Is Christmas not a christian festival

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Is Christmas not a christian festival

December 25th is very close to the winter solstice of December 21st. Our Christmas tradition is probably a combination of pagan solstice holidays, early Catholic church assignment of saints days, and the desire of northern Germanic tribes (for whom winter was much more arduous) to have a celebration for home and hearth.

This holiday had Christ woven into the fabric of various European cultures and now with American apostasy and advertising Christ is being taken out of our culture altogether including the Christmas holiday.

There is nothing Biblical about the date December 25th. It has come to have traditions of family, giving, and the birth of Christ associated with it. It has had and continues to some degree to have a strong sentimental association for family and home even as it is now often celebrated with a diminishing emphasis on Christ.

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For about the first three centuries after Christ's birth there were no estimates of the date. December 25th seems to be more about a Christian takeover of the Roman festival of Saturnalia, or the equally pagan festival of Sol Invictus, than any attempt to be historically accurate. The lambing season in the Judaen hill country is about mid-spring, with various early estimates putting Christs birth as 21st March, 20th April, or 20th May. All are doubtful dates. The fact is, we don't know. Not only is the date wrong, the year is also wrong. The Herodian dynasty is reasonably well fixed by historic dates, and the Herod who persecuted the infants in and around Bethlehem, died about 3 years before the conventional year zero. Bizarely, therefore, Christ was born approximately 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 years BC.

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