To OneGodBeliever- the list you gave me

[Mishael]

2 minutes ago, HAZARD said:

The birth of Jesus certainly was a great event, but no where in Scripture are we commanded to celebrate this day, and especially not on a pagan holy day. 

You can't prove it was a pagan holiday, Christmas has nothing to do with Sol Invictus, you quote myths not historical facts.

[HAZARD]

1 minute ago, Mishael said:

You can't prove it was a pagan holiday, Christmas has nothing to do with Sol Invictus, you quote myths not historical facts.

I did only you obviously ignore what I have written. Jesus was not born in winter.

History convincingly shows that December 25 was popularized as the date for Christmas, not because Christ was born on that day but because it was already popular in pagan religious celebrations as the birthday of the sun.

Shepherds were not in the fields during December. According to Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays, Luke’s account “suggests that Jesus may have been born in summer or early fall. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night” (p. 309).

Similarly, The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary says this passage argues “against the birth [of Christ] occurring on Dec. 25 since the weather would not have permitted” shepherds watching over their flocks in the fields at night.

Jesus’ parents came to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-4).

Such censuses were not taken in winter, when temperatures often dropped below freezing and roads were in poor condition. Taking a census under such conditions would have been self-defeating.

Given the difficulties and the desire to bring pagans into Christianity, “the important fact then … to get clearly into your head is that the fixing of the date as December 25th was a compromise with paganism” (William Walsh, The Story of Santa Klaus, 1970, p. 62).

If Jesus Christ wasn’t born on December 25, does the Bible indicate when He was born?

The biblical accounts point to the fall of the year as the most likely time of Jesus’ birth, based on the conception and birth of John the Baptist.

Since Elizabeth (John’s mother) was in her sixth month of pregnancy when Jesus was conceived (Luke 1:24-36), we can determine the approximate time of year Jesus was born if we know when John was born. John’s father, Zacharias, was a priest serving in the Jerusalem temple during the course of Abijah (Luke 1:5). Historical calculations indicate this course of service corresponded to June 13-19 in that year ( The Companion Bible, 1974, Appendix 179, p. 200).

It was during this time of temple service that Zacharias learned that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a child (Luke 1:8-13). After he completed his service and traveled home, Elizabeth conceived (Luke 1:23-24). Assuming John’s conception took place near the end of June, adding nine months brings us to the end of March as the most likely time for John’s birth. Adding another six months (the difference in ages between John and Jesus) brings us to the end of September as the likely time of Jesus’ birth. 

 

https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/biblical-evidence-shows-jesus-christ-wasnt-born-on-dec-25

[Mishael]

9 minutes ago, HAZARD said:

I did only you obviously ignore what I have written. Jesus was not born in winter.

History convincingly shows that December 25 was popularized as the date for Christmas, not because Christ was born on that day but because it was already popular in pagan religious celebrations as the birthday of the sun.

Shepherds were not in the fields during December. According to Celebrations: The Complete Book of American Holidays, Luke’s account “suggests that Jesus may have been born in summer or early fall. Since December is cold and rainy in Judea, it is likely the shepherds would have sought shelter for their flocks at night” (p. 309).

Similarly, The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary says this passage argues “against the birth [of Christ] occurring on Dec. 25 since the weather would not have permitted” shepherds watching over their flocks in the fields at night.

Jesus’ parents came to Bethlehem to register in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-4).

Such censuses were not taken in winter, when temperatures often dropped below freezing and roads were in poor condition. Taking a census under such conditions would have been self-defeating.

Given the difficulties and the desire to bring pagans into Christianity, “the important fact then … to get clearly into your head is that the fixing of the date as December 25th was a compromise with paganism” (William Walsh, The Story of Santa Klaus, 1970, p. 62).

If Jesus Christ wasn’t born on December 25, does the Bible indicate when He was born?

The biblical accounts point to the fall of the year as the most likely time of Jesus’ birth, based on the conception and birth of John the Baptist.

Since Elizabeth (John’s mother) was in her sixth month of pregnancy when Jesus was conceived (Luke 1:24-36), we can determine the approximate time of year Jesus was born if we know when John was born. John’s father, Zacharias, was a priest serving in the Jerusalem temple during the course of Abijah (Luke 1:5). Historical calculations indicate this course of service corresponded to June 13-19 in that year ( The Companion Bible, 1974, Appendix 179, p. 200).

It was during this time of temple service that Zacharias learned that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a child (Luke 1:8-13). After he completed his service and traveled home, Elizabeth conceived (Luke 1:23-24). Assuming John’s conception took place near the end of June, adding nine months brings us to the end of March as the most likely time for John’s birth. Adding another six months (the difference in ages between John and Jesus) brings us to the end of September as the likely time of Jesus’ birth. 

 

https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/biblical-evidence-shows-jesus-christ-wasnt-born-on-dec-25

If you were reading anything I said I refuted all your nonsense. There's no evidence December 25 was used in sun worship except certain records that already had come after Christianity dominated the Roman Empire, so it really bring some into question if the Sun was celebrated on the 25th of December who did the pagans steal it from? 

History proves otherwise and we have historical evidence that unblemished lambs for the Temple sacrifice were in fact kept in the fields near Bethlehem during the winter months. With that said, it is impossible to prove whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. And, ultimately, it does not matter nor does it prove it to be a pagan festival.

There is still one problem with using those calculations to arrive at a September birth of Jesus. We just aren’t sure exactly when the Abijah division of priests served. The priestly divisions were created by David and instituted during Solomon’s reign (1 Chronicles 24:7–18), but the Babylonian exile required a “reset” of the divisions and their rotation (Ezra 2). Zechariah’s division could have served in mid-June, but other sources calculate Abijah’s course to have ended on October 9 of that same year. An October conception of John would place Jesus’ birth in December or January.

•  

[HAZARD]

7 minutes ago, Mishael said:

If you were reading anything I said I refuted all your nonsense. There's no evidence December 25 was used in sun worship except certain records that already had come after Christianity dominated the Roman Empire, so it really bring some into question if the Sun was celebrated on the 25th of December who did the pagans steal it from? 

History proves otherwise and we have historical evidence that unblemished lambs for the Temple sacrifice were in fact kept in the fields near Bethlehem during the winter months. With that said, it is impossible to prove whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. And, ultimately, it does not matter nor does it prove it to be a pagan festival.

There is still one problem with using those calculations to arrive at a September birth of Jesus. We just aren’t sure exactly when the Abijah division of priests served. The priestly divisions were created by David and instituted during Solomon’s reign (1 Chronicles 24:7–18), but the Babylonian exile required a “reset” of the divisions and their rotation (Ezra 2). Zechariah’s division could have served in mid-June, but other sources calculate Abijah’s course to have ended on October 9 of that same year. An October conception of John would place Jesus’ birth in December or January.

•  

What you are promoting is PURE NONESENSE. 

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. 

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 25^th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

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).

    In the 4^th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

   The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25^th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

     Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.”  The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

      The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who  first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3]  Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4]  However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

    Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city.  An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators.  They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

    As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18^th and 19^th 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.

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”.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.

Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna.  Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January).  Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace.  The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas.

The Christmas Challenge

·        Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated 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.

·       Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

·        Christmas is a lie.  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25^th.

·        December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

·        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.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20^th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

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?

AUTHOR: LAWRENCE KELEMEN

 

[Mishael]

18 minutes ago, HAZARD said:

What you are promoting is PURE NONESENSE. 

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. 

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 25^th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

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).

    In the 4^th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.[2]

   The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25^th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

     Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.”  The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

      The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who  first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”[3]  Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.[4]  However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

    Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city.  An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators.  They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”[5]

    As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18^th and 19^th 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.

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”.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.

Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna.  Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January).  Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace.  The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas.

The Christmas Challenge

·        Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated 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.

·       Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescue mankind from the “curse of the Torah.”  It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism is no longer valid.

·        Christmas is a lie.  There is no Christian church with a tradition that Jesus was really born on December 25^th.

·        December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, and murdered.

·        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.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20^th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

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?

AUTHOR: LAWRENCE KELEMEN

 

Nonsense, according to scholars of Roman Religion, there were no religious festivals between Saturnalia (17th December, celebrated 17th – 22nd in some periods) and January. I am not convinced soltices featured largely in pagan religious thinking, based on my examination of the evidence. I suspect the obvious link may well be a result of modern neo-paganism where there are strong associations though with solstices. In fact my survey of ancient paganism has found very little evidence that the solstices were actually at all significant – it seems to just be something “everyone knows” again. Lucian was born at an era during which Christianity was spreading so it's not like he came before Christianity. Funny you quote from an anti Christian Jewish rabbi.

[Mishael]

Don't know how the Nazis are supposed to fit in with everything? Maybe they invented Christmas too.

[HAZARD]

7 minutes ago, Mishael said:

Don't know how the Nazis are supposed to fit in with everything? Maybe they invented Christmas too.

 

Because you just don't get it al all. This is to show how people will celebrate anything they are told to or are raised with regardless of its origin or pagan beginnings.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20^th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

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:

[Mishael]

1 minute ago, HAZARD said:

 

Because you just don't get it al all. This is to show how people will celebrate anything they are told to or are raised with regardless of its origin or pagan beginnings.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmas celebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s real significance.  If they do know the history, they often object that their celebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history and meaning.  “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday.  Imagine that they named the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness, gift-giving, and various pagan practices.  Imagine that on that day, Jews were historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that this continued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildren were about to celebrate Hitlerday.  April 20^th arrived. They had long forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  They had never heard of gas chambers or death marches.  They had purchased champagne and caviar, and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s real history and their ancestors’ agony.  Imagine that they initially objected, “We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerday party.”  If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you could say a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

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:

You can't prove Christmas is of pagan origin, you jut don't want to admit that you have no proof. I still find it weird that your quoting from an Anti Christian Jewish Rabbi.

[HAZARD]

15 minutes ago, Mishael said:

Nonsense, according to scholars of Roman Religion, there were no religious festivals between Saturnalia (17th December, celebrated 17th – 22nd in some periods) and January. I am not convinced soltices featured largely in pagan religious thinking, based on my examination of the evidence. I suspect the obvious link may well be a result of modern neo-paganism where there are strong associations though with solstices. In fact my survey of ancient paganism has found very little evidence that the solstices were actually at all significant – it seems to just be something “everyone knows” again. Lucian was born at an era during which Christianity was spreading so it's not like he came before Christianity. Funny you quote from an anti Christian Jewish rabbi.

Saturnalia – December 17 At first lasting only one day, Saturnalia was the Roman midwinter celebration of the Solstice* and the greatest of all the Roman annual holidays. In the late Republic it was extended to two or three days, celebrated over three days in the Augustan Empire and in the reign of Caligula extended to four. By the end of the first century AD, it was technically a five-day holiday celebrated in seven.

A cry of Io Saturnalia! and a sacrifice of young pigs at the temple of Saturn inaugurated the festival. They were served up the next day when masters gave their slaves – who were temporarily immune from all punishments – a day off and waited on them for dinner. After dinner there was plenty of clowning and merriment with wine as a social lubricant, sometimes degenerating into wild horseplay. Dice were used to choose one person at the dinner as Saturnalian King – it could be a slave – and everyone was forced to obey his absurd commands to sing, dance or blacken their faces and be thrown into cold water and the like for the entire period. The dice may have been loaded in 54 AD, when Nero was so chosen. He used the opportunity to humiliate Claudius' son Britannicus, apparently a poor vocalist, by forcing him to sing.

It was traditional to deck the halls with boughs of laurel and green trees as well as a number of candles and lamps. These symbols of life and light were probably meant to dispel the darkness.

It was also traditional for friends to exchange gifts and even to carry small gifts on one's person in the event of running into a friend or acquaintance in the streets or in the Forum. Originally the gifts were symbolic candles and clay dolls – sigillaria – purchased at a colonnaded market called Sigillaria which was located in the Colonnade of the Argonauts, later in one of the Colonnades of Trajan's Baths. Something similar is still practiced in Rome's Piazza Navona today. Gifts which could also include food items such as pickled fish, sausages, beans, olives, figs, prunes, nuts and cheap wine as well as small amounts of money grew to be more extravagant over time – small silver objects were typical – as did their acquisition. How modern the first century writer Seneca sounds when he complains about the shopping season: "Decembris used to be a month; now it's a whole year." At the same time, Martialis may have been the first sage to remark "The only wealth you keep forever is that which you give away."

Nor did the fun stop there. During the entire festival, the laws against gambling were relaxed so that everyone including slaves and children could gamble at dice and other games of chance, children using nuts for wagers. Men stopped wearing their uncomfortable togas in favor of the synthesis (a tunic with a small cloak both brightly-colored and also wearable by women) for the entire period and simply donned a felt cap, pilleum to show they were not slaves.

Away from Rome, Romans still commemorated the festival. In Athens, academy students such as Aulus Gellius and his friends dined together for the occasion, much as American students in a European university may dine together on Thanksgiving Day.

 

Festival of the New Sun – December 25 Originally not an official festival, but celebrated by adherents to Mithraism as the birth of the new sun. The Emperor Aurelian was devoted to a single sun god and during his reign this became a public festival complete with chariot-racing in the Circus. He erected a temple to Sol Invictus in AD 274.

There are lots of Pagan customs in Christianity because early Christians adapted their Pagan customs to fit their new Christian beliefs, hiding their original meanings and giving them new ones.

We can thank the Romans and Celts for most of our modern day Christmas traditions.

The festival of Saturnalia, an ancient pagan holiday which honoured the Roman God Saturn, took place every year between the 17th and 24th December. This was basically a week of eating, drinking and giving presents during the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice.

Likewise, the Celts celebrated the fact that the winter solstice had arrived and rejoiced at the fact that the nights were once more getting lighter and spring was only just around the corner.

The early Christian church tried very hard to ban Pagan customs and encourage its converts to follow Christ, but the people were not to be convinced. Winter was a dark and depressing time, and they were keen to keep their winter solstice festivities. Eventually the church realised that they were not going to able to ban all festivities, so they provided their followers with an alternative option, a festival which honoured the birth of Jesus Christ and eventually gave us the Pagan Christmas traditions that we celebrate today.

[Mishael]

8 minutes ago, HAZARD said:

Saturnalia – December 17 At first lasting only one day, Saturnalia was the Roman midwinter celebration of the Solstice* and the greatest of all the Roman annual holidays. In the late Republic it was extended to two or three days, celebrated over three days in the Augustan Empire and in the reign of Caligula extended to four. By the end of the first century AD, it was technically a five-day holiday celebrated in seven.

A cry of Io Saturnalia! and a sacrifice of young pigs at the temple of Saturn inaugurated the festival. They were served up the next day when masters gave their slaves – who were temporarily immune from all punishments – a day off and waited on them for dinner. After dinner there was plenty of clowning and merriment with wine as a social lubricant, sometimes degenerating into wild horseplay. Dice were used to choose one person at the dinner as Saturnalian King – it could be a slave – and everyone was forced to obey his absurd commands to sing, dance or blacken their faces and be thrown into cold water and the like for the entire period. The dice may have been loaded in 54 AD, when Nero was so chosen. He used the opportunity to humiliate Claudius' son Britannicus, apparently a poor vocalist, by forcing him to sing.

It was traditional to deck the halls with boughs of laurel and green trees as well as a number of candles and lamps. These symbols of life and light were probably meant to dispel the darkness.

It was also traditional for friends to exchange gifts and even to carry small gifts on one's person in the event of running into a friend or acquaintance in the streets or in the Forum. Originally the gifts were symbolic candles and clay dolls – sigillaria – purchased at a colonnaded market called Sigillaria which was located in the Colonnade of the Argonauts, later in one of the Colonnades of Trajan's Baths. Something similar is still practiced in Rome's Piazza Navona today. Gifts which could also include food items such as pickled fish, sausages, beans, olives, figs, prunes, nuts and cheap wine as well as small amounts of money grew to be more extravagant over time – small silver objects were typical – as did their acquisition. How modern the first century writer Seneca sounds when he complains about the shopping season: "Decembris used to be a month; now it's a whole year." At the same time, Martialis may have been the first sage to remark "The only wealth you keep forever is that which you give away."

Nor did the fun stop there. During the entire festival, the laws against gambling were relaxed so that everyone including slaves and children could gamble at dice and other games of chance, children using nuts for wagers. Men stopped wearing their uncomfortable togas in favor of the synthesis (a tunic with a small cloak both brightly-colored and also wearable by women) for the entire period and simply donned a felt cap, pilleum to show they were not slaves.

Away from Rome, Romans still commemorated the festival. In Athens, academy students such as Aulus Gellius and his friends dined together for the occasion, much as American students in a European university may dine together on Thanksgiving Day.

 

Festival of the New Sun – December 25 Originally not an official festival, but celebrated by adherents to Mithraism as the birth of the new sun. The Emperor Aurelian was devoted to a single sun god and during his reign this became a public festival complete with chariot-racing in the Circus. He erected a temple to Sol Invictus in AD 274.

All major sources regarding the dates of Saturnalia and Sol Invictus celebrations and feast days come after Christianity dominated the Roman Empire. There is no mention of the celebration of Sol Invictus in Roman history until the rule of Aurelian (A.D. 270-275). Aurelian did try to re-introduce the worship of Sol Invictus by decree in the year 274. But there is no record of this festival being held on December 25th. “The traditional feast days of Sol, as recorded in the early imperial fasti, were August 8th and/or August 9th, possibly August 28th, and December 11th.”(Hijmans, p. 588 )

Aurelian did declare games to Sol every four years. But there is no record from the period or early historiographers that these games were associated with December 25th in any way. The best evidence suggest that the games were held October 19-22 of their calendar. Anyway, on another coincidence, a year after Aurelian declared these games in honor of Sol Invictus, he was assassinated by his own pagan Roman officers out of fear he would execute them based on false charges.

The earliest calendar to mention that Invictus as a specified date for Roman religious life comes from a text of the Philocalian Calendar, VIII Kal recorded in an illuminated 4th Century manuscript called The Chronography of 354. In this late manuscript the date is listed in Mensis December (The Month of December) as N·INVICTI·CM·XXX.

Many scholars through the years have assumed that INVICTI in this calendar must mean “Sol Invictus.” This is possible. However, elsewhere the calendar does not hesitate to make explicit mention of festivals to Sol, for example: on SOLIS·ET·LVNAE·CM·XXIIII (August 28th) and LVDI·SOLIS (October 19-22).

Even if INVICTI does refer to Sol Invictus on December 25th of this calendar, all this shows is that the celebration of Sol Invictus was placed on December 25th after Christianity had already widely accepted and celebrated December 25th as the Nativity of Christ.