Why Christmas is on December 25

Last updated on: December 5, 2017 at 9:35 am By Gene Veith

[From an old WORLD column]

According to conventional wisdom, Christmas had its origin in a pagan winter solstice festival, which the church co-opted to promote the new religion. In doing so, many of the old pagan customs crept into the Christian celebration. But this view is apparently a historical myth—like the stories of a church council debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or that medieval folks believed the earth is flat—often repeated, even in classrooms, but not true.

William J. Tighe, a history professor at Muhlenberg College, gives a different account in his article “Calculating Christmas,” published in the December 2003 Touchstone Magazine. He points out that the ancient Roman religions had no winter solstice festival.

True, the Emperor Aurelian, in the five short years of his reign, tried to start one, “The Birth of the Unconquered Sun,” on Dec. 25, 274. This festival, marking the time of year when the length of daylight began to increase, was designed to breathe new life into a declining paganism. But Aurelian’s new festival was instituted after Christians had already been associating that day with the birth of Christ. According to Mr. Tighe, the Birth of the Unconquered Sun “was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians.” Christians were not imitating the pagans. The pagans were imitating the Christians.

The early church tried to ascertain the actual time of Christ’s birth. It was all tied up with the second-century controversies over setting the date of Easter, the commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. That date should have been an easy one. Though Easter is also charged with having its origins in pagan equinox festivals, we know from Scripture that Christ’s death was at the time of the Jewish Passover. That time of year is known with precision.

But differences in the Jewish, Greek, and Latin calendars and the inconsistency between lunar and solar date-keeping caused intense debate over when to observe Easter. Another question was whether to fix one date for the Feast of the Resurrection no matter what day it fell on or to ensure that it always fell on Sunday, “the first day of the week,” as in the Gospels.

This discussion also had a bearing on fixing the day of Christ’s birth. Mr. Tighe, drawing on the in-depth research of Thomas J. Talley’s The Origins of the Liturgical Year, cites the ancient Jewish belief (not supported in Scripture) that God appointed for the great prophets an “integral age,” meaning that they died on the same day as either their birth or their conception.

Jesus was certainly considered a great prophet, so those church fathers who wanted a Christmas holiday reasoned that He must have been either born or conceived on the same date as the first Easter. There are hints that some Christians originally celebrated the birth of Christ in March or April. But then a consensus arose to celebrate Christ’s conception on March 25, as the Feast of the Annunciation, marking when the angel first appeared to Mary.
Note the pro-life point: According to both the ancient Jews and the early Christians, life begins at conception. So if Christ was conceived on March 25, nine months later, he would have been born on Dec. 25.

This celebrates Christ’s birth in the darkest time of the year. The Celtic and Germanic tribes, who would be evangelized later, did mark this time in their “Yule” festivals, a frightening season when only the light from the Yule log kept the darkness at bay. Christianity swallowed up that season of depression with the opposite message of joy: “The light [Jesus] shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Regardless of whether this was Christ’s actual birthday, the symbolism works. And Christ’s birth is inextricably linked to His resurrection.

UPDATE:

Premium Content

The Missionary and the Christmas Tree

Last updated on: December 24, 2007 at 11:24 am By Gene Veith

0 Comments

[This entry from 2006, which continues the case that Christmas did NOT derive from a pagan holiday, reminds us that those of us from European, yea, Germanic stock, had pagan ancestors who were brought to faith by missionaries.]

Thanks to reader SSchaper–also to commenter Puzzled– for alerting me to an account of the origin of the Christmas tree that goes way, way back to the missionary who first evangelized the German tribes. who That was St. Boniface. His apologetic technique to get through to the barbarians was to cut down the Sacred Oak of Thor. To the Germans’ amazement, Boniface did not get hammered. This convinced many of them that Boniface had the true God after all.

According to this story, after cutting down the Sacred Oak, Boniface saw an evergreen tree nearby, which he used as an object lesson to teach about the everlasting life through Christ, who died on a tree: According to tradition, when he chopped down the pagan Thor’s Oak at Geismar, Boniface claimed a tiny fir tree growing in its roots as the new Christian symbol. He told the heathen tribes: – “This humble tree’s wood is used to build your homes: let Christ be at the centre of your households. – Its leaves remain evergreen in the darkest days: let Christ be your constant light. – Its boughs reach out to embrace and its top points to heaven: let Christ be your comfort and your guide.” So the fir tree became a sign of Christ amongst the German peoples, and eventually it became a world-wide symbol of Christmas.

One of my students wrote a paper about the Church fathers and how they appropriated Greco-Roman education. They were extremely careful about distinguishing between the true God and the pagan gods. Those who believe these guys would conflate Christianity and paganism just have never read the original sources.

Premium Content

The New Theists

Last updated on: October 25, 2024 at 5:42 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Is religion, so beat up by secularism in recent years, on the verge of a comeback?

Ross Douthat, writing in the New York Times, no less, thinks it may be. In his op-ed entitled Is the World Ready for a Religious Comeback? (behind a paywall, but the syndication is available here), Douthat cites three new books that he thinks may be game-changers in the debates about religion.

He begins by pointing out that the New Atheist phenomenon, which was so popular on best-seller lists and online a decade or two ago, was a product of its time. Fear of religious fundamentalism after 9/11, the Catholic sexual abuse scandals, and the iconoclastic spirit of the internet all contributed to a widespread reaction against religious belief.

But all of that feels anachronistic today. Scientific rationalism has not solved our problems. Humanism has not made us more humane. Instead, says Douthat, we have “existential anxiety and civilizational ennui.” People are plagued by mental problems, lack of community, an absence of meaning in their lives. And researchers have connected that malaise to a lack of religion. Meanwhile, the “Nones” are turning not to the chilly certainties of reason alone, as the New Atheists hoped, but to psychics, psychedelic drugs, astrology, UFOs, and other New Age spiritualities that by any measure are far less rational than Christianity.

Today a number of former secularists have converted to Christianity. Even some of the New Atheists have changed their tune. Richard Dawkins still doesn’t believe the doctrines, but he now considers himself a “cultural Christian.” And Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom Dawkins once hailed as the “horsewoman” of the New Atheism has gone all the way and now embraces Christianity.

Douthat says the world seems “primed for religious arguments,” not just that religion is culturally valuable but that it is true. He himself , a Catholic convert, says that he has a book on that subject coming out next year. But he focuses on three other recently published books that he thinks could be game changers, “covering the philosophical, the scientific and the experiential cases for a religious perspective on the world.” Let’s call them New Theists. (Douthat doesn’t use the term, but we might as well. Though it’s been used before.)

For the philosophical, he refers to the American Orthodox thinker David Bentley Hart‘s new book All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mystery of Mind and Life. It’s a series of Platonic dialogues between ancient Greek deities who meet to discuss the mysteries of consciousness, existence, and mind. In doing so, in the words of the editorial description at Amazon,

He systematically subjects the mechanical view of nature that has prevailed in Western culture for four centuries to dialectical interrogation. He argues through the gods’ exchanges that the foundation of all reality is spiritual or mental rather than material. The structures of mind, organic life, and even language attest to an infinite act of intelligence in all things that we may as well call God.

Engaging contemporary debates on the philosophy of mind, free will, revolutions in physics and biology, the history of science, computational models of mind, artificial intelligence, information theory, linguistics, cultural disenchantment, and the metaphysics of nature, Hart calls listeners back to an enchanted world in which nature is the residence of mysterious and vital intelligences. He suggests that there is a very special wisdom to be gained when we, in Psyche’s words, “devote more time to the contemplation of living things and less to the fabrication of machines.”

Douthat comments that the dialogue form allows Hart to let opposing views make their strongest case, and yet his notion that mind–and thus spirit, and thus God–underlies physical existence is very persuasive.

Addressing the scientific is Spencer Klavan’s Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith. Klavan does something in this book that is long overdue; namely, thinking through the implications of quantum physics for our view of reality.

The post-Enlightenment view of science, premised on rationalistic materialism, assumes that nature consists solely of physical elements interacting with each other in accord with natural laws discernible by reason. But this materialistic order has been disrupted by quantum physics, which shows scientifically, that underlying nature and its laws are mind-boggling quantum phenomena that defy the simplistic reductionism of human reason. From Amazon’s editorial review:

Surveying the history of science and faith from the astronomers of Babylon to the quantum physicists of postwar Europe and America, classicist and scholar Spencer A. Klavan argues that science itself is leading us not away from God but back to him, and to the ancient faith that places the human soul at the center of the universe. Reconciling the discoveries of science with the truths of the Bible, Klavan shows how the search for knowledge of the natural world can help illuminate the glories of its Creator, and how the latest developments in physics can help shatter the illusion of materialism.

Douthat is taken especially by Klavan’s point that, according to the findings of quantum physics, “probabilities only collapse into reality itself when a conscious mind is there is to measure and observe.” Therefore, says Douthat, we must “accept that there is only one reality and that it’s ‘created when consciousness gives shape to time and space’ — created in some sense every time we look upon it, and created fundamentally by the Power that said let there be light in the first place.”

In other words, if there is any kind of objective reality, there must be an Observer. Not only to create reality at the very beginning, as the Deists thought, but also to keep it in existence at every moment, the richer teaching of Christianity.

I first heard this articulated by a reader and sometimes commenter on my blog, my cousin by marriage, the pioneering engineer Bob Foote: That quantum physics requires a transcendent Observer, whom we know as God.

Addressing the experiential is Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. His point is that the supernatural breaks in upon us all the time! From Amazon’s editorial review:

In his trademark mixture of analysis, reporting, and personal story, Dreher brings together history, cultural anthropology, neuroscience, and the ancient Church to show you–no matter your religious affiliation–how to reconnect with the natural world and the Great Tradition of Christianity so you can relate to the world with more depth and connection.

He shares stories of miracles, rumors of angels, and outbreaks of awe to offer hope, as well as a guide for discerning and defending the truth in a confusing and spiritually dark culture, full of contemporary spiritual deceptions and tempting counterfeit spiritualities.

The world is not what we think it is. It is far more mysterious, exciting, connected, and adventurous. As you learn practical ways to regain a sense of wonder and awaken your sense of God’s presence–through prayer, attention, and living by spiritual disciplines–your eyes will be opened, and you will find the very thing every one of us searches for: our ultimate meaning.

I would add to Douthat’s list of books Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World by historian Tom Holland, who shows that the beneficent values people prize today–mercy, equality, kindness, peace, the value of each person, rights, freedom, etc.–cannot be found in Greco-Roman paganism and emerged from Christianity and nowhere else. This one adds to “the philosophical, the scientific and the experiential cases,” the historical case.

We’ve blogged about Dominion already, so go to that post. The main argument of the New Atheists was that Christianity is bad, that it has had a baleful, repressive influence on Western culture. Holland’s book utterly refutes that claim and is reportedly a factor in the conversion of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I haven’t read Douthat’s three books yet, but I plan to. (I put them on my Christmas list!) I am working on Holland’s. Have you read any of these? If so, please report about them in the comments.

Photo: David Bentley Hart by Jjhake, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Premium Content

Christian Atheism

Last updated on: May 15, 2024 at 10:27 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Yesterday we posted about people who do not believe in God but are not atheists. Today we are posting about atheists who (sort of) believe in Christianity.

Many intellectuals are taking to heart the scholarship of Tom Holland, whose book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World shows how the humane and democratic values that we take for granted today and that virtually all sides agree on–such as human equality, the value of peace over war, compassion for the weak, etc.–derive from Christianity alone and cannot be found in classical paganism or anywhere else. Those intellectuals typically do not believe in God, but they recognize the importance of that Christian legacy, especially as it is currently being threatened by radical Islam and the new illiberal authoritarianism.

So they are claiming that, while they are atheists, they are “cultural Christians.” Even Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent of the “New Atheists” of a few years ago, recently said, “I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer, but there’s a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian.” He went on to say that “If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time. It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.”

I like the rejoinders quoted at Breakpoint: “Rod Dreher pointed out that for Dawkins to claim he likes cathedrals and Christmas carols but is glad church attendance is declining is like saying he enjoys eating but is glad his country’s farms are closing.” And Tom Holland said, “Secularism & Dawkins’ own brand of evangelical atheism are both expressions of a specifically Christian culture—as Dawkins himself, sitting on the branch he’s been sawing through and gazing nervously at the ground far below, seems to have begun to realise.”

My fellow Patheos blogger Michael Jimenez, in the post I referenced in our Friday discussion “Then I Prefer My Mother” put me onto another “Christian atheist” whose concerns are actually philosophical, even (sort of) theological, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He is a true atheist, a dialectical materialist and a Communist, no less. But he also draws on what he sees as the philosophy of the Apostle Paul and emphasizes the doctrine of God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ.

Let’s let Wikipedia explain his tortured thinking:

Žižek has asserted that “Atheism is a legacy worth fighting for” in The New York Times. However, he nonetheless finds extensive conceptual value in Christianity, particularly Protestantism: the subtitle of his 2000 book The Fragile Absolute is “Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?”. Hence, he labels his position ‘Christian Atheism‘, and has written about theology at length.

In The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Žižek suggests that “the only way to be an Atheist is through Christianity”, since, he claims, atheism often fails to escape the religious paradigm by remaining faithful to an external guarantor of meaning, simply switching God for natural necessity or evolution. Christianity, on the other hand, in the doctrine of the incarnation, brings God down from the ‘beyond’ and onto earth, into human affairs; for Žižek, this paradigm is more authentically godless, since the external guarantee is abolished.

So only through Christ can anyone be “authentically godless”!

Žižek has just published a book to this effect: Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist. Here is the editorial description from Amazon:

Slavoj Žižek has long been a commentator on, and critic of, Christian theology. His preoccupation with Badiou’s concept of ‘the event’ alongside the Pauline thought of the New Testament has led to a decidedly theological turn in his thinking. Drawing on traditions and subjects as broad as Buddhist thought, dialectical materialism, political subjectivity, quantum physics, AI and chatbots, this book articulates Žižek’s idea of a religious life for the first time.

Christian Atheism is a unique insight into Žižek’s theological project and the first book-length exploration of his religious thinking. In his own words, “to become a true dialectical materialist, one should go through the Christian experience.” Crucial to his whole conception of ‘experience’ is not some kind of spiritual revelation but rather the logic of materialistic thought. This affirmation of Christian theology whilst simultaneously deconstructing it is a familiar Žižekian move, but one that holds deep-seated political, philosophical and, in the end, personal import for him. Here is Žižek’s most extensive treatment of theology and religion to date.

And here is the table of contents from the publisher:

Introduction: Why True Atheism HAS to be Indirect

1. Let a Religion Deplete Itself
2. Why Lacan is not a Buddhist
3. From Superpositions to Athings
4. The Sacred, The Obscene, and the Undead
5. Neque Homo Neque Deus Neque Natura
6. Why Politics is Immanently Theological

Conclusion: The Need for Psychoanalysis

What strikes me from this odd melange is his Chapter 5, with the Latin saying “Neither man, nor God, nor nature.” As I understand him, Žižek seeks an atheism and a materialism completely ungrounded by anything, with no “external guarantor of meaning.” We ought to ground ourselves neither on man (as the humanists do), on God (as religious people do), nor on nature (as the scientific rationalists do). Presumably, this is the atheist version of walking by faith.

The problem, though, is that Žižek here cuts off the quotation. “Neither man, nor God, nor nature” is a partial quote from Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 220 AD), who for all his faults was the first major Christian apologist. The full quotation is “Neither man, nor God, nor nature lie” (neque deus neque natura mentitur).

Tertullian was arguing that if you honestly consider “man,” specifically, your own human soul, you will come to the truth of Christianity. If you honestly consider “God,” you will come to the truth of Christianity. If you honestly consider nature, you will come to the truth of Christianity.

Listen to him, from On the Testimony of the Soul (De testimonio animae). He argues that whatever you believe about the soul–whether you think it’s divine and eternal, or just a product of material atoms (sound familiar?)–it will not lie, but rather will lead you to the truth:

Now I invoke a new witness better known than any literature, more compelling than any theory, more widely circulated than any publication, greater than the fullness of man – which is to say the very sum of man. O soul, step forth into our midst whether you are divine and eternal as many philosophers attest. All the more would you not lie! Or whether you are not divine, since you are material as only Epicurus suggests. All the more you ought not to lie. Whether you are received from heaven or conceived from the earth; whether you are assembled from numbers or atoms; whether you originate with the body; whether you are introduced into the body after birth. However you originate, you make of mankind a rational animal, supremely receptive to awareness and knowledge.

Tertullian goes on, exploring the relationship between the soul, nature, and God:

Go ahead and believe in your literary sources; even more believe in our divine sources. But as for the insight of the soul, believe in Nature. Select whichever of these you believe to be the faithful sister of the truth. If you have doubts as to your own sources, be assured that neither God nor Nature lie [neque deus neque natura mentitur]. In order that you may believe in both Nature and in God, believe in the soul. So it shall come to pass that you will believe in yourself. It is the soul you value as having made you as great as you are. . . .

God is everywhere and the goodness of God is everywhere. . . ..The awareness of death is everywhere. . . and the testimony of the soul is everywhere . . . .Rightly then, every soul is both defendant and witness – as much a defendant against the charge of error as a witness to the truth. And she will stand before the court of God on the day of judgment with nothing to say.

Bracing, is it not? And far less tortured than the Christian atheist. Žižek is saying that man, God, and the self do lie, so that we should never ground our lives on them. Tertullian is saying they do not lie. Tertullian is affirming all of existence because it points to God. Žižek is repudiating all of existence because it points to God.

Photo: Slavoj Žižek by Amrei-Marie – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119893485

Premium Content

“No One Is Shut Out from This Joy”

Last updated on: March 25, 2024 at 5:08 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

“No one is shut out from this joy; all share the same reason for rejoicing. Our Lord, victor over sin and death, finding no man free from sin, came to free us all. Let the saint rejoice as he sees the palm of victory at hand. Let the sinner be glad as he receives the offer of forgiveness. Let the pagan take courage as he is summoned to life.” —St. Leo the Great

[Leo (400-460 A.D.) said this in a Christmas sermon, but it still applies! Have a joyous Easter!]

HT: Kathryn Jean Lopez

Illustration: Tintoretto, “The Resurrection” via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Premium Content

“Lived Religion” vs. Formal Religion

Last updated on: November 3, 2023 at 7:38 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Philip Jenkins of Baylor’s Institute for the Study of Religion continues to amaze me with the scope of his prolific scholarship, ranging from studies of Christianity in the ancient world through its growth today in the global South.

At the Patheos blog Anxious Bench, where he is one of the Christian historians who posts there, he tells about his latest project: “Lived Religion,” which is “the study of religion as it is actually practiced by ordinary people, rather than as is laid down by organized institutions, faiths or churches.”

From Lived Religion and Default Faith:

Imagine for example that you are trying to write a history of religion in the modern United States. I quote an excellent review by Ancient historian Peter Thonemann in a recent Wall Street Journal. Yes, says Thonemann, you could count all the institutions and their formal rituals, all the formal adherents of the various churches:

Or, instead, you could choose to start from the rich, chaotic mishmash of practices and rituals that make up most people’s day-to-day religious experiences. My religious life might include formal daily prayer; but it might also include reading newspaper horoscopes, yoga, charitable giving, putting flowers on relatives’ graves, erecting a fir-tree totem pole in my living room in mid-December, knocking on wood, dressing as a witch for Halloween, or making a wish while blowing out candles on my birthday cake. My own reasons for attending synagogue might be profoundly meaningful to me—loyalty to my wife, dealing with personal grief, an instruction in a dream—while bearing no relation whatsoever to the ritual’s official “meaning.”. . .

Once you get into this Lived Religion approach on a wider comparative scale, you notice that people around the world, in totally separated cultures, tend to do very similar things, whether or not these have any formal linkage to institutional religion. Some motifs are so widespread that they seem to arise naturally and intuitively, and prolifically. Those commonalities would include ideas about sacred space and charismatic individuals; about the proper ways of showing respect to holy things; about ideas of pilgrimage; about the quest for spiritual healing; about using portable objects to enhance benefits and protect against evils; about the power of fasting and regulating foods; and about various forms of divination. Those elements appear naturally, whether or not they are absorbed in some larger agglomeration of beliefs, and still less of formal credal statements.

He goes on to give examples, such as the impromptu shrines set up at sites of tragic deaths after school shootings, terrorist attacks, or auto accidents. The photos, messages, flowers, teddy bears, and candles are heartfelt offerings to the departed. And they mark a place that has been made “sacred” by their deaths.

I would add some other examples: The patriotic aversion to burning or desecrating the flag is surely a kind of respect for holy things. The controversy over whether athletes stand or kneel for the national anthem has a religious flavor, whether of honor or protest. Both kneeling and standing are religious gestures. Non-Christians persist in celebrating Christian holidays, as in giving gifts, decking the halls, and becoming especially thoughtful at Christmas.

I daresay such behavior persists even in highly secularized countries. In fact, I know it does because I have seen it. When I visited the Soviet Union, for example, I was intrigued to see flowers left at statues of famous authors and at historical monuments, a practice said to have originated with Communism, which considers religion the opiate of the people. I learned that when Russian couples got married by signing documents at the matrimony bureau, the first things the newlyweds do is to bring flowers to the local war memorial. These practices continue today.

If religion is defined not just as belief but as rituals, attitudes, customs and feelings that relate to a sense of transcendence and meaning, that would suggest that “secular” societies are not as secular as they think they are.

Is all of this just a remnant of human beings’ natural religious impulses, hard-wired into us at our creation? Or, from a Christian point of view, are they remnants of paganism best put away?

Let me throw in one other possibility. The word “piety” derives from a Latin word for “dutiful conduct, sense of duty; religiousness, piety; loyalty, patriotism; faithfulness to natural ties.” That suggests there are different kinds of piety, with different objects, though similar enough to have a common name.

We still use the term “filial piety,” the love, honor, and obligations that children have for their parents and grandparents, often associated with Confucian cultures like China, but also taught in the 4th Commandment. Such practices as putting flowers on the graves of deceased family members is not necessarily ancestor worship, but is an expression of family piety.

There is also a kind of patriotic piety, the love, honor, and obligations for one’s country. The rituals, symbols, and emotions of patriotism are powerful and meaningful, but they are not necessarily religious, something both Christian Nationalists and their critics would do well to realize.

Then there is religious piety, the love, honor, and obligations to God. The meaning of “piety” has narrowed to that sense, but we need not confuse the different “duties” and “loyalties” that continue to pull on our hearts.

Still, we can reflect on what “lived Christian religion” looks like. How do we handle sacred space, respect to holy things, and the other constants Jenkins gives us? (My wife will never stack another book or put any other object on top of a Bible. That strikes me as a very “lived” way of honoring God’s Word–not a requirement for everybody, not a superstition, not a good work, and failing to do so is no sin–and I’ve started trying to do that myself.)

What about those other examples of lived religion? Should some elements be Christianized, for example, substituting prayer for “good luck” rituals? Or are all or some of them, at least, harmless?

Image: “Sympathetic Woman Leaves Flowers at Roadside Memorial for Victims of Crime,” designed by Wannapik.

Premium Content