Talk about the origin of Christmas

Speaking of "Christmas", we always associate it with the atmosphere of global jubilation. For Christians, this joy comes from the peace and salvation brought to the world by the Incarnation of the Son of God; for non-Christians, the reason why Christmas is a happy holiday is because it is a holiday where people can gain friendship, affection and love. Christmas is no longer a holiday exclusive to one religion. Nowadays, it can be said that people open their hearts to accept this festival. After all, it is always a good thing to have more joy in the world.

However, if we open the Bible and check the activity records of the early church, we will find that in the church in the apostolic era, people were not keen on commemorating the birth of Jesus, but paid more attention to the resurrection of Jesus Christ (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-8). There is no record of the specific year and date of Jesus 'birth in the Bible. So, how did Christmas on December 25 become an important festival in the universal church every year and become popular around the world? Exploring this issue will take us into the creative and open-minded tradition of faith of early Christianity.

First of all, when talking about the birth of Jesus, people will think of the "AD" chronology method, because this chronology method was proposed by the monk Densius in the 6th century AD, which regarded the birth year of Jesus as the first year of AD, and Densius calculated that this year was the 753rd year of the Roman chronology used at that time, which was the first year of the Yuan of Emperor Ping of the Eastern Han Dynasty in our country. However, most later church scholars questioned the accuracy of this calculation. An obvious basis is that, according to history, Herod, who was the so-called tetrarch king under Roman rule, died in 4 BC. In the second chapter of Matthew, Herod's brutal behavior is mentioned. In order to eradicate the Messiah from the house of David, he slaughtered babies under two years old in Bethlehem and surrounding areas about half a year after the birth of Jesus. This can prove that Jesus must have been born at least half a year before Herod's death, which should have been between 4 and 5 BC. That is, Jesus was born around 4 BC, and this inference is now accepted by most scholars.

The discussion about the date of the birth of Jesus is even more interesting. First of all, if we accept that Jesus was born on December 25, then the records related to shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem will be questionable, because it is difficult to imagine that shepherds at that time would still herd sheep in the cold and freezing fields in the middle of the night. The record in the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke feels more like it was around the vernal or autumnal equinox. Therefore, there have always been doubts in the history of the church that Christmas is scheduled for December 25. When the Puritan government came to power in England in the 17th century, the Puritan government even banned Christmas celebrations in England on the grounds that Christmas had no biblical basis. The British government at that time sent call calls teams Criers to walk through the streets and shouted: "No Christmas)." The government ordered shops that were accustomed to closing during the Christmas period to remain open as usual, making people across the country depressed due to the lack of Christmas celebrations. To this day, in universal Christianity, there are still some religious believers who cannot insist on Christmas. Of course, people do not need to insist on uniformity for special sectarian characteristics, but in history, the reason why the Church set the date of Christmas cannot be explained by the saying,"Human inheritance can be abolished."

In fact, before the fourth century AD, the church did not stipulate Christmas as a holiday for Christians. In the fourth century, the situation was different. In the church at that time, the heretic Masionism was rampant. The heretics focused on the divinity of Christ and ignored the humanity of Christ. They even denied that Jesus had a physical body, believing that he would not truly die on the cross. From the perspective of orthodox beliefs at that time, if this heresy was allowed, it would raise doubts about the salvation of Christ's descendants. Therefore, in order to establish orthodoxy and fight back against the invasion of heresy, the Western Church at that time established a festival to specially celebrate the birth of Jesus, thereby demonstrating that Jesus Christ was flesh and born of a woman. However, when it came to the fixed date, the churches at that time had no agreement. Some kept March 5 and some kept June 6. The reason why the Western Church first proposed December 25 as Christmas is also thought-provoking.

It turns out that there is an interesting "December 25" phenomenon in various religious systems in the northern hemisphere, which is a major festival for many religions. People familiar with astronomy and calendars know that this situation is related to the movement of the sun. For the Northern Hemisphere, especially the Mediterranean region, and Southwest Asia and North Africa, around December 25 is the turning point in the sun's movement that people can feel, commonly known as the Winter Solstice. On that day, for these areas, because the sun hit the Tropic of Capricorn directly, the local situation of short days and long nights reached its peak. After this day, the sun gradually moved north, and the day time gradually extended and the night time gradually shortened in the local area. The feeling is that after this night, the sun gradually grew up and became stronger. Therefore, Mithraism, an ancient religion in Southwest Asia, designated this day as the memorial day of Mithras, the god of light, and believers celebrated the birth of the god of light on this day; and in Egypt, the ancient Egyptians also designated this day as the birthday of the sun god Horus. This trend also spread to Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire at that time. The Romans designated December 25 as the Sun God Festival. In 274 AD, Roman Emperor Aurelius issued an edict to honor the "Sun God" as the "main god" of the empire, honoring the sun as the "invincible sun". During this festival, the Roman people's bohemian life, ferocious and bloodthirsty character was fully revealed in the celebration ceremonies of the festival, and was despised by Christians at that time. In the eyes of Christians, only Jesus Christ is the "real sun"; he is "invincible" when he rose from the dead and destroyed the power of death. In 313 AD, when Emperor Constantine granted legitimacy to Christianity and encouraged the use of Christianity to improve the corrupt society and culture of Rome, the Church decided at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD to commemorate the birth of Jesus every year on December 25. Five years later, Emperor Constantine decided that December 25 would no longer be held throughout the Roman Empire to commemorate the sun god, but would instead be celebrated as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus. In 381 AD, Emperor Theodosius I established the meaning of this day in the form of a document at the Second Council of Constantinople of the universal Church. In this way, a day that was originally a day of worship of idols, debauchery, and revelry was changed into a holy day to worship God and love others, and commemorate the birth of the Savior; and the original situation of disagreement within the Western Church on this issue was completely changed.

At the same time, the Eastern Church (that is, the Church that speaks Greek on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean) also established January 6, the day they commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, for almost the same reason. Originally this day was the local winter solstice, and according to local religious customs, it was believed that this day was a day when the gods appeared and listened to pleas. Because the local government has a habit of sending officials to visit various parts of Greece once a year to inspect people's sentiments and listen to complaints. The local area calls this activity "manifestation" Epiphany), and people believe that the gods also "show the mountains and dew" on January 6 to listen to the people's condolences. Not only that, January 6 is also the birthday of Dionysus, the wine god in charge of grains and orchards. According to Greek mythology, he was born of a virgin. It can be seen from the above that Christians in the Eastern Church have designated January 6 as the day to commemorate the birth of Jesus, which is closely related to the astronomical, political and religious significance contained in this day. The reason why local Christians chose this day was on the one hand to resist the influence of excluding other religions, and on the other hand, it also demonstrated their belief that Christ alone is the true light, because Christians believed that Christ alone was born of a virgin and could reveal God (cf. John 1:18), through whom the glory of God appeared in the world. After the middle of the fourth century, the Christmas celebration tradition of the Eastern Church spread to the Western Church. However, since the Western Church had already designated December 25 as Christmas, the Western Church creatively combined the original political and religious meaning of this festival with the records of the Eastern Doctor's coming to see the Holy Child in the Gospels, and set this day to commemorate the Eastern Doctor's appearance of the Holy Child, in order to promote the appearance of Jesus Christ to other nations. This is the origin of the "Epiphany" during the church festival. Since then, church tradition has limited the commemoration of the birth of Jesus to the Day of Exhibiting on January 6 of the following year.

The Bible does not record exactly when Christmas is, but since Christ is the Son of Man, he must have a day when he was born. We celebrate Christmas today in accordance with Church tradition to commemorate and experience the "grace and truth" brought by Incarnation. In fact, it doesn't matter which day Christmas is, but what matters is the meaning of God's birth for us. In fact, it doesn't matter what kind of day December 25 turned out to be. What matters is that we have renewed this day as a day to worship the only true God. Just as Paul directed people's eyes from the idol of the "unknown god" at the temple in Athens to the "true and living god." Today, when we celebrate Christmas all over the world, let us not pay too much attention to the excitement of form, but pay attention to the significance that Christmas brings to the world.