Christmas has long been celebrated by many as the birth of Jesus Christ. And the majority of Christians throughout the world take it for granted that Christmas is Christianity's most sacred holiday.
But was Christ truly born on December 25? Most of Christendom believes that he was. However, a close examination of the Bible's account of Christ's birth (where the Christmas story comes from) tells us a different story.
For example, the gospel of Luke, that reveals the most extensive account of the birth of Jesus Christ, informs us that the angel Gabriel visited Mary "in the sixth month" (Luke 1:26) to inform her that she had been chosen by God to give birth to His Son Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah.
What was the "sixth month" that Luke referred to? It was most likely the Hebrew month of Elul that coincides with August-September on our Julian calendar.
The Bible never reveals whether Mary conceived during that month, but it's safe to assume that the reason why the Holy Spirit encouraged Luke to record the time of Gabriel's visit was to inform us that Christ wouldn't be born in late December.
If Christ had indeed been born on December 25, then Mary would have conceived sometime in the month of Nissan, or the first month of the Hebrew calendar that coincides with March-April on our calendar.
Is it really important to for us to know when Christ was born? Yes, because Christmas isn't the birthday of Jesus Christ, but rather a pagan holiday that was once celebrated by the ancient Romans as the Saturnalia.
The Saturnalia was an annual festival that honored the Roman god Saturn and was marked by raucous merrymaking, gluttony, debauchery, heavy drinking and orgies.
Simpletoremember.com gives us a description of that pagan festival: "Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the week-long celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman."
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/Christmas_TheRealStory.htm
How did the birth of Christ become incorporated into such a detestable holiday?
In the Fourth Century C.E., the early Roman Catholic Church decided that it could best encourage the pagans to join the church by converting pagan celebrations such as the Saturnalia into "Christian" holidays. Thus, the Saturnalia was changed to the mass of Christ or the birthday of Christ that later became known as Christmas.
Though Christ became the alleged focus of this strange new holiday, the old pagan traditions continued to thrive for many centuries. According to David Kertzer, (The Popes Against the Jews: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, p. 74.) Pope Paul II forced several Jews to run naked through the streets of Rome in 1466 as part of that year's Christmas festivities.
And in 1881, according to Kertzer, high-ranking leaders of Poland's Warsaw Catholic Church stirred up the faithful against the Jews during Christmastime that year that resulted in the murder of several Jews and the widespread destruction of their property.
Obviously, I don't think that Jesus Christ would want us to celebrate His entrance into the world in that fashion. Rather, he would want us to honor and celebrate His life, ministry, death on the cross for the sins of the world and his resurrection from the dead.
And He would want us to celebrate that each and every day of the year rather than on just one day of the year that was once dedicated to a detestable, false god.
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