On the first day of Blogging Brian brought to you a giant disappointment because he didn’t have internet – and an excuse for simply being too tired at the end of the moving. But on the second day of blogging Brian is going to write his butt off with two blogs. Here we go!
Lately, on my scouring the internet for all sorts of entertainment I have come across the argument that Jesus wasn’t really born in December but rather Christmas was placed in December in order to counteract the Winter Solstice and therefore counteract the Paganism that would take place on this holiday with holiness instead.
There are mildly convincing arguments for Jesus being born for every month of the year. However, the argument that Jesus could not have been born in December because the shepherds would not have been out in the cold is absurd. (I found this argument on the Hulu page for the Charlie Brown Christmas Special) The reason why this is absurd is that the climate is Israel is actually quite similar to Southern California. Shepherds can easily handle 50 degree weather. Therefore, Jesus probably could have been born in December but that’s not important. Trying to place a specific date for Jesus’ birth is just absurd. Scripture is silent on the date of Jesus birthday – therefore we should be silent. However I still have a few thoughts:
1. Why is this view as a bad thing? Instead of people having orgies and running around naked and sacrificing things they are instead celebrating the birth of the Savior with their families and giving gifts to one another. I can’t see this being a bad trade-off.
Christ + Mass = Christmas a celebration or mass of Christ. So we don’t know the date of the birth but this is when the early church decided to celebrate Christmas. So why does that matter? We celebrate most of our holidays based upon which day of the week they fall on and they change each year. Thanksgiving for example is a fiasco. Since we will never know if Jesus was actually born in April or August why does it really matter. We have enough evidence to see that he is real, he is God and he was born in a manger some 2000 years ago and he changed the world. I don’t think the actual date is really that important. The song Come Thou Long Expected Jesus places the thought appropriately it’s not about when he came, it’s simply that he came.
It’s December so I will probably blog about Christmas a lot – I love Christmas.