Calculating Christmas

One of our most popular articles has been "Calculating Christmas" by William J. Tighe. I mention that now for obvious reasons. You might want to share this with your pastor, teacher, or friends. Or on your blog site with a link to the article here. It begins:

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December   25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost   no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism,   who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it   is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result   of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’   birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.....

Comments

[joseph]

Thanks for reposting this. It is a fascinating article. I find that there is a lot of "pop-history" around Christmas. Tighe's article is just the sort of concise resource for which many of us have been looking.

[labrialumn]

Dr. Tighe's article doesn't include that a date in the second half of December is also derivable from noting at what times Zechariah's division served in the Temple, dating Elizabeth's pregnancy to his return home, and noting that Elizabeth was six months pregnant when Mary, having newly conceived Our Lord, visited her.

[labrialumn]

As to the Christmas tree: It does not derive from the Asherah Pole, and it does not derive from Yggsrassil. Quite the contrary.

The tradition is that when St. Boniface went on a mission trip to the Germans, he cut down a sacred oak considered to be Yggsdrasil, the world-tree. This got the German's attention. They were furious. Boniface took this opportunity to preach to them, standing between them and the stump of Yggsdrasil. While he preached to them (they -were- going to kill him, of course), a fir tree sprung up from the stump, miraculously. This preserved Boniface's life. As the sun set, and he preached on, his assistants held candles over his shoulder so that he could read his text. They were superimposed on the miraculous fir tree, an evergreen symbolizing eternal life in the place of an oak upon which men were sacrificed via the blood eagle.

Martin Luther, it is said, then brought this St. Boniface tree into the celebration of the Nativity.

[Matthew N. Petersen]

St. Boniface being, of course, a good English monk.

Also Lamrialumn, could you provide any links for that? I'm kinda interested, and would like to investigate more.

Thanks

[Matthew N. Petersen]

And just, btw, I didn't ignore your comment on the previous thread, but my interaction got eaten as spam. But thanks for the discussion.

[William Tighe]

"a date in the second half of December is also derivable from noting at what times Zechariah's division served in the Temple"

As far as I could tell, such notions as to when Zechariah's division served in the Temple were wholly speculative -- just as speculative as those who improbably assert (based on the seventh-century Egyptian ecclesiastical chronlcler John of Nikiu) that "census records" preserved in Rome (where? how? why?) demonstrate that December 25 was the actual historical date of the Lord's birth.

[Stuart Koehl]

Isn't it an interesting coincidence, though, that Annunciation falls on 25 March, which marked the beginning of the Roman new year, and that Nativity would fall precisely nine months later? One would have to take into account just when and how the dating of Annunciation was selected before one could make any assertions about Nativity.

As for Nativity, the oldest stratum of the Christian Tradition did not recognize it. Instead, it was subsumed into the Feast of Theophany (or Epiphany, as it is known in the West), meaning the Feast of God's Manifestation. It marked the various means by which God revealed himself to us through Christ, including his Nativity, his baptism in the Jordan, and the visitation of the Magi. It was not until the fourth century that Nativity (which apparently first arose in the Western Church) was universally recognized and placed on 25 December. Outside the Roman ecumene, the Church of the East continued to follow the older practice of observing Christ's birth along with the other instances of divine manifestation. In the "Western" Churches (i.e., everything inside the Roman Empire), Nativity developed its own hymnography and liturgical rites according to the usage of each particular Church. Theophany/Epiphany, from its common roots, developed very different emphases in the Latin and Eastern Churches. In the former, the visitation of the Magi took precedence; in the Eastern Churches, the baptism in the Jordan--though, if you read carefully through the liturgical texts you will find that both Churches observe these two events, but give much greater weight to one over the other. In the West, Nativity/Christmas is by far the more important of the two feasts, while in the East, Theophany is far more prominent, as the richness of the liturgical tradition and hymnography of that Feast bears out.

[William Tighe]

"Outside the Roman ecumene, the Church of the East continued to follow the older practice of observing Christ's birth along with the other instances of divine manifestation."

They accepted it too, eventually; and of all the Eastern Churches only the Armenians have never accepted the 25 December Nativity. By contrast, I don't think that in the West there is any trace, anywhere, of observing the 6 January Epiphany/Theophany before the latter half of the Fourth Century; and when it came to be observed in the West there was a good deal of variance concerning what was commemorated on the day -- Christ's baptism, or the visitation of the magi, among others. In Rome, it seems to have begun to be observed in the early 380s, towards the end of the pontificate of Damasus; and St. Augustine observes somethere that the Donatists "differ from us" in not observing the day, which was not the case with regard to 25 December, and which in turn implies that 25 December was a "liturgically significant day" before the Catholic/Donatist split of 310 and onwards.

[Nick]

Very useful article as my background is probably lumped in with those "fringe" groups. I was aware of both this and Lab's arguments but its handy to have it in a nice concise article. Thanks much.

[boobo]

Isn't it an interesting coincidence, though, that Annunciation falls on 25 March, which marked the beginning of the Roman new year, and that Nativity would fall precisely nine months later?

If I understand the article correctly that pagan Rome dated the Winter solstice as Dec 25, then exactly nine months or three seasons before would take one to the beginning of Spring, a very sensible time to start the new year.

The coincidence might be further explained by the incorrect calculation of "Friday", 25 March AD 29 having been propagated by attraction to the nearest sigificant Roman calendar event.

[bonobo]

Heaven forbid that my mistyping of "Bonobo" be taken as a further shape-shift. (Stuart, can you think of a few puns on "Boobo"?)

[labrialumn]

Dr. Paul Meier points out that of the possible dates for the crucifixion, only April 3, A. D. 33 had a total lunar eclipse, which Peter referred to on his Pentecost sermon, and which Joel had prophesied.

Surely we all know that the real reason New Year's is on March 25th is that it was the Elven New Year, and also the day of the downfall of Sauron? :-)

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Surely we all know that the real reason New Year's is on March 25th is that it was the Elven New Year, and also the day of the downfall of Sauron? :-)<<<

Surely we all know the reason that Christmas is on 25 December is that is the day the Fellowship of the Ring departed from Rivendell on the quest to Mount Doom?

[bonobo]

BTW, I had assumed before that Dec 25 came from a possible memory that Christ's birth was around Hanukkah (25 Chislev) and that Roman Christians mistakenly identified Chislev with December. Plausible?

[Stuart Koehl]

Calendrial associations are ambiguous at best and misleading at worst. Romans did not keep track of dates the way we do, but used a series of eponymous years based on the sitting consuls (later the years of the Emperor's reign), and ultimately to the year of the founding of the City. The Greeks dated according Olympiads, which ran for four years. Jews used a variety of methods. Alexandrians to the reigns of various Pharoahs. Synchornization is a difficult task at best, made more difficult by the fact that partial years were considered whole years. Thus, e.g., if an emperor died in the third month of the fifth year of his reign, his reign counts as five years. If the next emperor died before the end of the year that he was acclaimed, his reign was accounted one year. So, we have two emperors occupying the same year, with no distinctions since fractional years were not used--that one year counts as two years in the annals.

Within months, the Romans dated from the nones and the calends, but there could also be intercalated days and other exceptions to normal dating. Not even the Julian reform of the calendar fixed this problem. You see, the ancients were just not into time the same way we are.

[Dnebiviza]

Break the made sleep olph hissed distant one our mission [url=http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/85114.php]diclofenac[/url] was dishonesty the sail one can jewel set structions without [url=http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/85109.php]seroquel[/url] was alert missing talent this another storm intensifie olph muttered [url=http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/85102.php]pravastatin[/url] the grass crusader who integrity and had its this reason [url=http://www.