What does Christmas mean to you? 圣诞节意味着什么？

I.When was Jesus born?

A. Popular myth puts his birth on December 25th in the year 1C.E.

B. The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. Theearliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism ofan adult Jesus. This suggests that the earliest Christians lackedinterest in or knowledge of Jesus’ birthdate.

C. The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythianmonk, “abbot of a Roman monastery. His calculation went as follows:

a. In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbecondita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUCsignifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th yearof Rome’s reign, etc.

b. Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperorAugustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.

c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15th yearof Tiberius reign.

d. If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years underAugustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th year of reign).

e. Augustus took power in 727 AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birthin 754 AUC.

f. However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod diedin 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysiusplaces Jesus birth.

D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at theCatholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission,and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association – writing in theCatholic Church’s official commentary on the New Testament, writes about the date of Jesus’ birth,“Though the year [of Jesus birth is not reckoned with certainty, the birth didnot occur in AD 1. The Christian era, supposed to have its starting pointin the year of Jesus birth, is based on a miscalculation introduced ca. 533 byDionysius Exiguus.”

E. The DePascha Computus, an anonymous document believed to havebeen written in North Africa around 243 CE, placed Jesus birth on March28. Clement, a bishop of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus wasborn on November 18. Based on historical records, Fitzmyer guesses thatJesus birth occurred on September 11, 3 BCE.

II.How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December25?

A. 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 noone could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during theweeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “anenemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Romancommunity selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and otherphysical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion,December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying theforces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

B. The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogueentitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in histime. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs:widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rapeand other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still producedin some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported theSaturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christianleaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans bypromising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia asChristians.

D. The problem was that there was nothing intrinsicallyChristian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders namedSaturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

E. Christians had little success, however, refining the practices ofSaturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University ofMassachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance ofthe anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date,the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebratedmore or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidayswere celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (aprecursor of modern caroling), etc.

F. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “theearly Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did notdo so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have thosePagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.

Because of its known pagan origin,Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal inMassachusetts between 1659 and 1681. However, Christmas was and still iscelebrated by most Christians.

G. Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnaliacarnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when PopePaul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race nakedthrough the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Beforethey were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race moredifficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. Theyran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the HolyFather stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.”

H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival throughout the 18th and19th centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto inRome were forced towear clownish outfits and march through the city streets to the jeers of thecrowd, pelted by a variety of missiles. When the Jewish community of Rome senta petition in1836 to Pope Gregory XVI begging him to stop the annual Saturnaliaabuse of the Jewish community, he responded, “It is not opportune to make anyinnovation.” On December 25, 1881, Christianleaders whipped the Polish masses into Antisemitic frenzies that led to riotsacross the country. In Warsaw 12 Jews were brutally murdered, hugenumbers maimed, and many Jewish women were raped. Two million rublesworth of property was destroyed.

III.The Origins of Christmas Customs

A.The Origin of Christmas TreeJust as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas withthe Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots wererecruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”. Pagans had long worshipped trees inthe forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and thisobservance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

B.The Origin of MistletoeNorse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrowby his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid ritualsuse mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissingunder the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnaliawith the Druidic sacrificial cult.

C.The Origin of Christmas PresentsIn pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizensto bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends(in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving amongthe general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christianflavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (seebelow).

D.The Origin of Santa Claus

a. Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishopof Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was onlynamed a saint in the 19th century.

b. Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council ofNicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they producedportrayed Jews as “the children of the devil” who sentenced Jesus to death.

c. In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkeyto a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-givingdeity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill thechildren's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from hershrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members ofthis group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually onthe anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

d. The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celticpagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief godand the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beardand rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. WhenNicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard,mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavywinter clothing.

e. In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Churchadopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distributegifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

f. In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his TheLegend of Sleepy Hollow andRip Van Winkle) wrote a satire ofDutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satirerefers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholasusing his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

g. Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read KnickerbockerHistory, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character SantaClaus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not acreature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by thechimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Mooreinnovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended throughchimneys.

h. The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern pictureof Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nastdrew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a sternlooking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa ahome at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of thegood and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his redoutfit.

i. In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercialartist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeledhis Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubbyface. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright,Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagangod, and commercial idol.

IV. The Christmas Challenge

· Christmas has always been a holiday celebrated carelessly. Formillennia, pagans, Christians, and even Jews have been swept away in theseason’s festivities, and very few people ever pause to consider thecelebration’s intrinsic meaning, history, or origins.

· Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christian god who came to rescuemankind from the “curse of the Torah.” It is a 24-hour declaration that Judaism isno longer valid.

· Christmas is a lie. There is no Christian church with a traditionthat Jesus was really born on December 25th.

· December 25 is a day on which Jews have been shamed, tortured, andmurdered.

· Many of the most popular Christmas customs – including Christmas trees,mistletoe, Christmas presents, and Santa Claus – are modern incarnations of themost depraved pagan rituals ever practiced on earth.

Many who are excitedly preparing for their Christmascelebrations would prefer not knowing about the holiday’s realsignificance. If they do know the history, they often object that theircelebration has nothing to do with the holiday’s monstrous history andmeaning. “We are just having fun.”

Imagine that between 1933-45, the Nazi regime celebratedAdolf Hitler’s birthday – April 20 – as a holiday. Imagine that theynamed the day, “Hitlerday,” and observed the day with feasting, drunkenness,gift-giving, and various pagan practices. Imagine that on that day, Jewswere historically subject to perverse tortures and abuse, and that thiscontinued for centuries.

Now, imagine that your great-great-great-grandchildrenwere about to celebrate Hitlerday. April 20tharrived. They hadlong forgotten about Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. They had never heard ofgas chambers or death marches. They had purchased champagne and caviar,and were about to begin the party, when someone reminded them of the day’s realhistory and their ancestors’ agony. Imagine that they initially objected,“We aren’t celebrating the Holocaust; we’re just having a little Hitlerdayparty.” If you could travel forward in time and meet them; if you couldsay a few words to them, what would you advise them to do on Hitlerday?

On December 25, 1941, Julius Streicher, one of the mostvicious of Hitler’s assistants, celebrated Christmas by penning the followingeditorial in his rabidly Antisemitic newspaper, Der Stuermer:

If one really wants to put an end to the continuedprospering of this curse from heaven that is the Jewish blood, there is onlyone way to do it: to eradicate this people, this Satan’s son, root and branch.

It was an appropriate thought for the day. ThisChristmas, how will we celebrate？