Be Ye Separate

A Day for Christmas

{ 18:33, Saturday, November 22, 2008 } { Posted in Country Doin's } { 0 comments } { Link }

Blessings!

I wanted to share one of our favorite things...researching and learning about the origins of things. In this case...Christmas:)

Christmas Day

In pre-Christian times, the birth of the "Unconquered Sun" was the most important festival of the Roman Empire. In adapting some of the practices of non-Christian festivals, the early Christian church captured the spirit of the festival, which was rebirth, and transformed it to signify the coming of Christ. Thus, Christmas now celebrates the birth of the "Unconquered SON".

In all Christendom, Christmas remains the most festive holiday of all the year. But it has not always been so. The history of the day owes much to those secular winter celebrations. Christmas past has ranged from lavish celebrations to actual bans on any observance at all. Added to this mix of sacred and secular, celebrations and bans, were charming and unique customs from many cultures, all of which contributed much to what is now the rich tradition of Christmas Day.

A Day For Christmas

The Gospel stories of Jesus' birth do not reveal to us the year or the date of His nativity. Biblical scholars have long agreed, however, that there is enough factual evidence to place Jesus' birthday in the year 6B.C. We are told that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, and it is known that Herod's reign ended with his death in 4B.C. Just before he died, Herod ordered all male children under the age of two to be executed. His order, issued out of fear, was meant to rid the world of the boy being hailed as the new King of the Jews. Jesus, if He were born in 6B.C., would have been approaching the age of two when Herod's violent decree was issued.

For more than three centuries, as Christianity spread slowly throughout the world, Christians remembered and celebrated the birth of Christ on different days and in different fashions; it was not until the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity that December 25 became the official Christmas Day. Constantine had taken root in Roman culture in the third century A.D. On December 25th, Mithraists celebrated the festival of Dies Invicti Solis, or the Day of the Invincible Sun, in honor of Mithra, who was said to have been born on this date. When Constantine declared himself a believer in Jesus Christ, he left Mithra behind, but he decreed the official Roman day of celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ to be December 25, the same day as the celebration of Mithra. This was also the season of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia and the Kalends of January, two highly spirited celebrations marked by great feasting and revelry. In those days, Christianity grew in a world full of mythology, superstition, and competing gods; and Constantine understood that the best means of winning converts was not by forbidding the old celebrations, but by turning the old traditions to the new Christian purpose.

One element almost all pre-Christian cultures and religions shared was the winter solstice celebration--rituals and festivals meant to help the people through the darkest, shortest days of the year and hasten the return of spring. Christmas Day became the new center of the winter solstice, and Jesus Christ the new light in the darkest time of the year. In 350 A.D., Pope Julius I decreed December 25 as the official Christian celebration day for the birth of Jesus. Two centuries later, Roman Emperor Justinian gave further permanence to the date by declaring it a civil holiday on which all work must cease. Jesus Christ may not have been born on December 25, but more than fifteen hundred years have proven that there is no more wonderful time to celebrate His arrival.

I have many more to share but I thought this would be a good start:)

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

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