Is Jesus the reason for the season?

I should share that I cling to aspects of my former fundamentalist Christian faith and highly admire Jesus Christ (and his philosophy and moral teachings) and all true Christians. A message of truly unconditional love; of pacifistic love for not only one's neighbor but one's enemies; of divine judgment but of earthly non-judgment of God's children by each other; of condemnation of outward religious displays, piety, and hypocrisy; and of the triumph of the meek and poor is one that I embrace.

I'm not anti-Christmas or anti-Christianity, just annoyed by those whom I think have perverted the message of Christ to suit their own ends. Please note what I'm NOT saying (I'm not saying that Christ's birthday is something that his followers should not celebrate).

The "War" on Christmas

Complaints regarding "the secular War on Christmas,” “the spiritual adultery of Christmas," and reminders that "Jesus is the reason for the season" increasingly bombard us ad nauseum during the holiday season. It might not be so annoying if, in fact, those reminders were actually historically valid or otherwise simply true. Of course I couldn't let this claim go unexamined, and I'm not the only one who ruminates on this topic annually.

I should note that I fully recognize that December 25 has been a Christian celebration of the birth of the Christ child for centuries, and am not opposed to the same, per se. I'm not at all opposed to celebrating Christ's birth, so long as it is celebrated honestly and without deceit.

I should share that I'm appalled by the increasing materialism and commercialism that now define this holiday and have usurped the "spirit of giving" or Christmas spirit deriving from St. Nicholas. What has earned my ire is the revisionist idea that underlies the maxim that "Jesus is the reason for the season," and the falsehood this slogan propagates.

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body,” (Ephesians 4:25)*. “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator,” (Colossians 3:9,10).*

*Unless you lie to promote the faith and save souls or battle Satan and his godless minions. In such instances, God will forgive you.

And there I go again thinking that lying is a sin. Silly me. Christians can lie to promote their faith, God doesn't mind... Really.

Why December 25?

Most rational and reasonable Christians will admit that December 25 was declared officially and somewhat arbitrarily with Pope Julius I in 350 CE, a theory that originates with Sextus Julius Africanus in 221 CE in his Chronographaia with the first Christmas feast documented at ca. 200 CE, its practice having really begun in 337 CE with the Roman Emperor Constantine's baptism and having spread to Egypt by 432 CE and then to England by the end of the Sixth Century CE.

Essentially, church fathers in the Fourth Century CE became concerned by the the rise of Mithraism in the Roman Empire and sought to co-opt, appropriate and associate festivals celebrating the birth of this sun god with the birth of the Christian Messiah.

Pagan festivals ranging from Mesopotamia throughout Europe celebrated the Winter Solstice (due to calendar slippage, the Romans set the winter solstice as Dec. 25, now occurring Dec. 21 or 22 but then occurring circa Dec. 25) as the rebirth of the sun or sun god (including the cult and festival of the Roman sun god Sol Invictus by Aurelian in 274 CE), and scholars believe the fall birth/New Year of Christ was manufactured to compete with the rise of these pagan traditions and in order to associate the annual rebirth of the sun or sun god with the birth of Christ (to analogize and co-opt pagan tradition into Christian tradition).

When was Jesus born if it wasn't Dec. 25?

And, of course, while scholars disagree about the time of year Christ was born (some preferring a fall birth, some preferring a spring birth), most agree that Christ was born between 6 and 4 BCE, during Herod's reign.

Shepherding in the spring

Most scholars actually believe today that Christ was born in the springtime, a belief that derives from Luke 2:8 (KJV): "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night." Since the shepherds were still in the field at the time of Christ's birth, his birth could not have occurred in the fall or the winter as it was Judaic practice to send sheep into the deserts at Passover (beginning March 25) and return home at the commencement of the first rain, during which time the shepherds watched over their flocks day and night.

The Matthean "Star" of Bethlehem

Astronomer Michael Molnar has proposed a date of April 17, 6 BCE as the date of the birth of Christ given the Star of Bethlehem that appears in the Gospel of Matthew's account of the magi (wise men) observing the rise of the King's Star when they arrived in Herod's court. Molnar's interpretation differs from that of other scholars in that instead of being a literal star (a supernova, a comet, a planet, etc.), the Matthean star the magi refer to was instead a specific astrological event of tremendous significance that appears in the astrological charts of several first century astrological sources announcing the birth of a great king, a lunar occultation of Jupiter in the constellation of Aries coinciding with an alignment of the planets within this single constellation that occurred April 17, 6 BCE. Early Roman and Jewish sources do tend to support an earlier nativity than that often accepted by scholars circa (ca.) the year 4 BCE. His ground-breaking scholarship is probably the most widely accepted scholarly interpretation of the Matthean star to date, and is congruent with the scholarly consensus that Christ could not have been born in the fall or the winter given Luke's account of shepherds tending to their flocks by night discussed previously.

We may never know with certainty upon what date Christ was actually born. However, it appears that the best scholarly guess is in the spring, probably April 17, 6 BCE.

Problems with the biblical account of Christ's birth

A Census that never was (Luke's lie)

Likewise, others question the perfect synopticism and inerrancy of biblical gospels due to Luke's account of Joseph's need to travel to his ancestral home for the Census of Quirinius allegedly ordered by Emporer Augustus. There are three major problems with this account.

1. First, Joseph was not a Roman citizen. He was a provincial. All historians agree on this point. The Roman Census was conducted to determine representation in the Roman Senate (much in the same way modern American Censuses determine representation in the House of Representatives and provides data for the apportionment of tax resources), but it only counted Roman citizens. It NEVER counted provincials. Historians are absolutely certain on this fact. There wasn't one year where Quirinius broke rank and counted provincials, as the gospel of Luke claims. So why would Romans count a Hebrew? Answer: They wouldn't.
2. Second, the Roman census occurred in 8 BCE, not the Christian year 0 then-associated with Christ's birth to the gospel writers writing the gospels a generation after Christ's life and death (although as we see here, scholars tend to put Christ's birth around 6 BCE). Quirinius, governor of the Iudaea Province, ordered a more regular census in 6 or 7 BCE. In other words, the actual census of which we do have historical record did not occur when the gospel writers would have thought it did (which of course makes Luke's author even less credible).
3. Third, even if it did count non-citizens, it would not have required anyone to return to their ancestral home and would have counted them where they were.

Luke's non-sense. The inerrancy and synopticism claimed by hyperliteralists and biblical fundamentalists is certainly in question. This bears repeating because it simply makes no sense. Does the Census Bureau of the United States today require Americans to return to their birth cities to be counted? Of course not; to do so would not only be costly but patently absurd. Who would pay for these costs for the travel of millions of Americans to their birthplaces? Certainly not the federal government. Neither would Rome.

Besides, all it takes is a little common sense. What valid purpose or reason would be served by so doing? None. Just as today, we're a very mobile society, various push and pull factors in the Roman province led to human migration from one city to the next. To think that Romans would require every Roman citizen or even Roman provincials to return to their birthplace is patently absurd. So why then did Luke tell us they did when every bit of historical evidence stands to the contrary?

Why did Luke's author lie? Form or redaction criticism of the New Testament's canonical gospels known as the two-source hypothesis of the origin of the gospels reflects that the earliest gospel was Mark (ca. 70 CE) and that the three other canonical gospels (Matthew, Luke, and John, but definitely the former two) began using Mark and the Gospel of Q as a starting point. The gospel authors began with Mark and then, based upon the biases and prejudices of the author, redacted sections they considered incongruent with their interpretations or ideas of Christ, and added their own ideas to add peculiar emphases.

In this sense, the author of Luke (who, as a Gentile Christian, is also the likely the author of Acts) and an extremely well educated literate Christian, seems most to want to insinuate Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of messianic Old Testament biblical prophecy in his gospel. Hence, the Census of Quirinius fiction. Messianic prophecy said that the Messiah would be born to the line of David and in the city of David. Luke's account solves this conundrum by putting Christ's birth not in Joseph's native Nazareth, but claiming Joseph as being of the line of David and from the city of David, hence making Christ Jesus of Bethlehem instead of Jesus of Nazareth in transforming Christ into the unquestionable messiah. In other words, and said more simply, the author of Luke (who was not the apostle Luke; the gospels as we were falsely taught were not written by the apostles of the same name) lied in order to insinuate Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic prophecy, but, in so doing, exhibited his ignorance of Roman law, custom, and procedure which historians, Christian or not, cannot question.

Was Jesus really a virgin birth?

Likewise, the Roman philosopher Celsus's accusation that Christ's mother was a spinner who had been impregnated illegitimately by a Roman soldier named Panthera, was driven away by her husband and convicted of adultery stands in stark contrast to the biblical account (as preserved partially in Origen's response to Celsus in the Contra Celsum, all such early anti-Christian writings having been destroyed by the early church fathers). Indeed, some scholars speculate that Mary Magdalene is a construction of New Testament authors and early church fathers meant to obfuscate the fact that differing historical accounts supposed that Jesus's mother was a prostitute and that Jesus was sired by a Roman soldier name Panthera. Certainly fascinating...

Other (non-canonized, apocryphal, pseudo-apocrypha) gospels

The synoptic gospels (Mark [CE 40-70 CE], Matthew, Luke, and John) were authored between CE 65-95. We of course can look at the New Testament apocryphal works in general to see that the canonized, synoptic gospels weren't the only accounts of Jesus Christ. In fact, there were so many, doctrinal/sectional conflict led to the canonization of the four gospels most Christians are familiar with today: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (which I'll remind my readers again were NOT written by the apostles of the same name as has been taught by the church for ages, but by unknown authors).

We may begin with the hypothetical/theoretical Gospel of Q [CE 40-70] or the Gospel of M [CE 30-50] as source materials for the synoptic gospels (see also: the two-source hypothesis). Biblical scholars can very clearly see that Mark is the starting point for Matthew and Luke, and for parts of John through careful examination. Given the nearly verbatim, word-for-word copying of specific scriptures from Mark embedded in Matthew and Luke, scholars have hypothesized older source material for Mark (Document Q), for Matthew (Document M), and perhaps even Luke (Document L).

Then we could examine the Gnostic gospels: the Gospel of Thomas [CE 60-140], the Gospel of Phillip [CE 150-300], the Gospel of Mary [contemporary with Christ - 2nd Century CE], the Gospel of Truth [CE 140-180], and the Gospel of Judas [CE 280 ± 60]), which certainly put the supposedly synoptic canonical gospels into question...

Around 2006, mainstream media coverage brought international attention to the re-discovery of the Gospel of Judas (written in the 2nd Century CE; carbon dated ca. 280 CE). Much attention was brought to the significance of its emphasis that Judas was, in fact, fulfilling God's will and his servant, not the pernicious betrayer of Christ. This is a not a fact lost on those who take a critical view of the bible as literature and history.

Problems with the canonized synoptic gospel accounts. In other words, not only do other Christian mystical texts contradict gospel accounts (which were canonized because of their agreement theologically in theme with each other, and the others rejected because of their disagreement with them), but so do remnants of existing Roman and Jewish anti-Christian writings.

Summing up the problems with canonized gospel accounts

It is presumed that in matters of historicity, the gospels are the authoritative source of Christ's nativity. In fact, they are only four accounts amongst many more that exist of Christ's birth, life, and death. And as an historian, it is invalid to consider these accounts in a vacuum without the contextualization and differing perspectives and accounts provided by these other sources.

Methodologically speaking, the same is tantamount to writing mythology, not history. To do the same would be akin to historians writing history based upon exclusively Nazi accounts of the Holocaust in excluding all other evidence and accounts... Inherent in the same is a glaring conflict of interest. Typically, the most dispassionate historical sources are considered to be those not written by adherents of a particular religious faith, but outsiders.

Conclusion

I think it's very important to remember all of the same when this country's religious conservatives continually remind us disingenuously that "Jesus is the reason for the season." That, in truth, is a blatant deception. That's what I take issue with semantically. In a sense, it's a true statement when one looks at church history and celebration of Christ's nativity since the third century CE, but I hope to have provided a more nuanced distinction in sharing how Christmas is actually an amalgam of Christian and pagan tradition over centuries.

I hope you agree, and will share my blog post with your loved ones (forward as an email, repost as a bulletin or blog, etc.).

I've included some video shorts below for your educational edification on these matters. The first is highly recommended in exploring the roots of all of our Christmas traditions in an unmistakable pagan context.

Multimedia/video

The Origins of Christmas (1999, Canadian Learning Television, 45 minutes)

This 45 minute expose examines the true origins of Christmas in pagan tradition from Mesopotamia to Rome to Europe.

The Origins of Christmas

Argh... There were two short videos on the History Channel's website that they've since removed... Oh well...

The History Channel’s History of Christmas (they don’t apparently like bloggers to embed their video).