Syndicate
Related Websites
Our Sunday service is at 10:00 AM.
View Map | Learn More
Why December 25 by Richard Ostling (AP)
Posted by Ed and Lois
In simultaneous pre-Christmas cover stories, Time and Newsweek magazines sifted with skepticism the narratives of Jesus’ birth in Matthew and Luke, the only accounts we have since no other chroniclers recorded this obscure peasant’s nativity.
It’s far less important than those historical debates, but there’s also a small disagreement about why the church later chose Dec. 25 for Christmas. Two main theories compete
One notes that in A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated Dec. 25 as the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” celebration, at the calendar point when daylight began to lengthen. Supposedly, Christians then borrowed the date and devised Christmas to compete with paganism.
William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College, champions the exact opposite theory.
Tighe acknowledged that the first hard evidence of Christmas occurring on Dec. 25 isn’t found until A.D. 336 and the date only became a fixed festival in Constantinople in 379.
However, the definitive “Handbook of Biblical Chronology” by professor Jack Finegan (Hendrickson, 1998 revised edition) cites an important reference in the “Chronicle” written by Hippolytus of Rome three decades before Aurelian launched his festival. Hippolytus said Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25.
Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendar——long before Christmas also became a festival.
Full Post http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2004/12/23/special_reports/religion/21_50_1412_22_04.txt