| When is Christmas? (It's about
time.)
There seems to be some dispute about the date of the first Christmas.
Part of that has to do with the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we
use. At one time, Greek months had three ten day weeks. This forced
them to add a month or two every now and then. The ancient Hebrews,
who alternated 29 and 30 day months, had the same problem. Our hour
and minute divisions go all the way back to Mesopotamia. Our 24 hour day
comes from pharonic Egypt. The names we use for Our calendar is based entirely on the positions of the sun through the year. (Julius Caesar abolished calendars based on lunar cycles and forced everybody to use the solar version. His system was called the "Julian" calendar.) So when was Jesus born? God only knows. The exact day has never been pinpointed. Christmas Day (as Christmas Day) has reputedly been celebrated by some since the year 98 AD. In 137 AD the Bishop of Rome ordered a feast for the birthday of the Christ Child. . In 350 AD, Julius I, chose December 25th as the official day. Some reckon the date by biblical quotes, figuring it going back from the crucifixion. But, dates are things on calendars, and calendars differ. For example, a Roman monk by the impossible name of Dionysius Exiguus, who had a piece of the calendar action in the sixth century, probably misplaced A.D.1 by at least five years! Click here for some fascinating background from the naval observatory.. In the New Testament we find that Christ's crucifixion occurred in
the week of Passover. On the Jewish calendar, Passover was celebrated at
the full moon of the first month (Nissan) of spring. Since Julius
Caesar didn't like lunar date-keeping, a later Roman, Pope Gregory XIII The English, always suspicious of Rome during this period, retained the Julian Calendar. Further, while others now began the new year uniformly on 1 January, the English began it on 25 March (an older custom). Now, for example, the date 11 February 1672 in England was 21 February 1673 on the Continent. After 1700 in which the Julian Calendar had a leap year but the Gregorian did not, the difference was eleven days. The English and their American colonies finally adopted the Gregorian Calendar in the middle of the eighteenth century. George Washington was born on 11 February on the Julian Calendar; we celebrate his birthday on 22 February. [source] Which hasn't helped us, much. But, two thousand years, a blink of the eye from the perspective of a star, or even our planet, is a long time to humans. And record keeping was a little harder at the time of Christ. Paper, for example, was invented by a Chinese bureaucrat 104 years after the crucifixion of the Christian redeemer. Fine point felt tip pens came along even later than that. And, what with wars that have swept this way and that across the middle east over those twenty centuries, structure fires, careless storage, hungry goats and so forth, it is a kind of miracle that we have even an approximation of the dates involved. Bishops and Popes be hanged, you will be hard placed to find any historian who will date the birth of Christ on December 25th. Some will tell you that Jesus wasn't even born in what we reckon as the year one A.D. ("A.D." does not stand for "After Death." It stands for two Latin words, "Anno," which means "year," and "Domini," which means "our Lord." The year of our Lord.) Astronomers recorded a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 7 B.C. The combination of the light of these two massive planets could have been the famous star of Bethelem. Did this combination last long enough for the Three Wise Men to follow it all the way from distant lands? My experience is that planetary conjunctions are brief events, so one would have to either dump the kings from the story or drop the idea that this was the "star" that guided them. However, this was a "triple" conjunction. It happened three times that year -- in May, September and "early" December. (source) On a minister's website, we ran across the following, which based on the above text leads us to believe that he has never heard of this triple conjunction. The wise men saw the star in the east, and came to Judea from the
east. This means they traveled west, away from the star to follow it. This
can only mean that they followed the The date of December 25th, according to a piece we read in the Pendleton East Oregonian, may have originated in ancient Rome, sometime around the 4th century. A Roman festival known as Saturnalia, which involved trees lit with candles, festive dinners (featuring a 12th Day Cake) with friends and the exchange of gifts, ended about then. The church didn't care much for it. It was a bit randy. Dungeons and Dragons types name their websites after it. The following is about a holiday called "Kalends," held in January, just after Saturnalia. It is from the writings of a sophist named Libanis. The festival of the Kalends is celebrated everywhere as far as the limits of the Roman Empire extend.. The impulse to spend seizes everyone... People are not only generous towards themselves, but also towards their fellow-men. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides... The Kalends festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows men to give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the minds of young people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the schoolmaster and the dread of the stern pedagogue... Another great quality of the festival is that it teaches men not to hold too fast to their money, but to part withit and let it pass into other hands. The ancient Persian (Iranians), according to the EO, had the 25th as a day of sun worship. It was an adventist holiday of some sort. 4,000 years ago, the Mesopotamians celebrated a 12 day festival at this time. Singers went from dwelling to dwelling, and people exchanged gifts. Of particular interest in this one is the "rebirth" of the king. A criminal was selected to be dressed in royal garb, and was subsequently executed (by crucifixion?). Then the actual king would emerge wearing the garments of the executed man, as though the king had returned from the grave. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Scandinavian lore describes men being sent to the winter mountain tops
to watch for the return of the sun. (They could do this in Alaska!)
When the sun was seen emerging from the southern The Pendleton East Oregonian article we ran across last year described the naming of the day as follows: Christmas in medieval England was called Christes Masse, then Christ’s Mass, until it acquired its present spelling. The day is still known in many European countries as “Christ’s Birthday” and is called Noel by the French, Natale by the Italians, Weihnacht by the Germans, and Yulen Jul by the Scandinavians.
Larry Leonard
© 2002 Oregon Magazine (Santa Illustration by Jeff Jackson © 2002) Photos are links to their source, where known. |
meaning
of the star. (While it is true that all stars rise in the east and set
in the west, the star the astrologers saw must have risen and set several
times during their journey, which scarcely could have been completed in
a single night. Thus traveling west would have constituted following all
the stars, not a particular star.) No astronomical phenomenon would have
been specific enough to lead the astrologers to a stable in Bethlehem.
Matthew’s text clearly contradicts the modern notion of a celestial homing
beacon, leading them to Bethlehem. (
I
have a plastic Christmas tree, decorated with colored balls, icicles and
so forth. I keep it up on a table in the living room all year round.
This has been my custom ever since my second open heart surgery.
When is Christmas? Every day I don't wake up dead is a Christmas
present to me.