, one message, and one goal — to make known the salvation that God has accomplished through His Son Jesus Christ, who suffered, died, and rose again to restore to Him what was lost to Him by sin and death.

So don’t buy this study Bible if you are looking for a Lutheran Bible. Purchase this study Bible if you are looking for Scripture honestly treated, faithfully interpreted, and carefully preserved so that it may speak with its own voice, as it has over time, the saving message of Jesus Christ.”

I got in the elevator the other day after making hospital calls, and a nurse came in right behind me, just livid. She was receiving ‘hate mail’ on her phone from Vikings fans, making fun of her (a Packer fan), that Brett Favre was joining their team. And as the doors to the elevator opened, I think I heard her mention something about Benedict Arnold and Brett in the same sentence.

Now, this Viking/Packer rivalry doesn’t get me upset, since I’m not a fan of either team. But if we were talking Cards/Cubs, THAT would get me going (go Cards!) But I’ve been paying attention to the banter that’s going back and forth and I’m amazed at how quickly hate for a player can turn in to undying love and loyalty once they put on a different jersey. I haven’t seen this much venom turn in to wine and roses since Roger Clemens moved from the Yankees to the Astros!

A buddy of mine posted some t-shirts that are fleshing out this new love/hate relationship, so I’m linking him here. It’s worth a look.

http://www.minnesotalutheran.com/2009/08/vikingpacker-drama-being-fought-out-on.html

And down the road, I guess will see if Farve is the new Fave in Minnesota – or the state pariah, once the season starts.

I used to have the excuse that I didn’t blog because there wasn’t time. Now, add to that the sad admission that I didn’t know how to log in!

WordPress changed their format and for the life of me I couldn’t find the ‘log in’ link.

I found it…now if only I could take care of the first excuse I  have with blogging!

What a crazy week…seems like celebrities are dropping like flies, and in a world where most people no longer have the generational memory of a death impacting our nation, such as the assassination of President Kennedy, it seems celebrity deaths hit those people harder. Such was the death of Michael Jackson, the so-called “King of Pop”.

I admit it – I was really in to Michael Jackson when I was a yoot (that’s ‘youth’, for those of you who haven’t seen My Cousin Vinny). I remember my first record purchase was “Off The Wall” (they’re like giant Cd’s to those who don’t know what a ‘record’ is), and I once spent my entire Christmas Eve listening non-stop to my brand new LP of “Thriller” (LP means “Long Play”, where big records played at 33 1/3 RPM and SP, “Short Play” records were at 45 RPM, or “45’s”) . You’d be hard pressed to find another performer who impacted Pop and R&B at the level he did.

But for all my interest and enjoyment of MJ in the days of “Thriller”, when MJ went off his rocker around the release of “Bad”, I lost interest in MJ. And I mourned his downward spiral in the media and the man he had become – lonely, depressed, and possibly much worse.

I watched the new channels’ coverage of his death last night, and was struck by some things:

- Tons of people holding some variation of a vigil, mostly at the hospital where he died or around his ’star’ on the walk of fame

- People making ‘altars’ with candles and flowers

- People in so much shock it was like they didn’t know where to turn and couldn’t believe MJ was dead

Interesting that the world paid so much attention to the King of Pop and openly mourned him, but the world paid so little attention to the King of Kings and laid him in a borrowed grave. Interesting that our world claims to be more and more secular and wants nothing to do with God but when a crisis of any magnitude hits, they collectively make ‘altars’, light candles and put out flowers. Interesting that the world doesn’t know where to turn when a life is lost, not knowing to turn to the Lord of Life.

If a person’s hope and joy was in the King of Pop, then there are no solid answers to bring hope when the King of Pop is gone. If a person’s hope and joy is in the King of Kings, Who announced His coming with a star, not on the walk of fame, but in the heavens itself, and Who rose from His borrowed grave 3 days later, then that’s the kind of hope that lasts. And that’s something to sing about.

Last night’s episode of Jon & Kate Plus Eight was pretty hard to watch. Two people, after 10 years of marriage, deciding to end it. It was heartbreaking, because even though I haven’t been an avid follower of the show, you could see the warning signs. It made my wife and I stop and think about what we’re doing right and what we could do better after 10 years of marriage ourselves.

People have asked me, “What happened between those two?” I’ll offer a humble observation or two:

- No telling how much stress it added to their marriage when every aspect of it was filmed for the world to see. Few people could handle that kind of scrutiny and survive it.

- For the most part, Jon didn’t step up to be the servant-leader God called him to be. And that means ‘giving himself up for his spouse’ the way Christ gave Himself up for the Church.

- Kate was far too much of a usurper of Jon, treating him like a doormat. I visibly jumped on the episode where Kate slapped Jon and told him to ’stop being a victim!’

- Both put their kids as their top priority. At first blush, that sounds right, but it’s not. Otherwise, that priority should have drawn them closer, not further apart.

When a child was born in to a family in Old Testament times, it was not the parents’ task to have their world revolve around their child. When a man and woman married, at that moment, they were a family. Let me say that again – they were already a family, joined to the Lord in a covenant of service to their spouse. Children were a blessing – not a mandate to be called a ‘family’.

But when a child was born, it was the child’s task to see how they fit in to an already established family, not the other way around. The child saw how to serve by how the father served the mother’s needs and the mother responded in kind by taking care of the father’s needs. The child knew they belonged to something bigger than themselves: to their family, then their tribe, then their nation. To put it simply: The Lord was the Sun, the parents, the Earth, and the children, the Moon.

Too many marriages fail today because when a child or two are born, the marriage becomes all about the kids – they become the Sun. And then, the kids grow up and the stresses build, and people divorce while the kids are home, or they kids leave home and the husband and wife can’t remember why they married in the first place, and divorce.

Now, I’m not saying to neglect your kids in order to have a good marriage. What I am saying is we need to understand where a child fits in to our families, and that our spouses need and deserve attention and honor. If you change the planet assignment in a family, and you change the entire family – and not for the better.

Fathers, if your priority is your children alone, and not your wife first, your children ultimately suffer for it, because your daughters are learning what kind of treatment they can expect from their future husbands and your sons are learning how to treat their future wives – as second class citizens in a family unit. Wives, if your priority is your children, and not your husband first, your children suffer for it, because your daughters are learning that husbands are peripheral and not necessary beyond procreation, and sons learn to be peripheral husbands and doormats, rather than partners.

So, when Jon & Kate both say their children were their priority, they might have had good intentions, but they were doomed from the moment they put that as their priority and didn’t do the task of honoring one another first. My prayers go out to them, as they learn to re-evaluate where their family will go from here.

Rather than keep rattling on about this, I offer today’s devotion from the Meyer Minute about marriage, families, and the priorities we need to set:

Hi, Christian here!  Opa was grumpy yesterday.  Grumpy grandpa.  He got sad when he read the newspaper.  “It’s official: TV’s Jon and Kate will divorce.  The parents of 8-year-old twins and 5-year-old sextuplets announced their separation on Monday night’s episode of their TLC reality show….  Jon and Kate said they keep their home in Wernersville, Pa., and would alternate the days they will stay there with the children.”  (USA Today, June 23; D1)  “Opa, what does ‘divorce’ mean?  ‘Alternate days?’  Why?”

Opa put that paper down and picked up another.  Sad face went to scowl.  “Matthew McConaughey and his girlfriend, Camila Alves, are expecting another baby.  Writes McConaughey: Camila and I are expecting our second child, bringing more life into the world, making more to live for.  The future looks bright as the family grows.”  (Omaha World Herald, June 23; 2E).  “Now what, Opa?”  Opa sang, “Will you still need me when I’m 64?”

Then Opa read, “Ryan O’Neal plans to marry Farrah Fawcett, who is struggling to overcome cancer.  The 68-year-old actor said…he asked his longtime companion to marry him, and ‘she’s agreed.’  O’Neal said they will tie the knot ‘as soon as she can say yes.’”

“Connor, what’s with Opa?”  Connor said, “Ma, Ma!  Da, Da!”  Then Opa smiled.  “That’s right Connor.  16-months old and you understand.”

To subscribe or unsubscribe send any email to daleameyer@aol.com

Copyright © Dale A Meyer 2009

There seems to be a trend of late in American Christianity, where Law and Gospel has been relegated to “prosperity” and tries to soften how sinful we are and how much we need a Savior. Case in point: a time when I guest preached at another congregation. I had just finished my sermon, covering our inherent sinfulness and how we deserve nothing from God, but in His mercy He sent His only Son to die a death He didn’t deserve to save us from sin. I sat down, and the music director said something to the effect of, “Yes, we might make mistakes, and there’s days we do bad things, but that never kept Jesus our Friend, Jesus away from us, and aren’t we blessed to have a loving God like that?” And looked straight at me, almost chiding me for daring to say we are bad people who need a Holy Savior.

That, folks, is called “the theology of glory”, where someone takes Law and Gospel, the basic parts of our unworthiness of salvation before the pure and holy God, and waters it down to “you’re bad…but not THAT bad”. The music director hit on the basics of the Americanization of Christianity – that we do the best we can, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and God covers the ‘gap’ in Jesus. The more ‘good’ stuff you do, the better things work out for you, and if you come up short, God will love you anyway. Sounds like a spin on works righteousness to me.

This is why Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, and others like them are so popular. Sinful ears love to hear they’re not ‘that bad’ and can make God work for them if they do the right things. And if God isn’t all that mean and would never send someone to hell just for being a ‘little bad’, then God can also serve as a ‘cosmic slot machine’ – do the right things, say the right words, pull the handle – and presto! Prosperity! This false gospel is leading so many astray. There’s a great article I read recently that states this issue wonderfully. It’s a bit lengthy, but well worth the read:

http://www.wscal.edu/resources/MichaelHorton_GloryStory.php

God forgive them for taking the sweet message of the Gospel and turning it in to Christless Christianity – a message that has no hope and makes idols of ourselves.

For you baseball fans, be on the lookout for a 17 year old major league baseball player in 2010 (he’s 16 right now). His name is Bryce Harper and nothing short of a prodigy. He’s got a gift and has opted to go to his local community college in Las Vegas and get his GED. By that time, he’ll be eligible for the draft (most likely 1st pick) and probably get to play for the Senators.

At first, I thought this was crazy. A 17 year old playing pro ball? Then I read the article below:

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Why-I-mostly-support-Bryce-Harper-s-decision-to-?urn=mlb,170270

The author makes a compelling argument, especially regarding the prep we give to tennis, skating and hockey athletes, practically strapping on their gear from diapers on to get them ready for their sport. The concern I have is the same concern he expresses in his article: we already have so many parents convinced their kids are ’special’ and have ‘uber-talent’, when they really aren’t and don’t. Now, we’ll have these same out-of-touch parents trying to groom the next Bryce Harper, with no real perspective on their child’s abilities.

I don’t fault the Harpers for this – they’re obviously not wrong about their child’s abilities.

It’s wonderful to be surprised back-to-back when you have a family movie night! As most of you know, I’m a movie buff and Netflix has been a real treat for our family. Here’s two that you might have missed that I’d recommend:

Australia – Entertainment Weekly panned this film, almost coming right out and calling it ‘underwhelming’. I thought it was like going to a three act play (hence, the 2 hr. 45 min. running time) that centers around a high-society Brit who goes down under to save her deceased husband’s cattle spread. It has western adventure, intrigue, race relations and tensions, all set within World War II. One word of caution: The PG-13 rating is aimed mostly towards the setting and the social view of Aboriginals in that era and the hardships so many endured, so it can be emotionally upsetting for kids under 13.

Taking Chance – I watched this during Memorial Day Weekend. It chronicles the true story of a Marine who volunteers to take a soldier who was KIA to be laid to rest Stateside. Somehow, it manages to avoid the political minefield and instead lifts up the soldiers who give their lives for our nation’s freedoms, along with all the men and women who honor the fallen by the incredible amount of care that is shown to them. You will be humbled after watching this film. I cried like a baby through most of it, so have tissues handy.

I came home the other day and our oldest was sitting on the floor singing to Brett the “ABC’s”. When, all of a sudden, he broke out in to a HUGE grin! I kept making Addisyn sing while I went ’shutter-happy’ with the camera. I can’t believe life flies by so quickly – it seems like we barely got him home, and he’s already smiling, developing his own personality and preferences, etc. He’s such a joy and it’s going by too fast. It reminds me to stop and take in each moment while I can.