There is a pretty thorough discussion of this question in the Catholic Encyclopedia
Basically it comes to the same conclusion as Cecil, that "the most tenable hypothesis, Christ’s birthday was assigned to the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar, January 6 in the Egyptian) because the date had a ready-made pagan holiday, the “Birthday of the Invincible Sun”.
In fact in AD 386 St John Chrysostom, a Christian bishop, says exactly that :
“On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this the Birthday of the Invincible One; but who is so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disk, but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness.”
So basically Christmas was a made-up holiday. While everyone else was exchanging gifts and celebrating the birthday of the Invincible Sun, Christians also wanted to have their own holiday.
It also doesn’t hurt that having a holiday on the same day as the “outsiders” with callbacks to their own ceremonies makes your religion a little more familiar to them, and therefore easier for them to convert because “hey, their religion has this too, and you DON’T have to give up half your livestock and the village’s newborn baby to gain their god’s bounty!”
I believe that back in the days when the population consisted of just a few scattered tribes, during the winter months when everyone was fed up and starving, some mad old shaman used to gather up all the little wooden toys he had whittled throughout the year, then go sneaking round the villages, placing them outside every home, just for the craic, like. Go on, I dare ya to prove me wrong.
Actually, the argument this guy makes is Jesus was conceived late Sept (Rosh Hashanah), born late June, visited by Magi in late Dec.
For years, I’ve held the Armstrongist theory of a Fall Festival Nativity, and therefore a late December conception. I’ve never followed the Armstrongs in their opposition to Christmas, however.
However, John Crysostom said a lot more than the OP quotes. He holds that Zacharias was serving in the Temple and visited by Gabriel during the Fall Festivals (late Sept-early Oct). If he & Elizabeth conceived John soon after, then the Annunciation to Mary came six months later in late March-early April, and Jesus would have been born… late Dec-early Jan. I don’t find that to be an unreasonable possibility.
Those two theories, out of all other possibilities, most appeal to me- so whether it be the time of the conception or the birth, I am glad to celebrate Christmas on Dec 25
Not necessarily. The dating of Herod’s death at 4 B.C. was based on mentions of a lunar eclipse at the time by Josephus. However, a similar eclipse occurred in 1 B.C./A.D. & that may well have been the one accompanying Herod’s death.
No, the argument he makes is that the first Christmas is the date the wise men visit the baby Jesus. So much is possible when you can make up the rules to fit your theories.
What do you mean by this? 1 BC and 1 AD are quite separate years.
No date or set of astronomical occurrences has ever been a consensus. I look at the arguments exactly as I do at Holmesiania: nobody ever made a reputation by agreeing with anything anybody else has ever said. The fun is making up your own set of plausible facts and weaving them together into a story. Except Holmesians appear to understand they’re writing fiction.
Cecil contends that the reason Jesus is considered by some to be a spring astrological sign is fitting personality to sign.
The reason (and I get this from Snopes’ discussion) is that, if we take any of the gospels’ Christmas story as grounded in fact, that the shepherds were out in the fields at night - that would most likely be in the spring, when lambs were being born.
I thought everyone knew Christmas’ date came from Mithraism?
“Even the date of Christmas, December 25, was borrowed from another religion. At the time Christmas was created in AD 320, Mithraism was very popular. The early Christian church had gotten tired of their futile efforts to stop people celebrating the solstice and the birthday of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Mithras’ birthday was December 25. So the pope at the time decided to make Jesus’ official birthday coincide with Mithras’ birthday.” from http://www.zenzibar.com/articles/christmas.asp
Do some research on Mithraism; it contributed more to Christianity than most people suspect.
No respectable historian denies the historical evolution of Christian customs from pagan religions and from such earlier beliefs as Mithraism. But a simplistic association between December 25 and Mithraism doesn’t fly.
I noticed this as well. Because the original question was posed in terms of astrological signs, Cecil assumes the poster thinks the meaning of the signs was important to the justification of the signs chosen. I think the poster used astrological signs as a shorthand for timeframe of the year, with Capricorn matching late December and Pisces and Leo corresponding to spring. But since I don’t follow astrology, I don’t even know if that is a correct assumption on my part.