Christmas and paganism?

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tabcom asked:
“Why didn’t early church fathers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen feel a need to celebrate the birthday of Christ?

What was significant about the mid-three hundreds that the Church felt it was necessary to take the pagan festivals that were celebrated long before the birth of Christ and amalgamate Christ into it?”

I thought I’d mentioned these earlier, but just glossed over.
Christians were subjected to persecutions until Constantine the Great abolished them in 324. Public celebration of Holy Days was in a developing phase then. Constantine used all forms of mono-theism to unite the empire to withstand the barbarians. Christianity was going public in a big way.

Epiphany was celebrated as a Holy Day earlier than Christmas. In addition to the visit by the Magi, Christ’s baptism and the marriage at Cana, they began to add Christ’s birth to the celebration. This is not to say that 12/25 had not been previously established as the day to commemorate His birth. Earlier homilies indicate that 12/25 was the commemoration of His birth, but Epiphany was the Holy Day celebrated. Epiphany was overloaded. A need was felt to celebrate His birth with a separate Holy Day. That Christmas was adopted so quickly by the various churches indicates that 12/25 was already the day established. What was instituted was the Holy Day, celebration of Christmas, not the 12/25 day.

Unless one is a very dedicated, and clever, sun worshipper, the winter solstice is not easy to determine. Takes about a week for the days to get a full minute longer. Rome was not a place of long standing, or dedicated, sun worship. We have no information whether the pagan Roman 12/25 or the Christian 12/25 is older. To maintain that the Church adopted a pagan holiday for the day to celebrate Christ’s birth is just plain nonsense.
 
Red_Wolf said:
Unless one is a very dedicated, and clever, sun worshipper, the winter solstice is not easy to determine. Rome was not a place . . . (for) sun worship. We have no information whether the pagan Roman 12/25 or the Christian 12/25 is older.
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**"The Saturnalia is the feast at which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of the god Saturn, which took place on 17 December. Over the years, it expanded to a whole week, up to 23 December.

Horace in his Satire II.7 (published circa 30 BC) uses a setting of the saturnalia for a frank exchange between a slave and his master in which the slave criticizes his master for being himself enslaved to his passions."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia**
 
tabcom,
I used the same source for the Saturnalia days given in the second to the last paragraph of post #11above. Seems Saturnalia had a sort of Boxing Day aspect. Heard that Julius Caesar set the new year at 1/1 because it took that long for the party to die down.

Think the long standing and dedicated are key, though. Is one thing to join a party once a year, another to be into the reason the whole year. Sort of like all the secular people who get into the secular Christmas celebration big time. I have a Hindu net friend in New Deli whose 6 year old daughter insists on celebrating Christmas, tree and all. Doesn’t make them Christians, or knowledgeable on Christianity.

Can you imagine how offensive this thread is to Druids? Arbitrarily setting the solstice anywhere from 12/17-12/25, depending on what axe we are grinding.

Allow me to get personal: I like your signature.
 
Seeks_God said:
From your earlier posts, it’s quite obvious that sources of arguments are EXTREMELY important. If that is the case, I would think that Wikipedia would be a source you would stay away from since it is not considered credible…
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:hmmm: You lost me on that one.
 
I’ll grant that it’s a work in progress, has errors and is not always without bias; they are working on that. Do you really think it unreliable for getting the days that Saturnalia was celebrated in ancient Rome?

While it is a handy resource, I do not consider it a proper source for something important. For example, it gives the Christian day of 12/25 originating in the year 221. If that information checked out from a reliable source, then the proposition that pagans adopted the day from Christians would have some support.
(The claim is that Sextus Julius Africanus’ Chronographiai set the day in 221 by advancing 9 months from the day of the Incarnation set by Tertullian. I can find others saying that but, only fragments remain of the Chronographiai and I’ve found no reliable source making that claim for them.)
 
**Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. It was not celebrated, commemorated, or observed, neither by the apostles nor in the apostolic church – not for at least the first 300 years of church history.

It was sufficient for the early Christians that Jesus, their Lord and Savior, had been born. They praised God that Jesus Christ had, indeed, come in the flesh. The day and the time of His birth had no relevance to them, because Jesus was no longer physically on earth. He had returned to heaven. And it was the risen, exalted Christ whom they looked to, and that by faith – not a babe laid in a manger.

Jesus Christ is no longer a baby; no longer the “Christ-child,” but the exalted Lord of all. **
 
So what. It doesn’t make any difference when the observence of Christ’s birthday started. What’s the big deal? It is not forbidden in scriptures. Those who have heartburn with it will just have to get over it or live with watching me and others celebrate it. If you don’t want to then stay home and watch TV.
 
ricko said:
What’s the big deal? It is not forbidden in scriptures.
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**
I suggest you and anyone else that thinks the Hebrew Bible is nothing more than supplemental stories before God gets to the good part, to do a study of baal (sun worship) and the grove (tree worship). From one end of the Hebrew Bible to the end of it, God warns Israel not to get involved with the pagan gods of the heathen. After repeated warnings, God destroyed Israel for it and will return at the end of time to destroy babylon again.

Rev. 14:8
And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

There was a 6 week thread that recently ended on the christmas tree and paganism:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=117881**
 
tabcom said:
**
I suggest you and anyone else that thinks the Hebrew Bible is nothing more than supplemental stories before God gets to the good part, to do a study of baal (sun worship) and the grove (tree worship). From one end of the Hebrew Bible to the end of it, God warns Israel not to get involved with the pagan gods of the heathen. After repeated warnings, God destroyed Israel for it and will return at the end of time to destroy babylon again.

Rev. 14:8
And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

There was a 6 week thread that recently ended on the christmas tree and paganism:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=117881**
Click to expand...
Bunk! (Again!)

As has been pointed out before, the things cited in the Old Testament and Christmas have about zero in common. No one goes out into "sacred groves’ (except maybe neo-pagans I guess) to worship under a tree, and the whole of Christian belief and practice concerning the Nativity has nothing whatever to do with the pagan rituals. Only someone with a very loose interpretation of the Word of God and an overly scrupulous conscience would even try to assert this stuff.

As I pointed out in the Sacred Scripture forum where this same thing was brought up, this is just another great reason to avoid the error of Sola Scriptura and another example of the correctness of Catholic literal interpretation and rejection of the “literalist” (or fundamenatalist) interpretations.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum.
 
Having now been tied by a link to the other thead on this topic here in Apologetics, this thread is now closed.
 
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