Shadowfest3 said:
sethnintendo said:
Shadowfest3 said:
To me this holiday is celebrating the birth of the Christ child. So I try to say Merry Christmas. However, I have said Happy Holidays on occasion. I'm also not offended if someone wished me Happy Holidays. I don't believe Christ should be taken out what this holiday is truly about. |
Christians stole the holiday from the pagans though.
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I don't know everything concerning Christmas so I had to go to Wikipedia and see what it said.
In the early 4th century, the church calendar in Rome contained Christmas on December 25 and other holidays placed on solar dates. According to Hijmans [90] "It is cosmic symbolism...which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the southern solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ, and the northern solstice as that of John the Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception." Usener[91] and others[92] proposed that the Christians chose this day because it was the Roman feast celebrating the birthday of Sol Invictus. Modern scholar S.E. Hijmans, however, states that "While they were aware that pagans called this day the 'birthday' of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas."[90]
Around the year 386 John Chrysostom delivered a sermon in Antioch in favour of adopting the 25 December celebration also in the East, since, he said, the conception of Jesus (Luke 1:26) had been announced during the sixth month of Elisabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist (Luke 1:10–13), which he dated from the duties Zacharias performed on the Day of Atonement during the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar Ethanim or Tishri (Lev. 16:29, 1 Kings 8:2) which falls from late September to early October.[7] That shepherds watched the flocks by night in the fields in the winter time is supported by the phrase "frost by night" in Genesis 31:38–40. A special group known as the shepherds of Migdal Eder (Gen. 35:19–21, Micah 4:8) watched the flocks by night year round pastured for Temple Sacrifice near Bethlehem.[93][94]
In the early 18th century, some scholars proposed alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas, celebrating the birth of him whom Christians consider to be the "Sun of righteousness" prophesied in Malachi 4:2,[21] was selected to correspond with the southern solstice, which the Romans called bruma, celebrated on December 25.[95] In 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that debased the true church.[24] It has been argued that, on the contrary, the Emperor Aurelian, who in 274 instituted the holiday of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, did so partly as an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already important for Christians in Rome.[96] In 1889, Louis Duchesne proposed that the date of Christmas was calculated as nine months after the Annunciation, the traditional date of the conception of Jesus.[97][20]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
I personally believe that Christ was born on April 6. This is because I am a Latter-day Saint (Mormon).
Doctrine and Covenants 21:3
Which church was organized and established in the year of your Lord eighteen hundred and thirty, in the fourth month, and on the sixth day of the month which is called April.
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