Every December 25 Christians throughout the world join together in celebration of Christ’s birth. But where do these various Christmas traditions come from?
Christmas is not and never has been what it purports to be. Learn why.
Many traditional elements of Christmas pre-date Christianity. In other words, Christmas was pagan before it was adopted (and renamed) by Christians. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 states that “Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts” – those authors lived into the 3rd century. The CE article concludes that when later Christians adopted the date of the 25th of December for Jesus’ birth, “the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too”. Prof. Hutton, a respected and careful primary-sources historian, mentions Christmas in his valuable book on the history of modern Paganism. How December 25 did officially became the world important most grandeur festive day in the calendar? We all know that Christmas is being observed around the world and generally commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ among Christian communities. The word Christmas is from the old English “Crīstesmæsse”, the pre historic Christian churches referred the meaning to “Christ’s Mass” the Eucharistic feast celebration of Christ birthday.
The Birth of Christ
Although the year of Jesus Christ birth date was estimated by most modern theology scientists and historians somewhere between 7 and 2BC, the debate continues about the exact month and day of Jesus birth. Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk has determined the year of Jesus birth through his own calculation using the foundation of city of Rome “ab urbe condita” thus 1 AUC signifies the birth year of Rome. Dionysius counted the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus to Emperor Tiberius and in the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke 3:1,23, indicates the 15th year of Tiberius reign where Jesus turned 30 years old. Jesus lived 15 years under Augustus in his 28th year of reign as a Roman Emperor. Dionysius concluded that the Christ was born 754 AUC the year Augustus reign started. However, the Gospel of Luke 1:5 placed Jesus birth under Herod and Herod died in 754 AUC, for this reason why most modern biblical scholars discredit Dionysius calculation.
