How did December 25th become Christmas or Jesus' date of birth?

The Catholic Encyclopedia makes the following admission: “Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their list of feasts.” When apostate Christians began to fall away to pagan practices, Tertullian complained: “By us, who are strangers to Sabbaths, and new moons and festivals, once acceptable to God, the Saturnalia [and other pagan feasts] are now frequented, gifts are carried to and fro, . . . and sports and banquets are celebrated with uproar.”—Gal. 4:10, 11; Col. 2:8.

In an effort to gain pagan converts the Roman Catholic clergy in the fourth century after Christ took in this pagan Saturnalia on December 25 and sponsored it as the “mass of Christ” or “Christ-mass.” Christmas, therefore, is nothing more than a carbon copy of the pagan Saturnalia. This is generally admitted by historical and religious scholars. Says a world history, On the Road to Civilization, page 164: “The feast of Saturn, the Saturnalia, was a winter festival which lasted a week beginning on the twenty-fifth day of December, and was celebrated with dancing, the exchanging of gifts, and the burning of candles. The Saturnalia was later taken over by the Christians as their Christmas, and given a new significance.”

Only one thing I would add to the first post is why a date was chosen at all. The Catholic lectionary is designed to read the entire bible over a fixed period of time. Currently, if you attend a Roman Catholic Church every Sunday and Holy Day for three years, you will hear the entire bible proclaimed minus a few census passages and parallel passages that were already covered on another day. If you attend daily, it takes two years. Most Protestant Churches have since the 1960's adopted the Catholic lectionary for their readings as well and renamed it the Common Lectionary. Eastern rite Catholics, Orthodox and Copts use a different cycle.

So the question becomes, when does one read the nativity readings. If you would use the three year cycle, then Christmas would only happen once every three years. A feast takes precedence over the ordinary calendar. Easter, of course, was already a feast, as was Pentecost, Theophany and Holy Thursday. Theophany and Christmas are deeply related one being the birth and the beginning of his pre-ministry life and the other culminating with his baptism in the Jordan caping his pre-ministerial period. In the West, epiphany came to replace theophany and theophany was moved down a week, I believe. These are the proverbial 12 days of Christmas. The readings were considered too important to read only once every three years.

While the above mentions that Christmas was not in the list of feasts it is obvious from writings shortly thereafter that it was widely celebrated on different days throughout the empire. As December 25th was the custom in Antioch and Rome and as Theopany would then be close on January 6th which was already the date in the Eastern Church for Theophany, decisions were made to unify the dates of celebration so all Christians of the true faith were celebrating on the same date. Eastern Christians got to keep their date for Theophany and Western Christians got to keep their date for Christmas, Antioch being the exception for the Eastern date for Christmas.

Finally, and I forget the date, but I believe it was the late 300's, the Patriarch of Jerusalem changed the date for celebration in Palestine making the date uniform throughout Christianity.

It would remain uniform until Gregory fixed the problem of leap days in the calendar resulting in two calendars in use, the Gregorian and the Julian. We still have those two calendars in use to this day.

While it is likely true that it was chosen to destroy the same date pagan feast, early Christians did that alot, the real importance was the question of whether the Nativity story should be read once a year or less. Early Christians decided it was of sufficient importance to do once a year instead of once every several years.

Nobody knows His actual birth date (seems to be a day in spring). December 25 is shortly after the start of winter. Thus you have a play on words: birth of the "sun" instead of "son". For example, Romans celebrated the sun god Mithra's birthday on December 25. The early Church wanted to convert everyone to Christians, so it adopted this celebration.

Here is my answer to you, and you can make what yo want of it or decide for yourself what it is:

CHRISTMAS IS LIKE SANTA CLAUS

You know the Fatman is a fake and a lie, but you go along with it anyway, as you deceive the kids and make them future liars to their own kids.

The Dictionary of the Bible says that: By the 5th. Century, the Church (of Rome) had concerned itself enough to have set December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth. This had been the date of the Festival of the Sun God Zeus and to the Christians a greater light was come, Jesus Christ, the true light of the World.

Fact is - the Sun God is Zeus, and Jesus is really Jezeus, and the Romans worshipped Zeus, and you can see Barnabas being called Zeus by the Priests of Zeus in the Acts of the Apostles 14:12-13, in the Bible. Mithra was another son of Zeus, but Je-Zeus was Zeus come down as his own son, which made him strictly a Roman God.

Sunday is also the day that was set aside for worship of the Sun God (Zeus) by the Romans.

The Winter Solstice gives us the shortest day in the year, December 22, as the birth of the new Sun, so Rome shifted it to the 25 December in order to celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision eight days later, on 1 January, in accepting Jezeus Christos as the Living God of the Sun risen from the dead.

Zeus and the Fathers of Christianity did not know there was a Southern Hemisphere that did not share the Sun God Zeus or his four seasons, or his twelve disciples or twelve months of the year with the Northern Hemisphere, and it is for this reason that Australia celebrates Christmas twice each year, with the White Christmas falling in June but is called Christmas in July since they know it is a lie.

So Christmas and Christianity were as ignorant of the nature of the Planet as was Santa Claus of the South Pole, and just as the Pope was afraid that Christopher Columbus might fall off the flat Planet in his attempt to reach India traveling westwards, so were Santa Claus and Zeus afraid to go below the Planet and into the Fires of Hell.

When Pope John Paul ii declared the Shroud of Turin a medieval fake after having it scientifically carbon-dated in 1988, he failed to point out that the Bible describes the use of two shrouds, with one for the head and another for the “body” of the 100 lbs of aloes and myrrh, the other perfect hoax.

TRY SOME HONESTY THIS YEAR.

EXPOSE THE FRAUD OF SANTA THE UNHOLY.

BRING THE TRUTH OF THE MESSIAH FROM THE QURAN TO LIGHT SO THAT MEN WHO ARE BORN BLIND MIGHT SEE THAT THE ONE TRUE GOD CAN HAVE NO SON OR NO PARTNER

.

HE IS ONE, HE ALWAYS WAS, HE IS, AND HE ALWAYS WILL BE!

PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TO ALL OF HUMANITY!

Enjoy

When the Roman Emperor Constantine forced the Roman Empire to become Christian for political reasons, he superimposed the new religion over the old. Many old holidays were expropriated to the new religion. Saturnalia became Christmas, Laerteas (household gods) became Saints,and so on. this was done to make the switch to the new "ultimate truth" easier. It is all crap anyway, there are no such things as gods.

in line with historic, astronomical, and biblical archives, it incredibly is been desperate that Jesus replaced into no longer born contained in the iciness months, yet contained in the spring. Shepherds do no longer herd their flocks contained in the iciness, and scientists desperate the 'celeb of Bethlehem' to be Jupiter, for the duration of a definite astronomical occurence, however the date of the occurence fell in April/would. Christmas is widely known on Dec. 25 because of the fact whilst the Christians have been given bored with killing the Pagans, they desperate to attempt and intergrate their way of existence and make conversion greater handy. Dec. 25 replaced into chosen because of the fact the Pagans (then and now) have fun yuletide on Dec. 21/22, that's a occasion of the rebirth of their God into the mild, and the arriving of spring. the two celebrations have been comparable adequate that no-one complained. contemporary Pagans nevertheless have fun yuletide, alongside with the different traditions in yuletide, the tree, the misteltoe, caroling, yuletide log, etc.

Wow, excellent question. Jesus was born in march. I know it has something to do with the winter solstice and the christians trying to convert the pagans, and the only way the could do that effectively was to do it during their already celebrated holidays.

Jesus is a fictional character in a book of fiction.

The celebration in December was originally known as Yule.

Christians subverted it to undermine pagan religons.

Now, the tables are turning and christians don't like it much. Too effing bad...

To cover up the truth, which is the celebration called Winter Solstice for the sun gods Amon and Ra.

Yep..(above)