Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: brians@hpcljms.cup.hp.com (Brian Sullivan) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Christmas should be April 15th Message-ID: Date: 8 Nov 90 03:09:29 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Hewlett-Packard Calif. Language Lab Lines: 96 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I was recently discussing evolution vs. creationism with a group of fanatical christians who believed the Bible word for word, including the Flood and all that. So, I posted this response to them in which I tried to suggest that they should first study their Bible and change some of their religious holidays instead of attacking the scientist who propose that evolution is true and creationism is bunk. For all of the religious believers out there who question the "scientific method" and believe the Bible literally maybe you should look a the current religious mis-beliefs that occur today. 1. Christmas, one of the most celebrated holidays of the Christian religion should not be celebrated in December. The stories in the Bible are quite detailed and speak of Mary and Joesph going to the town of their Joesph's familiy for the Census and to pay their taxes to the Roman Empire. The history of the Roman Empire indicates that this took place in April or May. This is more in line with the shepherd being in the fields when Jesus was born. During December the shepherds don't have much to do in the fields. If you want to celebrate the birth of Jesus I would suggest that April 15th would be an good approximation of his birth date and has some modern relevance to the historical events surrounding his birth. 2. The God of Genesis rested on the seventh day. His commandment was to keep this day holy. One every calendar that I have access to Saturday is the seventh day. If you are one to take the Bible literally I suggest that you worship on Saturday since this would be better protection from God's wrath than Sunday, literally the day on the Sun, which was the day which pagan's gave worship to the "sun". As I see it, the early Church manipulated the calendar to suite their needs. Many pagan religions at that time had a major religious holiday during the winter solstice. These religions had as their celebration the rebirth of the sun as a major religious event. During the winter solstice the days stop getting shorter and shorter and started getting longer and longer. The early christian church placed their celebration of the birth of thier son right on top of this important pagan holiday to replace this pagan holiday. Likewise with Easter. From all that I can tell the early christians would just about do anything to increase the size of their flock and outright lies from them do not suprise me at all. Much the same a the charlatans that I see on TV today. -- Brian -- [The date of Christmas is really a non-issue. Nobody claims that Christmas is Christ's actual birthday. The day of worship has more behind it than meets the eye. First, there are Christian groups that worship on Saturday, e.g. Seventh Day Adventists. But most Christians do not follow the ceremonial portions of the Law. You may have noticed that Christians do not follow kosher laws and do lots of other things called for in the OT either. This really goes back to the beginnings of Christianity, when there was a heated internal debate over whether Gentiles who wanted to become Christians should be circumcized and take on all of the obligations of the Jewish Law. Jewish exegesis at that time (as now) was that the Law is obligatory only for Jews, who have a special covenant with God. So Gentile converts to Christianity were only required to keep to some basic moral principles, but not to accept obedience to the Law. (This discussion is described in Acts 15, so there is a clear Biblical basis for the concept that the Law does not apply to Gentile Christians. Paul's discusssion of the role of the Law in Romans and Galatians might also be cited.) The specific day of worship is normally not considered to be one of those essential principles. There are some nuances here on which there is no agreement, but what it comes down to is that everybody agrees that we should worship regularly, but as we are not Jews, there is no law that requires this to be on the seventh day. It appears that Sunday was chosen in commemoration of Christ's resurrection. The Christian term is the Lord's Day. This is more obvious in languages other than English. In Russian the day is called Resurrection. I believe some of the Romance languages use words that sound similar to the Latin root for Lord. I don't see anything wrong with locating Christian holidays on top of traditional pagan holidays, where there is no particular reason to choose one day or the other. This is almost certainly the case for Christmas. The connection of Easter with pagan roots is fairly indirect. Easter is a commemoration of the Resurrection. Unlike Christmas -- where we don't know the date of Jesus birth -- we do know the date of his death and resurrection. It was at the Jewish Passover. So Easter is based on Passover, though the exact way the lunar calendar is used is slightly different. It has certainly taken on some aspects of spring fertility worship in certain cultures, but as far as I can tell Easter eggs and other specific associations in the U.S. are not part of the original Christian holiday (unlike Christmas, which does seem to have been scheduled on top of a pagan Roman festival from the beginning). This argument is one that we have every Christmas and every Easter, and frankly I'm beginning to get a bit tired of it. --clh]