If the date for Christmas was determined by counting nine months from the...?

March 25 was traditionally the day celebrated as the anniversary of the beginning of the world.

So, biblically, I'm guessing somewhere in the first chapter of Genesis.

SeRiOuSly? on March 25th you say??? feast of "annunciation"??? ReaLLy??? There’s no command in the Bible to remember the Birth of Christ. Jesus was most likely not born the 25th of December. He was probably born in the fall. That was a date that was adopted by the church because it was the winter solstice and it was already a popular holiday in the Roman Empire. So the date for the 25th of December was really adopted from the pagans. Is it a sin to remember the Birth of Christ? No. There’s no command to do it. Easter, on the other hand, does come during the time of the Jewish Passover, which is in the Bible; but we’re never commanded to celebrate the Resurrection. What the Bible tells us to do to remember the Resurrection; it says Baptism is a symbol of the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus. Is it wrong to remember the Resurrection? No. I think it would be wrong to ignore it. Does it only need to be done during one day of the year? No. There’s no Bible command that says that.

So I hope that gives you a little background. Now there’s a lot of paganism attached to some of these holidays. Nothing in the Bible talks about Easter bunnies and chicks and egg hunts – that all comes from pagan fertility festivals. And so Christmas all had to do with the - a lot of it was surrounding solar worship and things, so, avoid the pagan trappings. Morally there’s nothing wrong with remembering the Birth or the Resurrection of Christ.

Happy Sabbath:-)

Megan and Susannah are essentially putting you on the right track, what you need to think about here is that the root of Christianity may be in the Middle East, but a lot of the modern influences are early European.

An explanation of counting back may be correct from a church viewpoint, but a lot of these feasts festivals and holy days (holidays) do not date back much further tha the early 7th Century in Europe, the origins of many of them are as late as the 12th Century, and the celebrations attached to them even more modern than that.

When the Christians first started to have influence was during the Roman occupation of most of Europe, but this was still many years after the presumed death of Jesus in or around 33AD (sorry by I do not buy into this BCE, CE stuff, we have a traditional calender, as an atheist is does not bother me that this counts from the birth of Christ any more than Wednesday is named for an ancient Norse Celtic god)

We can establish Easter as the return of fertility to the land after winter, it is named after Eostre, the pagan goodess of fertility in the same way that the female hormone Eostregen is, and was celebrated by the passing of eggs to one another, often painted, hence the brightly coloured wrapping of Easter Eggs.

The adoption of Christmas from Yuletide celebrations of the lengthening of the days after midwinter is well understood also, most people accept, much in the way that Susannah has said, that there is no harm in accepting the duel nature of both 'festivals', I would actually beg to differ, but that is a somewhat different argument for another time.

What is not often recognised is that almost all the other Christian festivals also fall on or close to other early European ones. The one you cite is interesting as it actually falls on or close to, changes in the calender make this seem less obvious, with the original date of the European New Year, this was often on or around the spring equinox, and would have fallen in the celebrations around Eostre, and is therefore yet another adoption.

To claim that it is a case of counting back nine months from the 25th December simply is not correct, as we have the addition of two months, July and August during the time of the Romans and the inception of the Gregorian calender to take into account.

In effect dates of anything in Europe much before the inception of the Gregorian calender in 1582 and the date of doption of that calender in any specific country make life very difficult in identifying when something happened apart from a proximation of the year without considerable calculation.

Added to the fact that a human pregnancy is on average 38 weeks, as opposed to 9 months being 39 weeks, with a variance of at least one and sometimes two weeks either side, the idea that counting backwards from 25th December would give you the date of conception of a child born 2000 years ago, in desert conditions as having been concieved on that date is simply nothing more than arbitary.

I know it's not the question you're asking, Rico, at least, not to the letter - but, really, why do people get so excited about the minutiae of scripture?

Scripture is a finger pointing at the moon, a signpost pointing to realities deeply hidden. It is a road, not a destination. What does it matter upon what day Christ was born? Those who use ancient writings to try to determine such matters are arguing about the warts on the finger rather than gazing upon the beauty of the moon.

The aim of religion, (in my submission), should be deep spiritual realisation rather than intellectual argification, which is a word I just made up.

Christmas was orignally a pagan holiday, in the 4th century they added Jesus to the mix to bring the christians and pagans together. Pagans got to continue worshiping Saturanalla so all were happy.

The bible says that shepards where out with their flocks when Jesus was born, not possible in the middle of winter.

His actually birthdate was closer to Aug. I think the fact that its not mentioned should show that celebrating it is unimportant.