Which Came First: The Unconquerable Sun or Christmas?
I was reading Doug Wilson's blog the other day, and he mentioned something that I had never been taught before: He stated (rather matter-of-factly) that Christians owned December 25th as a day of celebration long before the pagans did, which is exactly the opposite of what my understanding had been. Here is an excerpt:
"It is not the case that our fathers tried to sanitize some pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As it turns out, the Romans did not celebrate the solstice, and their Saturnalia was on a different day entirely. There was one brief abortive attempt by a pagan emperor to start celebrating the solstice (with a feast to the Unconquerable Sun), which was almost certainly a response to the Christian celebration of this day."
Now I'm sure that for most of you this is old news, but just in case you would like to know a little more about the origin of the December 25th date, Gene Edward Veith wrote a good article on this subject in last week's World Magazine, which you can read in full by clicking here.
"It is not the case that our fathers tried to sanitize some pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As it turns out, the Romans did not celebrate the solstice, and their Saturnalia was on a different day entirely. There was one brief abortive attempt by a pagan emperor to start celebrating the solstice (with a feast to the Unconquerable Sun), which was almost certainly a response to the Christian celebration of this day."
Now I'm sure that for most of you this is old news, but just in case you would like to know a little more about the origin of the December 25th date, Gene Edward Veith wrote a good article on this subject in last week's World Magazine, which you can read in full by clicking here.
posted by DrewDog at 2:41 PM
3 Comments:
Dont know if its ground that needs to be fought over...and I havent read the guys book...and I have no strong opinion about it...BUT here are some fun facts for the mix:
1. The Saturnalia wasnt a day but a week long festival falling in the range of Christmas.
2. I dont know what postdates what but Mithras' b-day was also listed as Dec. 25th.
3. What about the springtime setting of shepherd keeping watch over the flocks by night?...maybe I am not up on what winter in Palestine is like.
Cool. Here are my thoughts.
1. You would know better than I, and probably better than Wilson. I was under the impression that it spanned from Dec. 17-23 (perhaps why Wilson said different day as opposed to mentioning that it was a week long). But I would consider you an authority not to be messed with when it comes to the Greek/Roman history.
2. Interesting, I don't know either. Veith seems to suggest in his article that Christmas was celebrated first.
3. It is hard to believe that shepherds would be out in December, but no one is claiming that Jesus was actually born on Dec 25. This came as a result of the ancient jewish belief that God appointed for the prophets an integral age- and since Jesus was certainly a prophet, and since it was believed that Jesus was crucified around March 25, his incarnation (date of conception) was as well celebrated March 25. This would put his birth 9 months later- Dec 25.
Thanks for commenting, now I have some more research to do!
Re: #2. Let me clarify: I'm not saying Veith suggests that Mithraism wasn't a cult or celebrated before Christmas, only that it wasn't celebrated in Rome first. Hope that makes sense.
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