Video: What if Jesus Were Born in the 21st Century?

My friend Mark posted a funny video about what might happen if Jesus were born in today's digital world.  You can check out that post at "Mark's Musings," here.  Enjoy. 

Why is Christmas Celebrated on December 25th?

 Last week, after discussing the non-Pagan roots of Christmas, I got this comment on that blog entry:

There is no evidence that Jesus was born on Dec. 25 nor in the winter for that matter. 

I could only think of one thing to say: well, duh. Everyone knows that.  And no one cares.  Did "anonymous" think that this would be some terrible blow to my self-esteem?  (John Gram, friend and fellow blogger, gave this anonymous contributor a proper response in his own comment.)  Here's the facts about December 25th:

Dating events from antiquity is very difficult.  In fact, for a very long time in mankind's history no even cared about chronology.  It's surprising to us, but even the intelligent Greeks didn't know when the battle of Troy took place, for example.  Eratosthenes would attempt to place events like that one in a timeline, but he was unusual for doing so.  The Greeks were happy to remember the lessons of the event and ignore the details.  (George Feeney has written a book called Caesar's Calendar that discusses man's apathy toward calendar dating until recent times, if you are interested in reading more about this.)

As a result, it's no surprise that we don't know when when Jesus was born.  The Bible doesn't give us much in the way of dates; in fact, the most specific dates we can discern come from passages like "In the year that king Uzziah died..." which is how ancient historians kept records.  No years, just landmark events to provide some context.  This sort of thing tells us approximately when something happened, and only more modern historians would later try to work out the exact dates.

The early church probably had no idea when Jesus was born (their big holiday was Easter, anyway), and since they were facing persecution they didn't really have the time to figure it out while running for their lives from Roman troops.  The Romans also burned the Christian documents and buildings, so if these records ever did exist then we would have lost them. 

Because these early people did not concern themselves greatly with exact chronology, the arbitrary choosing of December 25th as Christmas Day is not a serious issue.  Christmas is not a superstitious festival for Believers who think that they must celebrate Jesus' birth only on a specific date.  It's a time for reflection on Jesus' birth and the implications of His birth.  Any date on the calendar will do.

People like to say that December 25th was chosen because it was a Pagan holiday, but there is no documentation to support this.  Early church records indicate that church leaders were not interested in copying local polytheistic customs.  And, as I've said before, this is sort of an unfair thing to say.  Every day on the calendar was a holiday for some religion, so if the church had gone with a different date we would be hearing the same argument.

But, going back to the original complaint, I hear it said often that December 25th is a stupid time to celebrate Christmas.  I read an article at Relevant.com recently that explained the tired old adage about shepherds watching their flocks by night:

According to biblical scholars, it’s unlikely that the Christ child arrived on the day we celebrate Christmas—or even during the winter season. For one thing, we’re told of shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). Decembers in Bethlehem are cold and regularly drop below freezing once it gets dark...

(You know what bugs me?  I write original things on the site each week, but real journalists who are paid to write just rehash old conversations that everyone has heard before.  But I digress.)

According to Weather.com, the average low temperature in Bethlehem is 42 degrees (F) - not below freezing.  I know people who camp out in freezing weather for fun, so this old argument is not very good.  Also, climates change over time, and unless you are an expert in late antique middle-eastern climate then you aren't qualified to know the temperature in Israel 2,000 years ago.  Plenty of winter nights in December are warm enough to watch sheep by a fire.  (By the way, Relevant.com writers, you are supposed to quote your sources instead of just saying "According to biblical scholars..."  Wikipedia even has higher standards than that.)

But it doesn't matter, because everyone in the church is aware that the date is arbitrary.  For those of you who think that nitpicking this date is a form of attacking the church, you should know that we Believers are well aware of our history and are only interested in remembering Christmas, not scrutinizing a calendar.

Christmas Music - The Bad and the Good

I love Christmas time, and I especially love the music.

In theory.

In reality, I cover my ears when most Christmas songs are playing and people think that I'm the Grinch.  But when good musicians make Christmas music then life is good.  Here's what I think is wrong, and right, about Christmas music.

The Bad

Too Much Santa - I don't mind Santa Claus.  I know that many people think that it's evil to tell your kids about an altruistic saint who gives people presents, but I don't.  (So far, exactly zero criminals have traced their evil ways to 'Santa Disillusionment.')  But during the holidays I hear way too much Santa music on popular radio.  While buying groceries I have to endure every single song about Santa, and sometimes different versions of the same song since there are only so many.  The holiday season is bigger than Rudolph, but when you insist on removing religion and deeper meanings from the season you end up with nothing but playful children's songs on the radio.  When those songs lack a bigger context then you have a pretty empty holiday.

The Worst of Pop Music - Studios don't put much effort into Christmas songs.  Pop stars who have no career (or who's career is tanking) are sent into the studio to record cheesy versions of 'Frosty the Snowman' or 'Winter Wonderland.'  The music is derivative.  The singing is dull.  The arrangements are not interesting.  Nothing new is brought to the songs.  Instead, they give us pop music's weakest attempt.  Pop music is bad enough, but when these artists and their studios are not even trying to reach their normal state of mediocrity then we get some really bad music.  I understand why non-Believers hate Christmas when I have to listen to this stuff.  (I would put Mariah Carey's work in this category, but legions of women threaten to descend upon me with blunt weapons when I criticize 'All I Want for Christmas is You.')

The Good

Sufjan Stephens - Everyone's favorite indie star has made some of the best Christmas music that I've ever heard.  According to rumor, he hated Christmas because of its commercialism, but found new meaning in the holiday and then began to love it like he was a child again.  His Christmas work covers some traditional songs ('Joy to the World,' I Saw Three Ships,' etc.) with very good arrangements that are, in my mind, the new "definitive" versions of some of these songs.  And the original songs he wrote for the album are great, too.  It's very inspired music that comes from a man who truly loves the holiday.  The album is called Songs for Christmas.

Yo-Yo Ma - The best Christmas music, as far as skill and composition is concerned, is most certainly found on Yo-Yo Ma: Songs for Joy and Peace.  I don't own many albums with better musicians and better arrangements.  This album brought together some of the finest musicians in the world (Yo-Yo Ma is the most famous cellist alive) and recorded them playing beautiful arrangements of traditional Christmas songs.  I listen to it all year, because the music is just that good.  The songs include old classics like 'Wexford Carol' and 'Wassail Song,' but it also has James Taylor doing 'Here Comes the Sun' and a musical arrangement of 'Happy Xmas (The War is Over).'  I can't recommend a better album for the season.  If I only got to have one Christmas album, it might be this one.

Vince Guaraldi - Guaraldi is the jazz genius behind the classic Merry Christmas Charlie Brown album.  It's great.  If you haven't heard it, try to find some recordings of 'Christmas is Coming' or 'What Child is This' and see if that doesn't put you in the holiday spirit.  If you only remember the music as little kids singing boring songs, then you should really go back and check out the good stuff from Guaraldi's piano.

That's it.  Of course, I could have mentioned certain individual recordings (Bing Crosby's recording of 'Do You Hear What I Hear' comes to mind), but I tried to stick with entire albums.  What albums did I leave out?

Edit: Oops, I forgot one.  In the comment section, Brian reminded me of Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb album.  it's very good, and tells the biblical story of Jesus through many excellent songs.  I saw the live performance and it was wonderful.

Was Christmas a Pagan Holiday? No.

"Christmas is based on a Pagan holiday!"  I've been hearing these accusations my whole life, and I'm happy to tell you that these claims have no grounding in history.  Last year, someone came to my site and gave me all of the normal arguments, and I discovered that they were just copying and pasting from a webpage over at ReligiousTolerance.org.  (A website that is dedicated to the intolerance of Christianity.)  I can't tell what the site is arguing, because the statements they make contradict each other, but it is a good collection of the sort of things people say about Christmas and its origins.

We'll start with the Tertullian argument.  Tertullian was a church father from the third century who is mentioned by many Christmas detractors who think that he condemned Christmas decorations.  ReligiousTolerance.org tells us the following

Tertullian (circa 160 - 230), an early Christian leader and a prolific writer, complained that too many fellow-Christians had copied the Pagan practice of adorning their houses with lamps and with wreathes of laurel at Christmas time.

That is interesting, but they are making a big mistake.  Tertullian is not referring to a Christmas-related practice.  He is complaining about Christians who are doing things to honor Roman heroes, and these wreaths were not necessarily linked to a calendar date.  Furthermore, there was no set date for Christmas in Tertullian's time (instead, people took mass in remembrance of Christ's birthday whenever they wanted to - if they did anything at all), so he could not have been referring to widespread Christian practices about Christmas.


The researchers at ReligiousTolerance.org clearly did not read the entire work when they looked this up.  You can read all of Tertullian's work, On Idolatry, here.

In their strange attack on the Christmas Tree, they also tell us that pagans would never cut down a tree for decoration:

In Europe, Pagans in the past did not cut down evergreen trees, bring them into their homes and decorate them. That would have been far too destructive of nature.

So this practice, according to ReligiousTolerance.org, could not have come from pagan rites.  But, again, they are making mistakes. The modern notion that ancient paganism is akin to our new-age earth worship religions is not supported by historical documentation.  Pagan shrines most certainly made use of wood and other natural resources to build their many temples.  Furthermore, there is no solidarity amongst pagan religions.  There are worshipers of Pan, Isis, Thor, Roman Emperors, etc., and the term "paganism" does not refer to one set of beliefs.  Anyone claiming that pagans all believed or acted in the same way has obviously not done their research.  (Imagine, for example, claiming that all monotheists exclude shellfish from their diet.  That is the logical fallacy that is being made.)

Then, they appeal to an old Egyptian practice:

Not having evergreen trees, the ancient Egyptians considered the palm tree to symbolize resurrection. They decorated their homes with its branches during the winter solstice.

(They do not quote a primary source for this observation, so who knows if it's even true.)  Someone told me this, last year, when trying to convince me that Christmas was a pagan thing, and I was confused.  What did this have to do with my Christmas tree?  Did the person who made this argument think that Christmas trees symbolized the Resurrection for believers?  Frankly, Christmas trees are not symbolic of anything to Christians - it's just a fun tradition.  And it's hard to imagine the Egyptians lamenting their own lack of evergreen trees and using palm trees as the next best thing.  Also, this makes no mention of calendar dates, so it probably had nothing to do with any holiday.  This isn't related to Christmas.

Saturn must be invoked in each of these conversations.  ReligiousTolerance.org reminds us of this:

The ancient Pagan Romans decorated their "trees with bits of metal and replicas of their god, Bacchus [a fertility god]. They also placed 12 candles on the tree in honor of their sun god"  Their mid-winter festival of Saturnalia started on DEC-17 and often lasted until a few days after the Solstice.

Many people will tell you that Christians adapted the celebration of Saturn into their own holiday and called it "Christmas."  This is the work of armchair historians, and not actual scholarship.  If this were true, Christians would have celebrated Christmas sometimes before December 23, not after.  Other than evergreens (which weren't associated with Christmas until much later), there's nothing that these two holidays have in common; they merely took place in the same month.  There are no documents, or other evidence, that indicate that the church relied on pagan festivals for its own calendar, despite what we are often told.  (And, ancient Hebrew writers claim that this festival came from their own Jewish holidays, which would explain the candles.)

What we have here is a confirmation bias.  You can pick any date on the calendar and, with enough work, find out that an older culture celebrated a particular holiday on that day.  It takes more than a correlation to prove something.

Finally, they try, clumsily, to quote the Bible in their strange discussion of the Christmas tree.  If you work for ReligiousTolernace.org, then the following passage might seem to reference a modern holiday tradition to you:

Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (King James Version)

It's hard to say what they are trying to do with this quote.  For starters, this is obviously not a reference to a Christmas tree.  Unless you came from a pretty strange family, you probably didn't nail your Christmas tree to a wall to keep it from moving.  And sliver and gold adornment are used for a lot of things, in this case these colors indicate that the thing being decorated is important.  It's obviously a shrine that is being built.  Christmas trees didn't exist until the late middle ages, so this must be a reference to something else. 

There you have it; those are the arguments that were supposed to convince me that Christmas is not an original holiday.  I actually have no idea what that ReligiousTolerance.org webpage is supposed to be arguing.  It gives arguments for a non-Christian origin of Christmas decorations, but also states that these decorations are not from pagan sources.  I'm not sure what they are up to, but their sense of history is very bad.

But we can soundly say that Christmas is not a pagan holiday.  It is the Church's celebration of Jesus' birth, and there is no evidence to the contrary.  Those who wish to hate the church will continue to launch these assaults, but history speaks of the truth.

FBC Dallas - Take Down Your Stupid Website

For those of you who don't know, FBC Dallas has decided to make a list of all the local companies and sort them into "naughty" or "nice" categories; stores are considered "naughty" if they use a phrase like "Happy Holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas."  Churchgoers are encouraged to add their shopping experiences to the site so that everyone will know which stores to avoid. 

After shopping at Macy's, one member of FBC Dallas was left with a bad taste in their mouth after this shocking experience:

"Employees would only respond with "you too" when wished a Merry Christmas."

Oh, the horror.  And someone in Crowley, TX added this review about their town hall:

"The city hall at Crowley has GIANT letters in front of the city buildings that say "HAPPY HOLIDAYS"......I say "booooooooo"!!! Merry Christmas is the true REASON for the SEASON!!!"

I suppose everyone will have to avoid shopping at the courthouse.

This is not a fight we need to have.  Stores have become much more accepting of Christmas in recent years and signs saying "Merry Christmas" are a common sight.  But that's not the point.

When we engage in these battles, we create enmity between ourselves and others.  Rather than sowing peace and getting along with our neighbors, we are creating strife and casting ourselves as the enemy.  Store owners are rolling their eyes and complaining about those whining Christians rather than seeing Believers as representatives of a loving God.  Forcing people to decorate their store with your preferred religious icons is a a throwback to medieval savagery, and we would do best to leave those days behind.

I'm trying to add FBC Dallas to the naughty list on their website (GrinchAlert.com).  Let's see if it works.  (FBC Dallas, thanks for bringing us all the wrong kind of publicity.)

The Sun Sets on a Tough Semester

In a few days, the Fall 2010 semester will finally be over, for me.  I just turned in the last assignment for my Old English class, and I'll spend the rest of the week amending my lengthy paper for a class I'm taking on the concept of time.  I'm glad it's ending, because it's been a rough semester.

As most of you know, I'm not only a grad student - I have a full-time job as an A/V programmer at the school.  That's enough work for one person, and my job has been busier this semester than any previous time.  I've been taking two classes in the midst of this.  One is the Old English course, in which I am expected to remember if "mǣġþum" is dative or accusative. (Trick question - those are the same in Old English!  Oh, man...)  It's been a fun class, but I often considered quitting school altogether when I had to obsess over these linguistic details.  What a drag.  But Anglo-Saxon documents are fascinating and it was worth the trouble.

In my evening class, after a long day of particularly irritating problems at the office I was once asked to explain Hawking's theories on non-absolute space to a group of historians.  Then I was asked about black holes (which is easier).  We had been reading Hawking's Brief History of Time, which is a wonderful read, and even though I enjoyed it I found it difficult to switch gears into "astro-physics" mode in a social science course.

I am really glad that I took both of these classes, but it can be a handful.  But I'll be even more glad when it's all over.  Almost there.

Sympathy for Steve Johnson

Last Sunday, Steve Johnson (NFL wide-receiver for the Bills - I know that few of my readers watch sports) dropped a pass in the end zone costing his team the game during overtime.  He didn't take it well, and he told God, through Twitter, that he was upset with Him.  He said the following:

I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO...

This didn't go over too well.  He's gotten some criticism, but he won't get any of that from me.  Haven't we all felt this way?  Have any of us not felt the pangs of injustice when life is unfair to us?  It's devastating to drop a pass like Johnson did, and emotions run high at those times.  Also, like any good researcher say, you can't understand someone's attitude just by examining a single document (or tweet).  The next day he told his fans:

I learned A lot Within 24hrs. Saw Both Sides.(Ups&Dwns) I AM HAPPY & THANKFUL 4 YESTERDAY! w/out Sunday iWldnt have grew closer w/The Lord!!

Now, I don't know much about Steve Johnson, but I won't fault someone for struggling with a bad piece of luck and then publicly telling everyone that the experience brought him closer to God. Believe it or not, it reminds me of the Bible.  The Bible writers were no stranger to hard times, and sometimes cried out that God was allowing injustices to happen to His people.  But they always remembered at the end of those passages to praise God during these hardships.  The book of Lamentations says that God is "like and enemy," and David was absolutely depressed in some of his writing to God.  (Yeah, I just compared the Psalms of David to an NFL player's tweets.) 

Anyway, after getting quite a bit of backlash, Johnson followed up with:

And No I Did Not Blame God People! Seriously??!? CMon! I Simply Cried Out And Asked Why? Jus Like yal did wen sumthin went wrong n ur life!

He's got a great point.  We've all been there, and I know exactly what it's like to ask God why He lets bad things happen.  I'm glad Johnson was big enough to learn from this, and I hope anyone who criticizes him will come by my website and explain to me how to live life without ever questioning God.