In a few days from now, it will be Christmas. For those who don’t know, Christmas is the annual Christian festival held in commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas, meaning ‘Christ’s Mass,’ I.e the Mass celebrating the birth of Christ (the cynosure of Christianity), remains the most celebrated period ornamented with pomp and pageantry among Christians.
For a very long time, the verity of Jesus’ existence has remained in question among custodians of history, scholars, and some curious students of theology and experts in the same field. However, assuming his existence was, in fact, true — for the sake of this argument — the Bible which provides the lead account on his life fails to establish a nexus between the 25th of the month of Yellow Narcissus and his parturition.
The parturition of Jesus, according to the accounts in the Bible, did not occur in the month of December; — as far as the geographical indications which replaced actual date and time in the Bible goes. On the night of Jesus’ parturition, according to Luke in the Bible, there were “shepherds staying in the field nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep.” Hence, one could draw an analogy centred on the average weather condition in Bethlehem, and infer that if Jesus had been born in December, the "shepherds" would likely not be out at night tending their flock because it would be too cold to do so.
We are, therefore, left with the question: When was Jesus born? But this isn’t our focus today, so let’s move on and leave the topic for another day.Since we have established through Biblically drawn circumstances that it is unlikely for Jesus to be born in December
— still assuming his reputed existence in Christian folklore is not false — we are then left with the question of how Christians came to accept December 25 as Christmas Day. Again, there is not a slight indication that December 25 was Biblically decreed or even observed to become an annual Christian liturgy as it is today. Interestingly, a microscopic exploration of the past has revealed that Christmas is of Roman origin.
Britannica explains that the term Yule, which is now the archaic term for Christmas, may have derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter solstice.
The winter solstice, according to a spiritual signification by Forever Conscious , "[c]elebrates the longest hours of darkness or the rebirth of the sun and is believed to hold [a] powerful energy for regeneration, renewal and self-reflection.” The account went further to explain that “In Pagan times the winter solstice was referred to as Yule and was a celebration of the Goddess (Moon) energy. It was believed that on this day, the moon would give birth to the sun."
Worthy of note also, is the fact that December, in Ancient Rome, used to be the umbrella month for observing one of the four Agonia (an archaic religious observance in honour of various deities). It was also the umbrella month for celebrating multiple Roman Festivals including but not limited to Consualia, Saturnalia, Divalia, Larentalia and Sol Invictus (the sun god also known as “Unconquered Sun”).
It was the Sol Invictus festival that Romanians held on December 25 until around 350A.D. when Pope Julius 1 declared December 25 as Jesus’ birthday. Sequel to this declaration, an annual ritual was born and the ritual has endured till this day in Christianity.
From this background, one need not dally to state that Christmas is essentially of 'pagan' origin.
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