Nobody’s really sure about that, either.
So is the takeaway from the OP supposed to be something other than the fact that somebody is a pedant about history? Is there some sort of turf battle between Christianity and ancient Rome over who gets to claim credit for the date? Has ancient Rome been sending out regular petitions to reclaim their day? Would the idea that Christianity can pick its own holidates imply that it’s somehow more correct than otherwise?
No, the idea is people love to spread ignorant memes. I mean we are here to fight ignorance.
Okay, just checking.
Is this original research?
Okay, having rechecked the OP, you seem to be specifically arguing that the date didn’t come from Saturnalia. (Which I’m perfectly willing to accept.) You don’t really seem to be arguing that it had no influence on the holiday though.
Well, for sure the date didnt. Lots of pagan or folk tradition crept into Christmas, so we cant say for sure Saturnalia didnt lend something. But by the time Charlemagne turned it into a holiday of partying & marrymaking (that clever man, dec 25 was his coronation day, so he could show how pious he was by celebrating Christmas when in actuality it was his special day) I dont think anyone remembered saturnalia, it hadnt been a holiday for like 500 years.
But it’s possible, I mean we stole holly and mistletoe and yule logs and Christmas trees, etc.
A little, basically I used a bunch of others original research but added a couple of my own ideas. 99% other peoples work.
You seem to be making many dubious claims. Do you have any cites to back up those claims? Cites in primary texts, or by reputable historians who are not pushing a Christian point of view?
You claim that Christmas wasn’t celebrated by partying or merrymaking before Charlemagne. Cite?
We know that Natalis Solis Invicti was made an official Roman holiday on Dec 25, from 274AD. There is no record of Christmas being celebrated on Dec 25 before the mid 4th century. You claimed (in the previous thread) that John Chrysostom’s sermon explicitly linking Christmas and Natalis Solis Invicti wasn’t written by him. Cite?
There is a long article with plenty of information (with cites) in the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Christmas. They say,
If you want to refute that, you have to do so by detailed arguments from the ancient texts. Wild assertions won’t cut it.
Well I don’t know about the West, but in the territories currently referred to as Romania people used to celebrate various pagan deities between December 25th and January 6th. Early Christian missionaries came up with the idea of reinterpreting existing holidays and celebrations, which (although this practice was met with the strong opposition of the religious establishment) turned out to be a successful idea because people were happy to embrace the new religion as long as they were not forced to abandon their old routines.
I’ve literally only ever heard this statement twice in my life, and both times it was you who mentioned it.
Oddly enough, the early Celtic pagans had no winter solstice holiday. Their biggest celebration was November 1st’s celebration of Samhain, which was the start of their new year. Their February 1st celebration of Imbolc came next, and the spring equinox was celebrated as Ostara, from which Easter gets it name.
I was curious because you present it as if it were your original research (no citations at all except the ones that came along with your copy and paste of a Wikipedia article).
I mean it’s ok if you’re just fucking around on a message board, but you said you were “fighting ignorance” or something.
I’m skeptical about the March 25th -Dec 25th nine months thing. I’m not skeptical about March 25th coming 9 months before Dec 25th…but …the idea of an anticipated birth date being calculated as being nine months exactly from the first missed period … that seems a little contemporary to me, did they do this in biblical times?
But the theory that the date of Christmas was decided by starting with the date of the Annunciation and then adding nine months is just the reverse of the standard theory that the date of the Annunciation was decided by starting with the date of Christmas and then subtracting the nine months. One of the dates was clearly calculated on the assumption that Mary’s pregnancy had lasted nine months. That figure of nine months was, in any case, probably viewed not so much as typical as ideal.
Unless, of course, one thinks that both events really did happen on those dates.
Um… all human societies everywhere, in all cultures, ancient and modern, from hunter-gatherers to developed civilizations, know that it takes 9 months (approx.) from conception to birth.
Not all months are equal. The Hebrew calendar months are 29 or 30 days so in nine months it would be off by eight or nine days from the Julian calendar.
I*n 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a “paganization” that debased the true church.[77] It has been argued that, on the contrary, the Emperor Aurelian, who in 274 instituted the holiday of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, did so partly as an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already important for Christians in Rome.[78]
Hermann Usener[79] and others[11] proposed that the Christians chose this day because it was the Roman feast celebrating the birthday of Sol Invictus. Modern scholar S. E. Hijmans, however, states that “While they were aware that pagans called this day the ‘birthday’ of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas.”[63] Moreover, Thomas J. Talley holds that the Roman Emperor Aurelian placed a festival of Sol Invictus on December 25 in order to compete with the growing rate of the Christian Church, which had already been celebrating Christmas on that date first.[80] In the judgement of the Church of England Liturgical Commission, the History of Religions hypothesis has been challenged[81] by a view based on an old tradition, according to which the date of Christmas was fixed at nine months after March 25, the date of the vernal equinox, on which the Annunciation was celebrated.[74]
With regard to a December religious feast of the deified Sun (Sol), as distinct from a solstice feast of the birth (or rebirth) of the astronomical sun, one scholar has commented that, “while the winter solstice on or around December 25 was well established in the Roman imperial calendar, there is no evidence that a religious celebration of Sol on that day antedated the celebration of Christmas”.[82] “Thomas Talley has shown that, although the Emperor Aurelian’s dedication of a temple to the sun god in the Campus Martius (C.E. 274) probably took place on the ‘Birthday of the Invincible Sun’ on December 25, the cult of the sun in pagan Rome ironically did not celebrate the winter solstice nor any of the other quarter-tense days, as one might expect.”[83] The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought remarks on the uncertainty about the order of precedence between the religious celebrations of the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun and of the birthday of Jesus, stating that the hypothesis that December 25 was chosen for celebrating the birth of Jesus on the basis of the belief that his conception occurred on March 25 “potentially establishes 25 December as a Christian festival before Aurelian’s decree, which, when promulgated, might have provided for the Christian feast both opportunity and challenge”.[84]….In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas Day was overshadowed by Epiphany, which in western Christianity focused on the visit of the magi. But the medieval calendar was dominated by Christmas-related holidays. The forty days before Christmas became the “forty days of St. Martin” (which began on November 11, the feast of St. Martin of Tours), now known as Advent.[85] In Italy, former Saturnalian traditions were attached to Advent.[85] Around the 12th century, these traditions transferred again to the Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25 – January 5); a time that appears in the liturgical calendars as Christmastide or Twelve Holy Days.[85]
The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800. King Edmund the Martyr was anointed on Christmas in 855 and King William I of England was crowned on Christmas Day 1066.*
Here is John Chrysostom’s - Homily on the Date of Christmas. No mention of *Natalis Solis Invicti *
Mary was perfect, thus her time had to be a perfect nine months. And they didnt know from first missed period, they knew from the Angel telling Mary.
Right. I am not in any way saying that Dec 25 is the right day.