As Christmas is
here again, many heretics in particular, Jehovah witnesses, The comedian, Mr. Daddy
Freeze, a Nigerian Pentecostal heretic will start to attack the Holy Feast of Christmas
calling it “Pagan”.
Also, over the
years, many, including Catholics themselves believe that the Feast of Christmas
was initially a pagan feast only converted by Constantine into a Catholic
feast.
But nothing can be
further from the truth. These lies are spread by the enemies of Jesus Christ
and the popular culture spreads it further and further.
We are repeatedly
told that the date 25th of December was originally a pagan holiday. It is said
that the Early Church “chose” it to “Christianize” a Roman feast of the Sun.
According to this false theory, the Christmas date was only established in the
4th century, when we have the first evidence of the birth of Christ being
celebrated in Rome in 336. The conclusion: The origins of Christmas are pagan,
and we do not really know the date the Savior of mankind was born.
It is time to make
corrections to this ugly lie. These lies are aimed to diminish the homage paid
to the Savior of the world, Our Lord Jesus Christ and to discredit His Church,
the Holy Catholic Church!
In fact, the
opposite of this lie is true. It must be stated that the idea that the origins
of Christmas is pagan is a myth with NO historical substance.
First, we MUST NOTE that there was no ancient Roman festival held on December
25
The notion that Christmas had pagan origins began to spread in the 17th century
with the heretical English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians, who hated all
Catholic things. The Puritans hated Catholicism so much that they revolted
against the so-called “Anglican Church”, another heretical organization
because, even with their heresies, they considered it still too similar to the
Catholic Church. They abhorred the feast days and in particular, they detested
the Christmas feast with its joyous ceremonies, celebrations and customs.
Since the Bible
gave no specific date of Christ’s birth, the Puritans argued that it was a
sinful invention of the Roman Catholic Church that should be abolished.
Later, Protestant
preachers like the German Paul Ernst Jablonski tried to demonstrate in
pseudo-scholarly works that December 25 was actually a pagan Roman feast, and
that Christmas was yet another instance of how the medieval Catholic Church
‘paganized’ and corrupted ‘pure’ early Christianity. Check out the book
by Thomas Talley called The Origins of the Liturgical Year, published by
Collegeville press Minnesota in 1991. Focus on page 88 of this book.
Around the same time, the Jesuit Jean Hardouin with his eccentric theory
of universal forgery that put in doubt every historical source known,
backed the Puritans on their theory of Christmas having pagan origins. But his
research was largely discredited given his absurd affirmations. For example, he
maintained all the Church Councils that took place before Trent were fictitious
and almost all the classical texts of ancient Greece and Rome were false, made
by monks in the 13th century. Such assertions are blatantly absurd, given the
countless source documents demonstrating the opposite.
The two principal claims for Christmas having pagan origins pretend that the
early Church chose December 25 in order to divert Catholics from Roman pagan
festival days. The first claim pretends that it replaced the ancient
Roman holiday of Saturnalia, a time of feasting and raucous merry-making held
in December in honor of the pagan god Saturn.
Now, the Saturnalia
festival always ended on December 23 at the latest. Why would the Catholic
Church, to diverge the attention of her faithful from a pagan celebration,
choose a date two days after that party had already ended and whoever wanted
had already overindulged? It makes no sense. No serious scholar believes this
claim.
Secondly and in actual fact, the feast of Christmas was established before the
said pagan feast that usually end on 23rd of December!
The second claim is that the Catholic Church established Christmas on
December 25 to replace a solar feast invented by Emperor Aurelian in 274 AD,
the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Birth of the Unconquered Sun).
The fact that
Christmas entered the world calendar (the accepted Roman calendar) in 354 –
which was after the establishment of the pagan feast – does not necessarily
mean the Church chose that day to replace the pagan holiday. Two principal
reasons concur with this conclusion:
First, one must not
simply assume that the early Christians only began to celebrate Christmas in
the 4th century. Until the Edict of Milan was published in 313, Catholics were
persecuted and met in catacombs, the Roman undergroud. Hence, there was no
public festivity. But they celebrated Christmas among themselves before that
Edict, as hymns and prayers of the first Christians confirm. The French man, Mr.
Daniel-Rops, proved this in his book “Prières des Premiers Chrétiens”, abour Early Christian culture.
Second, this claim is based on unsound assumptions. As scholar Thomas Talley
points out in his book The Origins of the Liturgical Year, Emperor Aurelian
inaugurated the festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun trying to give new
life – a rebirth – to a dying Roman Empire. It is much more likely, he argues,
that the Emperor’s action was a response to the growing popularity and strength
of the Catholic religion, which was celebrating Christ’s birth on December 25,
rather than the other way around.
There is no historical evidence that Aurelian’s celebration preceded the feast
of Christmas, and more reason to believe that establishing this festival day – which
never won popular support and soon died out – was an effort to give a pagan
significance to a date already of importance to Roman Catholics.
But let us leave the realm of conjecture and return to historical records. There
is ample evidence to demonstrate that, even though the Christmas date was not
made official until 354, clearly it was established long before Aurelian
instituted his pagan feastday, which nevertheless ended on 23rd December.
The conception of St. John the Baptist is the historical anchor to know the
date of Christmas, based on the detailed and careful calculations on dates made
by first Fathers of the Church.
The early tractatus
De solstitiia records the tradition of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to
Zachariah in the High Temple when he was serving as high priest on the Day of
Atonement (Lk 1:8). This placed the conception of St. John the Baptist during the
feast of Tabernacles in late September, as the Archangel Gabriel said (Lk 1:28)
and his birth nine months later at the time of the summer solstice.
Since the Gospel of Luke states that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the
Virgin Mary in the sixth month after John's conception (Lk 1:26), this placed
the conception of Christ at about the time of the spring equinox, that is, at
the time of the Jewish Passover, in late March. His birth would thus be in late
December at the time of the winter solstice.
That these dates,
based on Tradition and Scripture, are trustworthy is confirmed by recent
evidence taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose authors were very concerned
about calendar dates, essential for establishing when the Torah feasts should
be celebrated. The data found in the Scrolls make it possible to know the
Temple’s rotating assignment of priests during Old Testament times and show
definitely that Zachariah served as a Temple priest in September, thus
confirming the tradition of the Early Church.
Shemaryahu Talmon, Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University in Jerusalem
and a top Scroll scholar, published an in-depth study of the Temple’s rotating
assignment of priests in 1958 and the Qumran scrolls to see the assignment
during New Testament times. Martin K Barrack, google “it comes from pagans” to
learn more.
The Catholic Church determined March 25 as the date of Our Lord’s Conception
long before Aurelian decided to make his solar feast.
For example, around
221 AD, Sexto Julio Africano wrote the Chronographiai in which he
affirmed that the Annunciation was March 25. Once the date of the Incarnation(pregnancy
of Mary with Lord Jesus Christ) was established, it was a simple matter of
adding nine months to arrive at the date of Our Lord’s birth - December 25.
This date would not be made official until the late fourth century, but it was
established long before Aurelian and Constantine. It had nothing to do with
pagan festivals.
We can be certain that the first Catholic apologists and Fathers of the Church,
who lived very close to the time of the Apostles, were fully aware of the dates
associated with the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They had all the calendar
sources at hand and they would not allow any untruth to be introduced in the
Catholic liturgy. The date of Christ’s birth was transmitted by them as being
December 25, a Sunday or a day treated as a Sunday! In the Catholic Church,
Christmas is treated as a Sunday!
Addressing the
verse of Luke 2:7, Fr Cornelius a Lapide comments in his Commentaria in
Scripturam Sanctam, (Published in Paris by Vives in 1811) on the architecture
of this choice: “Christ was born Sunday, because this was the first day of the
world. … Christ was born on Sunday night, in keeping with the order of His
marvels, so that the day on which He said Let there be light, and there
was light, was the same day on which, at night, the light shone in
darkness for the upright of heart, that is, the sun of justice, Christ the
Lord.”
Inclonclusion, the
date for the birth of Christ is established to be on 25th of December. If the
Church is right in establishing the date of the Incarnation to be March 25th,
then the date 25th December should be accepted as the day of the Birth of
Christ. There may be margin of error here and there. But the bottom line is
that the feast of Christmas has NO pagan origin whatsoever!
By Malachy Igwilo,
(with ideas from Maria Hovat) Ember Friday, 18th December 2020
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