Merry Christmas

December 27, 2007

On the 3rd Day of Christmas, Serving Seattle gave to me…a much delayed Merry Christmas!   But seeing as how we are still in Christmas, I must be forgiven.  BTW, none of you have received a card either.  Just in case you hadn’t noticed (which you probably hadn’t).  Having moved last month and being in limbo caused us to buy our Christmas cards the week before Christmas and then we got sick and they didn’t go out.  Remember, Christmas is the season for forgiveness.

Here’s something interesting that kencollins.com (a good resource for liturgical stuff, BTW) put up regarding the 25th of December as the date of  Christmas:

There is a very widespread theory that Christmas began in Rome as a response to pagan festivities centering around the winter solstice, which was locally considered to be 25 December. The pagan celebration, which was first established by the Roman emperor Aurelian in AD 274, was called The Birth of the Invincible Sun. However, there is evidence that, some years earlier, Christians had made a sincere attempt to calculate the actual date of Jesus’ birthday.

In ancient Judaism, there was a common belief, which ancient Christians inherited, that the prophets of Israel died on the on the same date as their birth or conception. (This may be behind the long-standing Christian custom of referring to the date of a martyr’s death as their “birthday in heaven.”) According to ancient western calculations, Jesus was crucified on 25 March, so they assumed that 25 March was the date of Jesus’ conception. The Annunciation is still commemorated on that date to this day. Nine months after 25 March leads to 25 December, which would be the birthday of Jesus Christ if all those assumptions and calculations were correct. They aren’t correct, but the fact remains that the date has a Christian origin.

True?  Dunno.  Interesting though.

So anyway, it’s the 3rd Day of Christmas, which is evidently St. John’s Day.  So, Happy St. John’s Day.  In honor of St. John, smoke a hookah and read the Book of the Revelation tonight.

Cheers!

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