Is Christmas Pagan?

[Jayhawker Soule]

... I don't feel the need to testify to the accuracy of the Gospel narratives because they are not actual history. But neither do I feel the need to uncritically buy in to pseudo-historical narratives that largely emerged from Protestant polemic and are now commonly repurposed to try to delegitimate Christianity as parasitic.

Instead, I prefer to look at the evidence that actually exists regarding why Early Christians chose 25 Dec.

^ this

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Yule seems to refer to a season in Northern Europe, and was first attested to in the 9th C in Northern Europe.

well bede wrote in the 8th century, and his name for december was ' before yule ,' and his name for january was 'after yule.' So this tells you that somewhere between those months , there likely was a holiday.

Pointing at Yule to be the origin of Christmas seems to be based on 2 very flawed premises a) that it clearly predates Christmas b) that Northern Europeans were the drivers of Early Christianity

You should read the poetic edda, there are occasional parts that connect to biblicalesque stories in weird ways. My sense of this is that there probably was some kind of missing indo-european religion that bridged the span of geography we're talking about. In the poetic edda, adam & eve are known as askr and embla for example, and other details of their genesis story is mutated in a sort of natural ethnographic way, as opposed to a heretical way. That makes me think that within the old testament, there is an old, old testament. There is the story of odin, who is pierced by a spear like Jesus, while becoming a god-sacrifice. He hung for 9 nights, while Jesus did so for 9 hours.

If I had had the means to for higher education and studied this, I probably could give you a better explanation of what I sense with this

Santa's reindeer were more a 19th C US invention than some long standing European folk tradition though.

Well the 19th century americans didn't invent stuff in a vacuum either. You'd surprised how much european folklore they carried here, possibly even stuff they lost over there. I know something of this because I'm a folk singer, and sometimes there are variants of really old british folk songs here that are different from british versions

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

well bede wrote in the 8th century, and his name for december was ' before yule ,' and his name for january was 'after yule.' So this tells you that somewhere between those months , there likely was a holiday.

Why is that significant?

 

[1213]

…"Historical features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious and philosophical systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Greek philosophy,[7] Christianity, Islam,[8] the Baháʼí Faith, and Buddhism.[9]" ...

I don’t believe in any case Jews copied from them, because there is no good reason and logical reason for that. But, Zoroastrianism is interesting, I believe it was born when Jews were in Persia and God did miracles for Jews there. Those events turned the rulers towards the God of Jews and probably caused the Zoroastrianism.

….Getting entry to an afterlife through a demigod sacrifice is still a basic concept that was in mystery religions and sacrifice alone is an archaic barbaric concept that even in this version is ridiculous.

"“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

Obviously in this case it's metaphorical but the concept ...

I think Bible doesn’t really have that concept. Afterlife, or forgiveness is not because of any kind of sacrifice. And not even about eating symbolically Jesus. Wine and bread are the “blood” and “body” of the covenant that was established through Jesus. They are like seal for the covenant. Everyone who participates to it (bread and wine as Jesus taught it), takes part of that covenant and its promises and conditions.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Why is that significant?

It seems to tell us that the two months had a holiday at their intersection, he claimed it just referred to a general season

 

[URAVIP2ME]

Good job i don't believe in god magic then otherwise i would have no need for clocks and calenders would i?
Grandfather's day is October 3rd in france and that is still 23 hours 56 minutes just like every other day.
And still much of Christmas is derived from pre christian mid winter celebrations

You're always keeping me on my toes! Good point about Grandfather's day in France.
However, in Bible speak, 'Noah's day' was more than 23 hours 56 or 59 minutes.
Note too: ALL of the 6 'creative days' are summed up by the single word ' day ' at Genesis 2:4.
And then we have the coming of Jesus' Millennium-Long Day of governing over Earth.......

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

It seems to tell us that the two months had a holiday at their intersection, he claimed it just referred to a general season

It seems to?

It might have had any number of holidays in any number of places in part due to and/or in spite of the season? Therefore? Let's say, for the sake of argument, that (somewhere, at least) the December 25th celebration of Mōdraniht preceded the celebration of Chrismas. What, if anything, should we make of this?

 

[ChristineM]

You're always keeping me on my toes! Good point about Grandfather's day in France.
However, in Bible speak, 'Noah's day' was more than 23 hours 56 or 59 minutes.
Note too: ALL of the 6 'creative days' are summed up by the single word ' day ' at Genesis 2:4.
And then we have the coming of Jesus' Millennium-Long Day of governing over Earth.......

And as far as i remember only once is there only one relevant reference to relativistic time in the bible in 2 Peter 3:8. ... with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Note the "with the Lord". Not any one else and the "as". Indicating time is relativistic to the bible god only. Anything else is modern interpretation of what is actually writren

 

[Bear Wild]

The first culture that noticed the solstices as a tangible astronomical phenomenon get to "own" them forever and everyone else "stole" them?

We know that hundreds of cultures independently assigned significance to the same astrological phenomenon, so its obviously fallacious to claim "There were pagans in Northern Europe before the 3rd C, therefore people in the Eastern Med stole Christmas from them".

Also sources for Christmas 25th predate those for Yule by half a millennium.

No you missed the point completely. Many cultures of Europe have evidence that they celebrated Solstice which predated the celebration of Christian Christmas by thousands of years. I do no know when the word Yule was first expressed but keeping a fire going through the period of Solstice is much longer ;and the celebration of this critical point of the year was far longer the 3rd century so I do not see what your point was. The point of timing Christmas was a was has a very different meaning. There is nothing wrong with Christians celebrating December 25th in their own way. The problem dated back to the Roman times when Rome suppressed not only Pagan religions but also other Christian sects. They eliminated the Marcians and the Gnostics as well as other branches of Christians to for a single Roman dominated belief. The way to eliminate pagan associations with Solstice of the pagans religions at the time was to rename the celebrations as purely Christian and suppress and eliminate any other beliefs. That is where the issue is.
Please if you can provide any credible documentation supported by archeological or records that show that Jesus was born on December 25th I will retract my statements. I will even listen to you if you have clear evidence that a census was done on December 25 ore around that time I will also listen or even credible evidence that Jesus was born in the winter. I am looking forward for your evidence.

 

[Bear Wild]

Instead, I prefer to look at the evidence that actually exists regarding why Early Christians chose 25 Dec.

I am looking forward to the evidence that you have with great anticipation. In fact I would be happy to hear the evidence that the birth of Jesus on December 25 was celebrated in the first 25 years of his death since that is within a time frame that people who knew Jesus might have been aware of his actual date of birth. Please feel free to give me your references. I am happy to know that they exist and looking forward to them.

 

[Bear Wild]

Seeing as I have presented plenty of secular academic scholarship on the issue, if you are interested in 'revealing the reality', you could address the actual historical evidence presented.

I have not seen any "secular" evidence of academic scholarship from you at all. Maybe I missed something. Help me understand better with your evidence.

 

[Bear Wild]

Why do you think that the most logical explanation is that in the 2nd C, an Eastern Mediterranean religion, Christianity, was stealing from English paganism even though there weren't actually any Christians in England, and England was a backwater on the fringes of the known world?

Now no at all. They were rewriting the celebrations of the pagan cultures of the Roman, Greek and surrounding areas. Not England or Ireland. That came later.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Yule seems to refer to a season in Northern Europe, and was first attested to in the 9th C in Northern Europe.

"Yule is attested early in the history of the Germanic peoples; from the 4th-century Gothic language it appears in the month name fruma jiuleis, and, in the 8th century, the English historian Bede wrote that the Anglo-Saxon calendar included the months geola or giuli corresponding to either modern December or December and January."
Yule - Wikipedia

 

[Bear Wild]

'Easter' is pascha which is derivative of Jewish pesach/passover. Resurrection, rebirth, eggs, etc. in a 2nd C Mediterranean religious tradition have nothing to do with obscure English goddesses only attested to in a single 8th C source.

This is about Christmas. The time of his conception is associated with the Spring Equinox.

 

[Bear Wild]

If you are talking about "appropriating" cultural traditions, don't you see the irony of adopting such a [Northern] Eurocentric approach to a non-European religion (at that time)?

We are not talking about "appropriation" of culture traditions. There is sufficient evidence that Pagan cultures were very tolerant of each other and could adapt new rituals without eliminating the other. The Roman Christian Church at that time has a very different motive. To eliminate any belief that was not their own. That is a very different thing that borrowing a belief from another culture. This is renaming a tradition and denying that the other tradition and worse eliminating anyone who disagreed. Please help me understand your evidence that Jesus was born on December 25th and his birthday was a part of the original Christian celebrations. I may be wrong and will accept it but I have never seen any non-Christian secular evidence for this. I look forward for you to enlighten me.

 

[Bear Wild]

"Yule is attested early in the history of the Germanic peoples; from the 4th-century Gothic language it appears in the month name fruma jiuleis, and, in the 8th century, the English historian Bede wrote that the Anglo-Saxon calendar included the months geola or giuli corresponding to either modern December or December and January."
Yule - Wikipedia

So appreciate your input. Hope you and your family is doing well. Ironically It was when I got to discuss the Solstice celebration at Newgrange when I got the privilege to enter Newgrange and they demonstrated how the light would have illuminated the passageway that I learned that the celebration was not just a single day but would continue on for days including December 25th. I am happy Christians can celebrate this time to with their own meaning. But to not recognize that this time period had so much symbolic symbolism to those who were not Christian. And how they manipulated the celebration as they eliminated any opposition to the Roman Christian belief whether pagan or alternative Christian views is naïve or worse acceptance of the intentional acts of the forming Roman Christianity. Now since then the Catholic church has change much up to current time. They even finally forgave Galileo and have become much more accepting of new knowledge including evolution compared to their past.

 

[Augustus]

Please if you can provide any credible documentation supported by archeological or records that show that Jesus was born on December 25th I will retract my statements. I will even listen to you if you have clear evidence that a census was done on December 25 ore around that time I will also listen or even credible evidence that Jesus was born in the winter. I am looking forward for your evidence.

I pointed out in my previous post why this line of argument is fallacious and quite obviously misrepresents what I have been saying.

The argument is 'why is Christmas on the 25th Dec'? not 'what was the actual real life birthday of the actual human historical figure behind the Jesus who became mythologised in the Bible'.

The fact that early Christians were interested in calculating dates for Jesus' birth quite obviously shows you they didn't know when it was.

That 25 Dec wasn't the actual date the historical human figure known as Jesus was born is irrelevant, what is relevant is when early Christians thought he was born.

For this you obviously don't need a census or archeological evidence, you need the writings of early Christians saying what they thought. You have seen these as they have been posted multiple times in this thread.

You ignored them all though and preferred to repeatedly address an imaginary position no one has actually taken.

This is about Christmas. The time of his conception is associated with the Spring Equinox.

And 9 months after conception, what generally happens...

Bingo!

Is it really that hard to grasp the idea that early Christians who bothered to make all kinds of fantastical theological calculations might just have calculated that Jesus was born 9 months after he was conceived?

 

[Augustus]

The Roman Christian Church at that time has a very different motive. To eliminate any belief that was not their own. That is a very different thing that borrowing a belief from another culture. This is renaming a tradition and denying that the other tradition and worse eliminating anyone who disagreed.

What tradition are they renaming? It's obviously not Yule or some other Northern European festival because they aren't in Northern Europe yet.

It wasn't Saturnalia, as this was on a different day and was even celebrated alongside Christmas in the same societies on different days.

The first reference to December 25 as the Nativity of Jesus occurs in a section of the Chronography of AD 354 known as the Calendar of Philocalus, which, even by this late date, still identified December 17 as ludi Saturnalia.

December 17 was recognized as the date of the Saturnalia as late as AD 448, when it was notated in the ecclesiastical calendar or laterculus ("list") of Polemius Silvius. But now, deprived of its pagan significance, it is identified only as feriae servorum ("festival of the slaves").

Sol Invictus? that's already been debunked in this thread.

So, which festival did they simply 'steal' and rename?

and worse eliminating anyone who disagreed.

"Anyone who disagreed"? How powerful do you think the Church was?

In the ancient world, they had nowhere near the amount of control and power people seem to think. This is before modern communication and transport technology. Before modern police forces and security services across a massive empire with tens of thousands of villages and towns all falling under the control of different political authorities with highly decentralised power structures.

Regional governors frequently ignored imperial edicts, never mind some church directive.

Paganism died out organically over centuries, it wasn't persecuted out of existence. Yes there were persecutions at times, but they were not qualitatively different from the Pagan Roman Empire persecutions.

Religion costs money. Once it lost imperial favour, temples fell into disrepair, without benefactors and all the aspects of a religion based on praxis gradually declined.

Christianity was promoted and gradually caught on. Aspects of pre-Christian myth found a new home and evolved into new myths, as they had done many times before.

 

[Augustus]

I have not seen any "secular" evidence of academic scholarship from you at all.

All of these are from peer-reviewed historical journals. They are not religious texts. Can we agree that this is secular academic scholarship?

C. P. E. Nothaft The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research

Northaft Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date)

S Hijmans - Usener's Christmas: A Contribution to the Modern Construct of Late Antique Solar Syncretism

TC Schmidt Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ Canon and Chronicon


Summary in this thread: Christmas 25 Dec: Scholarly views

 

[Bear Wild]

All of these are from peer-reviewed historical journals. They are not religious texts. Can we agree that this is secular academic scholarship?

C. P. E. Nothaft The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research

Northaft Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date)

S Hijmans - Usener's Christmas: A Contribution to the Modern Construct of Late Antique Solar Syncretism

TC Schmidt Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ Canon and Chronicon


Summary in this thread: Christmas 25 Dec: Scholarly views

I have read these and also about the winter solstice importance of pagan celebrations of this time. This connection of the Equinox and solstice would have been well established amongst the pagans of the time and would have influenced the thinking of those created a date which is mythological. They would have also been very well of the importance of these rituals to the pagans of that time. Roman based Christianity did not develop in a vacuum and was influenced by Greek and Roman thinking just as Gnostic Christianity was influenced by the thinking and rituals of Northern Africa. I am sure those who wrote what they did, had no intentions of making any suggestion that the Pagans of the time and area had any influence on them so when studying their writings it will be none objective. Studies of human behavior tell a much different story as we see Christianity move northwards over time and how it was influenced by those cultures. This does not lessen one bit that placing the birth of Jesus at the solstice time was very useful to shift pagan rituals to the new celebration of Christmas for conversion (often forced) to eliminate pagan religions.