Scrooge You Part 1.

Ahh, the holidays, nothing more brings to mind the smell of roast turkey, the sparkle of lights, throngs of angry shoppers and the debate about the holidays. We all hear the following at least once or twice during this holiday season:

1. You should never say X-MAS, only Christmas!
2. It's not happy holidays, it's Merry Christmas!
3. We make Christmas too secular, it needs to go back to its roots!
4. Jesus is the reason for the season!
   
5. Not everyone is Christian you know, there are other holidays at this time other then Christmas!
6. Bah, the holidays suck it's the worst time of year.

So what do we know about the origins of Christmas? As we all know the NT does not give a solid date for the actual birth of Jesus. We do know he was born sometime between year BC 8 & 6. As to the month, it's anyone's guess. I've personally read differences from May - January. We just really have no way of knowing.I'm not really a historian so any personal views on the actual date do not have any true primary research behind them and would be nothing more then hypothetical guesstimates. In this case, I don't think the actual month & day is that important.

Winter celibrations are nothing new, Hanukkah is mentioned in the Talmud and other sources. Sol Invictus was observed by the Syrians as a way to worship various sun gods during solstice. The ancient Greeks held a celibration of Dionysis (God of wine) in which a festival was held in his honor. Early Romans celibrated Saturnalia which began as a feast day for Saturn

Early Christians really did not practice Christmas until 354 AD which is the first record showing a feast by Christians on December 25th. During the middle ages Christmas was actually very rarely recognized, the importance being placed on the epiphany instead. It wasn't really untill the 1200's or so that Christmas really took off as a celibration. But that lasted only a few hundred years, in 1647 protestants actually banned the celibration of Christmas as "trappings of popery" & "rags of the beast". Through the late 1600's the protestants even had the celibration of Christmas outlawed in Boston. Then, during the American revolution most Americans did not celibrate Christmas because they felt it was an English holiday. Everyone should remember George Washingtons famous attack on the British during Christmas of 1777.

The modern day celibration of Christmas (family, compassion, good will, etc) can really be traced to one man, Charles Dickens. He wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and after that book was published, Christmas as we know it today was born.

So the continual evolution of how society celibrates Christmas is farily easy to see I think. We are constantly adding/changing/removing things from how "normal" society celibrates Christmas. The Christmas we celibrate today isn't the same Christmas our great-grandparents celibrated. And, the Christmas our great-grandchildren celibrate will probably be different from ours.


On Friday I will continue this post dicussing the modern day conflict and what if anything in my view needs (or doesn't need) to be done.