http://www.accuweather.com/owbin/world_forecast.asp
Current forecast for Bethlehem, Israel. Predicted low for Christmas Eve:
1C (34F)
Further detail about “abiding”:
http://www.christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html
“Was Jesus born on December 25, or in December at all? Although it’s not impossible, it seems unlikely. The Bible does not specify a date or month. One problem with December is that it would be unusual for shepherds to be “abiding in the field” at this cold time of year when fields were unproductive. The normal practice was to keep the flocks in the fields from Spring to Autumn. Also, winter would likely be an especially difficult time for pregnant Mary to travel the long distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem (70 miles).”
http://www.redbay.com/ekklesia/birth.htm
"Shepherds would abide with their flock using a cultivated field as their fold for the sheep in the fall of the year. In the late summer and early fall a farmer in Bible times would hire shepherds to keep their flocks in his field overnight. In this way, the sheep’s manure would fertilize his field. This is another indicator that Jesus Christ was born in early September. In December it is too cold for shepherds to watch their sheep at night in fields or pastures and too cold for travel to “registrations”.
Are you sure about this? The way I was taught, Christ was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year, so the exact length of time He lived on earth the first time was 33 years.
You are correct; I was two days off, saying the Resurrection. BTW, would you have the original source for that, in response to grienspace’s request – I looked where I thought I’d made a note of where I got it from, and whatever notes I took weren’t in evidence – and I don’t offhand recall the source. While I could research, I have come to count on Orthodox familiarity with the Fathers to bail me out of such stuff. 
Watching the goyim at play, I think you’re close - and I don’t think it is cowardice. Look how much of the Christmas spirit in the US has to do with children. (And since Christmas is a young holiday, at least the way it is celebrated today, I don’t think you need to go back to the pagan roots.)
Kids like babies, they like presents, and so the story of a birth is a lot easier to relate to them then that of someone being nailed to a cross - no matter the theological implications. The part of Easter that kids do like, the Easter bunny and the eggs, is again a symbol of birth.
Funny, from the news articles in the past week or so, I think it’s the Christians who are doing the bulk of the blaming… 
I have experienced that changeover here in PR in my lifetime BIG TIME, and I’m only 43; and yes, marketing and media have a lot to do with it (by now most kids in PR get loot on the 25th AND on the 6th. The Retailers Association loves it.) Down here one thing that contributes to it is that the Holiday recess (in schools) runs from just before Xmas to just after Epiphany; so the kids get more enjoyment of presents given at the front end of the break.
BTW, it is true – Xmas itself was not such a huge deal as a Christian Fest
during much of its history. The puritans even tried to supress it. The revelry and celebration was mostly secular all along.
And a lot of the liturgical calendar was indeed retroactively arranged to “fit” not only the traditions about the lives of Jesus and the Apostles, but also the extant patterns of life and festivity(*). They didn’t just pull it out of their hats, the Fathers thought about this!
[sub](*Hey, you don’t end lasting 20 centuries and with 2+ billion followers w/o giving people some accommodation!)[/sub]
The gospels do tell us the Passion/Easter happened on or around a Passover, fair enough; from it we can get a sense of when the Ascencion and the Giving of the Spirit would go. Then the fun begins. If for numerological or mystical reasons it would “fit” that Jesus would not only die but also be conceived on a date tied to the Spring Equinox, then how convenient that 9 months later Advent and Nativity would coincide with Saturnalia/Juvenilia and the Birth of Sol Invictus. And how Jesus’ briss being a week after that, would also make January 1 a Christian commemoration, and that the Purification of Mary being at the 40th day would do the same to the winter cross-quarter (Candlemas). And lookee here, gospel says that John, the Baptist, was 6 months older than his cousin JC, why that would puts his birthday… near the Summer Solstice (24 June, Midsummer’s Day).
Unfortunately, I don’t know the patristic source offhand either. I did a quick scan of some of my resources, and didn’t come up with anything. I’ve emailed my priest, but he doesn’t know offhand either. Google’s given nothing. I know it’s somewhere – I’m wanting to say one of the early Western fathers. Iranaeus, maybe?
Ha! From the Catholic Encyclopedia, the first to suggest that was a work called De Pascha Computus, written by a pseudo-Cyprian around 240.
Good work !
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
Good points all.
None of us? I beg your pardon, but I absolutely believe the death of the Lord Jesus Christ brought salvation to the world, and scripture will bear witness to this.
It says in Romans chapter 5:
**6 "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ *died * for the ungodly.
7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.
10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
11 And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. " ** (Rom 5:6-11)(KJV)
The gospel the apostle Paul preached was **“the gospel of Christ” ** (Romans 1:16), which he said was “the power of God unto salvation.” This gospel is identified in 1 Corinthians 15:
*1 "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins * according to the scriptures;
4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures" (1 Cor 15:1-4)(KJV)
This is the message of hope to the world today–that “the man(not the baby)…Christ Jesus, gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time”. (1 Tim. 2:5,6)
Death AND Resurrection. I know it’s a nitpick but kind of an important one.
But that is a conclusion you reach in the light of your faith, it’s not an instinctive reaction: the visceral reaction to death is fear and uncertainty, that to birth is hopeful joy. And I believe the prior poster’s “none of us” was referring to the self-described, self-admitted group of “cowardly” Christians, which I think is unfairly self-deprecatory – God would know their weakness and the ways into their hearts.
Once in a church I was visiting I saw the juxtaposition of two icons facing each other across the chapel.
One was a Madonna-and-Child.
The other one was a Pietá.
I’m pretty sure that arrangement was no accident.
Whoof – that juxtaposition would zap me as well.
With regard to the distinction you draw, let me reference my post #9 in this thread, in the context of JMS’s post – he apparently being a prime example of a decent sort of the Atonement-focus evangelicals I referenced there. For people of that belief style, there is a very narrow focus on the Passion and what it accomplished for us, usually expressed in terms of the Substitutionary Atonement. (If JMS cares to dissociate himself from any part of my comments here, which are intended to generalize, I have no intent to attribute that which he does not himself believe to him – but my impression is that his piety is that of the classic evangelical mode, so I’ll expound on it in general.)
While the entire salvation history, God working among men from Adam down to John the Baptist, the Nativity, and Jesus’s earthly ministry, and then from the Resurrection and Ascension on to the eschatological events of Thessalonians and Revelation, are important to evangelicals, the central focus of their piety is on Christ paying the debt for our sin through His self-sacrifice on the Cross. In their view, God’s justice demands a condemnation for sin, a price none of us can pay, yet His mercy demands that somehow He get us out of that pickle. He handles this by sending His Son, who being God can pay the debt, and being man can suffer, and accepting that substitution in fulfillment of the pain that we deserve for sinning.
It doesn’t take much thought to see where that approach paints an unflattering picture of God, and is founded in a very low view of man as well. Having perfect foreknowledge, He knew from Fiat Lux! that we were going to fuck up, and yet created us, calling us to be that which we were not and were incapable of being, and then threatening to punish us for not succeeding. Then He allows Himself to be bought off, like some sort of megalomaniac sadist, by the death by torture of His Son – at the hands of some of the very humans He’s prepared to condemn. This in turn frees us, if we then accept Him as Lord, to live lives devoted to Him, which seem to center on persuading others to accept Him as Lord in order to avoid getting that punishment.
Love, compassion, and forgiveness seem to be a part of the picture only insofar as the strictest and most undemonstrative of parents might say, “All right, you’ve been punished enough, now go play, but don’t get into any more trouble.”
Somehow this strikes me as a less-than-wise, not to mention abusive, way to run a Universe.
[QUOTE=JMS@CCT]
Interesting post
I noticed you are a pastor. It seems from your post that you do not celebrate Christmas as it not biblical. Is this correct?
Do you teach your flock this as well? I’m curious.
It’s Christmas morning, so perhaps it’s appropriate that I post this now. To me, the key difference between Christianity and other religions and one of the main reasons I am Christian, rather than Wiccan, Buddhist, or some other religion is that Christ was fully human as well as fully divine. The Feast of the Incarnation, Christmas, focusses on that humanity to me, just as the Feast of the Resurrection, Easter, focusses on Christ’s divinity. God is not just some remote, all-powerful, all-knowing Entity far beyond human comprehension, or rather He is, but He’s more. This all-powerful Deity whom human minds cannot begin to comprehend took on vulnerable, fragile, human form that we might know He understand us, even if we can’t understand Him.
Very few people throughout history have lived at the top of their society in terms of rank, wealth, or power. Very few of us get to be born kings or princes. Most people in history have simply tried to live their lives getting through the day with no great stories told about them. If we speak of a King or a Prince, let alone the Son of God, the immediate image that comes to mind is that of someone far more powerful than we are and very remote from us. Without the Incarnation, it would be too easy for Christ to become that. Instead, we have the All-Powerful Prince born in the humblest of circumstances. There is an imlication of poverty and powerlessness in His birth and babyhood as described in the Gospels. It wasn’t just wise men or kings who came to worship him, but shephards as well. The music of Christmas which has shaped my experience over the years speaks of poverty as much as it does as wealth:
The King of Kings was not born to wealth, power, and glory, receiving all the privilege His rank as the Son of God entitled Him to; instead, He was born in circumstances made more humble by government decree and there being too little for too many. His mother may have been of a priestly line, but she’s never been depicted as being wealthy; instead, I’ve always pictured her of being of ordinary circumstances, if a bit more logical and even audacious (she did question God, after all) than some.
The Christ who is truly the Son of God, who defies Death, heals the lame, gives sight to the blind, and who could turn stones to bread or even children of Abraham is too remote, powerful, and intimidating a figure for me. The one who was outcast, however temporarily, at his birth, who wept at the death of a friend, who, in Gethsemane, acknowledged He didn’t want to face an ordeal of pain and humiliation, who noticed even a man who tugged at His cloak, is one I can understand, or at least who I can be sure understands me, one who I can trust. I’m 40 years old. This morning, my knee hurts, as does my back. I’ve been cold, hungry, and unwilling. The Christ who was fully human understands that, although he does expect and will help me overcome my unwillingness. Without the Incarnation, without Christmas, I might not understand that as well.
I’ve learned a fair amount about other religions. While majoring in Japanese, I studied Buddhism, and not only is a very dear friend of mine Wiccan, he has a book coming out next year on the relationship between some of the ideas behind his form of Wiccan and quantum physics. An author’s copy of it’s sitting on my kitchen table. I’ve also been rather badly burned by some Christians and my heart goes out to those here and elsewhere who’ve been burned worse by them. So does my anger. I’ve had the chance to turn away from Christianity, and I won’t condemn those who follow other religions; to do so would be to condemn a man who has saved my life and strengthened my faith. What keeps me Christian is tied to Christmas as much as it is to Easter. The Christ who overcame death and the grave, who took the sins of the whole world throughout history upon Himself, the King of Kings is made accessible to me, child of a long line of Lancashire peasants, daughter of parents who worked their way through college, who has, herself, been working since she was sixteen and expects to continue to work long past sixty. When I am consumed by my faults, despairing, unable to forgive myself, as that Wiccan friend reminded me, Christ, too, has been fully human and understands that condition.
On a more practical and spefic note, in the Anglican Church in practice, there is far more emphasis on Easter than on Christmas, and there’s no question which is more important, even though Advent, the season of preparation before Christmas, marks the start of the church year (technically, for Anglicans, Christmas started at sundown yesterday; before that, it was Advent). Because Lent, the season of preparation before Easter, is a far more solemn time and, indeed, no music is to be performed between Good Friday and Easter, Christmas gets more publicity, but Easter requires more and more stringent preparation and Christ’s death and resurrection is referred to a lot more in ordinary circumstances during the service than His birth, especially during the Eucharist. Indeed, the Eucharist makes no reference to Christ’s birth, although it’s implied that it happened, but it does retell the circumstances of the Last Supper, and it has the congregation say as a whole, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” Now, using the Eucharist is to some extent unfair because the whole focus is on recreating the last supper and on echoing Christ’s actions in it before His death and resurrection; on the other hand, I know of no equivalent for the events surrounding His birth unless you count church Christmas pageants, and those are performed once a year versus once a week. They also have their equivalent in the way Palm Sunday is celebrated.
This has been a long post on Christmas morning, and I do have other things to be done. Thank you for bearing with me. To those of you who celebrate it, a very merry Christmas, and, to the rest of you, may you enjoy all the joys of this holiday season.
With not only respect, but joy, for this is Christmas morning!
CJ
(Besides, the way my family’s into music, there’s going to be good listening today, as well as good eating! 
What Siege said. (Which surprises about three Dopers, right? :))
Let me add in the first few verses of one Christmas carol that may not be familiar to everyone, double-echoing what my sister said (it’s in the public domain, mods.)
I’ve leaned to the Autumn birth of Jesus theory that JMS has presented, tho without his animosity towards Christmas (which I’m getting ready for as I type).
After all, that would still have Jesus being conceived around Christmastime, so Yay!
Interestingly, this week I found this on the Worldwide Church of God (formerly Armstrongist, now Evangelical) website-
After discussing the Autumn birth idea, which had previously been a WCG doctrine…
“The second method of trying to fix a precise date for Jesus’ birth counts backward rather than forward. When the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., the priestly course of Jehoiarib was serving. If the priestly service was unbroken from the time of Zecharias to the destruction of the temple, this calculation has the course of Abijah occurring in the first week of October. Some early Christian writers (John Chrysostom, 347-407) taught that Zecharias received the message about John’s birth on Atonement, which falls in September or October. This would place John the Baptist’s birth in June or July, and the birth of Jesus six months later, in late December or early January. Some advocates of this second method view believe that December 25 is the correct day of Jesus’ birth, while others believe that January 6 is the correct day.”
OK. I hafta agree with JRD this is a matter of FAITH to you. My point was that most people are excited about a new baby and see him/her as a new start, new beginnings etc. Hence, the celebration of Christ’s birth–in addition to the him being the Messiah etc, NOT to challenge you or anybody else’s commitment to their own faith. The Bible verses, IMO, were not pertinent to my comment.
I don’t know how better to explain myself than to say that a baby is concrete–an graspable, physical being which evokes positive feelings in most everybody, nevermind just Christians (I’m talking about babies in general here). I think that Voyager probably put it best in her/his post–cowardly is not quite the correct term. The hugeness of Christmas may well be b/c of not so very deep reasons at all–the holiday, as celebrated here in USA, IS kid focused, it has a rich tradition of both pagan and religious roots, it incorporates many many cultures that only serve to enrich it.
Since there is no direct physical evidence that Christ walked on Earth after 3 days in the tomb, my point was that alot of people focus on Christmas d/t it’s message of hope and the love we can relate to with a new baby, rather than focus on a painful death and the uncertainty(b/c there is no “proof”) of everlasting life. These are strictly my own opinion-there are probably as many people out there who say the opposite: that Easter is the outward expression of their faith and Christmas is not the emphasis for them.
I hope that is clear. I did not mean to offend anyone with my comment about cowardly Christians–yes, God would know of our “weakness” (I call it being human).
I most definetly do not want to enter into a debate about matters of faith. That is an endless argument. I see no reason to not celebrate Christmas, even if it has been piggybacked onto a pagan festival for millenia–I think that improves the holiday, if anything. But that is another thread.
In the Eastern churches, Christmas is a big deal, but not nearly as big a deal as it is in the west. I’ve seen it ranked variously as the 3rd and 4th most important feast of the Church year, behind Pascha, Pentecost, and sometimes Theophany. The liturgical focus is very much not on what is depicted in the typical nativity scene, with the baby Jesus in a little crib and Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, et al. surrounding Him – you will not see nativity scenes or Christmas pageants in an Orthodox church. Rather, we’re concerned with the awesome fact that God Himself became a human, rather than baby Jesus has just been born. As one of the hymns sung on Christmas eve states:
And also,
This is the point of the Nativity; otherwise, we’re just celebrating the birth of a random baby.
I will try once more. We all have known babies that were looked forward to, prayed for even. And we all know the warm fuzzies that come from such an event. What I am saying that our very real feelings about human babies gets transmogrified onto this Birth. And that, IMO, is the reason for the huge celebration–and one reason for the manner of celebration.
Easter to me has always been much more contemplative, inward, sad, poignant–but a baby? Hey, party on! (so to speak). Woot!