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Hisalone
Guest
Why are you still here?
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LilyM
Guest
And what if you don’t know your adopted child’s actual birthday? Say the child is an orphan foundling whose birth was never officially recorded and both parents dead or abandoned it somewhere?
An educated guess might be made as to the child’s approximate age, but you couldn’t hope to know its specific birthday. Would you not nonetheless chose A date on which to celebrate each year the fact and miracle of that child’s birth and life?
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Irish_Catholic_1
Guest
We like protestant train wrecks
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Hisalone
Guest
My initial question was why celebrate Christs birth on a day that isnt His birthday.
Can we say today with all certainty which day Christ was born?
No
So is it OK since we dont know His birthday to just pick a day?
As with an adoptive child who I did not know which day was the birhtday I would chose a day which was closest by guesswork
the child appears to be 18 mos old so I will chose a day 18 mos ago.
Is it terribly wrong to celebrate Christs birth on Dec 25th?
No
Why was the date not chosen which was His birthday?
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Irish_Catholic_1
Guest
Because we don’t know his real birthday
It is okay for the Church to do that, because She has the Christ-given authority to bind and loose.
Maybe thats what you real issue is: Not Christmas, but the Church’s claim to have the Christ-given authority to bind and loose.
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graceandglory
Guest
I learned from the link you provided earlier in this thread (wiki) that it was because the ancients didn’t celebrate the birth of the “gods.”
Here’s more:
from the Catholic Encyclopedia link at the top of this page
oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Christmas
I hope you would show the same consideration and read the links we take the time to research and provide for you.
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Hisalone
Guest
Whether individual or collective the position is nothing but arrogance.
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Tantum_ergo
Guest
BINGO! I think you hit the nail on the head.
If Hisalone’s pastor said to him that, based on extensive reading of the Scripture, the consensus was that Christ had been born on day X and that was the day that should be celebrated, Hisalone would probably leap into compliance because he/she would be ‘assured’ that the “Spirit” had led to the knowledge from the “Bible” and therefore it was ‘true.’
Of course, if Hisalone’s pastor said to him that, based on extensive reading of Scripture there was never any indication that Jesus had ever had a celebration and there was no real ‘proof’ 100% for the actual day, and therefore, they were not going to celebrate at all. . .why, Hisalone would leap into compliance. Because, you see, whether or not a day is picked to celebrate, Hisalone is going to claim that the only real authority is Scripture and **that **is the only authority he will accept.
Of course, the fact that it is Hisalone’s pastor (or even Hisalone himself reading his leatherette Bible) who is interpreting that since Scripture does not give an actual ‘date’ that therefore one ‘should not celebrate’ , or that one should celebrate in “fall”, or “spring” etc. seems to escape him. He won’t permit there to be any authority but Scripture, yet he would choose the ‘interpretation’ of his non-denom pastor or his own personal view, even though the interpretations range from celebration to non-celebration.
Yet we fail to find in Scripture or anywhere else where Christ delegated His authority to some non-denom pastor in AD 2009, or to some random internet poster who sadly turned his back on the real faith and set off after a gospel that pleased his ‘itching ears’ and seems to allow him apostolic authority to cherry pick and choose. . .
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dianaiad
Guest
Think about what you just said.
Now think about how people celebrate Christmas. You are aware, aren’t you, that almost every Christmas tradition we cherish is of pagan origin? That the Christians ‘converted’ all these symbols (the decorated tree, the holly, caroling, the ivy,yule log, even gift giving…) to Christian symbols? That even the day we celebrate is pretty much the winter solstice?
Christians turned the winter holiday into a holy day, and keep it to celebrate the birth of Christ.
What’s wrong with that? We sorta ‘baptized’ all those symbols and made them Christian, so that most of those who use them are not aware that they ever had different meanings. This is a very good thing.
So…those of us who believe that He may have been born at a different time of the year get to celebrate His birth twice, and that is a VERY good thing.
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yellowbird
Guest
I agree dinaiad!!! I think it would be wonderful if Christ’s birthday was celebrated EVERY DAY!!! What do you think of THAT Hisalone?
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rovimax
Guest
If I did I would think that Jesus’ birth was on December 25th
I know but you are having your weekends on Saturday and SUNDAY
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Byzantine_Wolf
Guest
Actually God uses Rolex, which many Catholics possess, so I think they’re still good.
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LilyM
Guest
OK - so you are saying that if it so happened that YOU didn’t know which day YOU were born on, YOU would be upset with us for choosing, on the same day each year for consistency’s sake, to celebrate the fact of your birth and life, as every person deserves to have theirs celebrated? And if we choose a date which is meaningful for you or us (say the dayte that we first met you), you’d get upset?
As other posters have pointed out, 25 December is very significant, falling as it does around the time of Feast of Lights, Hannukah, which nicely ties in with the idea of Christ being the Light of the World coming in to dispel the darkness.
Believe it or not, there ARE people in this world who for whatever reason simply DO NOT know which day of the year they were born on, and cannot even guess. For example, if I were found wandering the streets as a twenty-year old with amnesia and my identity were never discovered. A doctor or scientist could guess my approximate (probably not my exact) age, but they wouldn’t be able to pin it down to the month, so basically I could be born at any time of the year about two decades ago. By your logic such a person doesn’t deserve to have their birth celebrated ever.
Another thing - why don’t I hear all this same angst and palaver in relation to us calling the year 2009 AD, since all of the same arguments apply? Jesus almost certainly wasn’t born in 1AD, more likely in around 4-6 BC, so why aren’t you insisting that we cease and desist using ‘2009’, since that date doesn’t refer to any significant period of Jesus’ life either?
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choy
Guest
the problem is that town in the middle of the metropolis, you don’t want to be caught wearing your business suit when some revelers approach you with a bucket of water
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choy
Guest
some kids in orphanages do not have their actual birth dates
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LilyM
Guest
True. I’m trying to broaden the examples beyond children to adults, though, as approximate DOB is much easier to narrow down with a child than with an adult. A baby or toddler you can often narrow the age down to within a few months at least. You can’t, however, say of an adult ‘this man/woman is 35 years and about 2 (or 6 or 10) months old’, for example, just by looking at them.
Hisalone just doesn’t seem to comprehend that there are circumstances where a person can’t even know even the year, let alone the month or the day, of their birth. Jesus is one of those people, in fact.
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Eutychus123
Guest
An early Christian tradition is that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. The crucifixion would have been shortly after the Vernal Equinox. Therefore the birth would have been shortly after the Winter Solstice. Thus, December 25 is an excellant choice to celebrate Christ’s birthday.
Yes, there were pagan celebrations for the Winter Solstice and the Sun. The pagans had a small glimpse of the truth. They were worshipping the physical light. The True Light was coming into the world and the world knew it not.
Location of sheep. How small of a village was Bethlehem? The Prophet Michah foretells, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are **small among the clans **of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
It was a small place. Some of the fields/pens were just outside the village.
I can’t prove or disprove a date based on where the sheep were that day. The shepherds had to be with the sheep, not only to guard against animals, but also against theft.
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Irish_Catholic_1
Guest
No, its Biblical Truth
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jmcrae
Guest
Yes, we do.
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exoflare
Guest
You’re amusing when you fruitlessly ask questions that (you think) you already know the answer to. If you’re going to make statements just to stroke your own ego, keep it a private affair.
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