THIS IS A sequel to our previous column on Christmas (Dec. 13, 2018 issue), where we wrote, “There is now no doubt among Bible scholars that Jesus could not have been born on a winter day, December 25, in 4 B.C. For on the day of his birth, the shepherds in Bethlehem were out in the fields grazing sheep – an impossible scene in snowy winter. Born in a manger, the naked child Jesus could have frozen to death.”
There is not even a single Bible verse about Jesus celebrating his birthday. It’s ironic that the birthday that the supposed “celebrator” never celebrated is now the biggest celebration in the world. Lest this writer be called a “killjoy,” this is nothing personal; I attend Christmas parties, too. But in journalism, we ought to always call a spade a spade.
If not Jesus himself, did the apostles and other early Christians celebrate his birthday?
No, because Christmas originated from a pagan festival that would later jump over the Christian world unquestionably. It is therefore equally deserving of repeated refutation.
We have supposed Jesus was born December 25. But the history of the world’s most popular holiday says otherwise.
As this corner already stressed last week, the word “Christmas” is an abbreviation of “mass of Christ,” which is believed to have begun as a Roman Catholic mass in Rome in the year 320 A.D. or, as it later became shortened, “Christ-Mass.”
It was an attempt to appease the pagans, who were celebrating December 25 as the birthday of Ba-al or Sol, the sun god.
Until then, Christmas had never been observed by the apostles. Otherwise, why did the apostles say nothing of it?
It could have been one of the religious falsehoods “that would deceive the world” as prophesied by the Apostle Paul in II Timothy 4:4.
To reiterate, Jesus could not have been born on December 25, winter time in his birthplace in Bethlehem, because “there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8).
That could not have occurred in the month of December. The shepherds always brought their flocks from the mountainsides and fields and corralled them not later than October 15 to protect them from the cold, rainy season that followed that date.
It was an ancient custom among Jews of those days to send out their sheep to the fields and deserts in the early spring, and bring them home at commencement of the first rain.
Even outside of the Bible, there is no mention of the apostles and early Christians celebrating Christ’s birthday; not even in the Catholic Encyclopedia, which on the contrary reveals: “Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church.”
The Romans had been pagan. Until the fourth century, Christians were few in number. But with the advent of Constantine as Roman emperor in the fourth century, they accepted Christianity by the hundreds of thousands.
Since these people had grown up in pagan customs like the birthday of the sun god, December 25 eventually crept into the new religion as birthday of the Son of God.
It was only in the fifth century, according to the Encyclopedia Americana, that “the Western Church ordered it to be celebrated forever on the day of the old Roman feast of the birth of Sol, as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed.”
The Roman “lie” has since then been perpetuated. For as the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
