It is probably a story not one (of those who believe in Santa, Xmas & all) wants to hear. Most religious leaders who know and have studied the history of religion, including that of Christianity, will be well aware of the claims on this interesting article.
After having read this, and inquired widely, and researched appropriately, I ask, as Lawrence Kellemen, does in his conclusion, how will you celebrate this one, and the subsequent Xmases?
The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’
birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the
baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked
interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C.
The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius
Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as
follows:
a.
In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from
ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC
signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of
Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor
Au
Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th
in the year 1 C.E.
B.
The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’
birth. The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the
baptism of an adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked
interest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.
C.
The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius
Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as
follows:
a.
In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from
ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC
signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th year of
Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor
Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c.
Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years
old, it was the 15th year of Tiberius reign.
d.
If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he
lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th
year of reign).
e.
Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put
Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f.
However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of
Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which
Dionysius places Jesus birth.
The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document
believed to have been written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus
birth on March 28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought
Jesus was born on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses
that Jesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.
How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on
December 25?
Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia,
a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During
this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could
be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong
celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the
Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected
a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures
throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th,
Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by
brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.
B.
The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in
his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in
his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread
intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other
sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some
English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).
As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th
and 19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto in Rome were
forced to wear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers
of the crowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome
sent a petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual
Saturnalia abuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to
make any innovation.”[6]
On December 25, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into
Antisemitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews
were brutally murdered, huge numbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.
Two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.
The Origins of Christmas Customs
The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with
the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were
recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.[7]
Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes
and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian
veneer by the Church.
by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use
mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.[8]
The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of
the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.[9]
by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below)
Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and
later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He
was only named a saint in the 19th century.
b.
Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened
the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they
produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11]
who sentenced Jesus to death.
c.
In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved
his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas
supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua
Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The
Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the
Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant
they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.
d.
The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by
German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden
–their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long,
white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When
Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard,
mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.
In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom
modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby
face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca
Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and
commercial idol.
IV. The Christmas Challenge
carelessly. For millennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept
away in the season’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider the
celebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.
Many of the most popular Christmas customs –
including Christmas trees, mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are
modern incarnations of the most depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.
On December 25, 1941, Julius
Streicher, one of the most vicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas
by penning the following editorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der
Stuermer:If one really wants to put an
end to the continued prospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish
blood, there is only one way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s
son, root and branch.It was an appropriate thought for
the day. This Christmas, how will we celebrate?
KELEMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment