The other day we looked at how religion news can appear in a review of a museum exhibit — that is, outside of news pages. Last week a reader noted a couple of advice columns that discussed religion. The Oakland Tribune’s “Growing Older” column discussed holidays for people who are not religious. And the Washington Post’s Carolyn Hax had a religion-themed advice column. Here’s the last question and answer:
Dear Carolyn:
What do you say to a family member who doesn’t want to go to Christmas Eve services with the family because the church is not her religion (she decided she was a pagan a few years ago), but shows up bright and early Christmas morning to get her Christmas presents? I grit my teeth every time she gleefully opens her gifts!
Mrs. Scrooge
If you’re looking to enforce religious purity, Christmas isn’t the place to start. The date itself traces more credibly to winter-solstice traditions than to the birth of Christ. And, American-style Christmas was cobbled together in the 1800s, using Christian, pagan, commercial, literary and various other cultural bits and pieces. If your sister isn’t giving gifts as well as receiving, then you have a case. Otherwise, smile and think generous thoughts (also a Christmas tradition).
Preach it, Rev. Dr. Carolyn Hax! Send forth the decree: Christmas is so not the place to care about silly things like religion. This is not a surprising doctrine to find espoused in the Washington Post’s sacred Style section. But it’s the second line of her response that I want to highlight. It’s just one of many examples you can find of newspapers and other media outlets advancing the theory that Christmas was given the date of Dec. 25 in order to co-opt Sol Invictus.
This idea was put forth a few centuries ago by two different scholars, one trying to show how the church could Christianize Pagan holidays and the other trying to show how nefarious the liturgical calendar was. The theory was popularized by folks in the latter group.
So is that the end of the story? Is Hax right that the date “more credibly” traces to winter-solstice traditions? The fact is that this anti-liturgical calendar theory is not the only one out there. Associated Press religion reporter Richard Ostling wrote on the topic a few years ago, first describing the theory that says Christians stole a pagan festival for Christmas. Then he cited other research, including Hippolytus of Rome’s Chronicle, written three decades before Aurelian launched Sol Invictus, that says Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, Dec. 25. He speaks with William Tighe, a church historian at Muehlenberg College:
Tighe said there’s evidence that as early as the second and third centuries, Christians sought to fix the birth date to help determine the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the liturgical calendar — long before Christmas also became a festival.
The New Testament Gospels say the Crucifixion happened at the Jewish Passover season. The “integral age” concept, taught by ancient Judaism though not in the Bible, held that Israel’s great prophets died the same day as their birth or conception.
Quite early on, [William] Tighe [, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College] said, Christians applied this idea to Jesus and set the Passover period’s March 25 for the Feast of the Annunciation, marking the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would give birth. Add nine months to the conception date and we get Dec. 25.
And the reason why the Eastern church celebrated, and some still celebrate, Christ’s birth on January 6 was because they were using different calendars. You can read more about this theory in Tighe’s essay over at Touchstone.
Anyway, the point is not that one theory about Dec. 25 is right and one is wrong but that journalists should not decide from the pulpit that one theory is right and ignore the other.
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Comments (16) |
December 23, 2010, at 10:48 am
Sigh, it would be nice if people did more research on the subject but until they do, we will have to sound like a broken record and point to Tertullian. This video touches on how the date came about. A very WErry Christmas
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December 23, 2010, at 11:13 am
“Christmas is so not the place to care about silly things like religion.”
If you can restrain yourself from snarking, do you really think that was the message?
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December 23, 2010, at 11:33 am
Why do journalists do this with Christmas and Easter (which has even flimsier “pagan roots,” yet the urban legends persist) but not other dates? For example, what happened on September 11? Everyone in Cincinnati knows that it was the day in 1985 when Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record. It’s also my daughter’s birthday. By Hax’s standard, no 9/11 commemoration would be complete without acknowledging Pete Rose’s hitting prowess, my daughter’s birthday, and - oh yeah - that other thing. There are only 365 days of the year. If two events share a common date, that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s some deep connection between them.
The question from the advice-seeker is a great one: if you convert to a religion different from your family’s, how do you navigate family traditions based on religion? I would LOVE to see an article about how Pagans with Christian family members deal with this time of year. Do they ignore Christmas altogether? Combine it with a Pagan celebration? Go along with the family traditions for the sake of harmony? This could be a great feature.
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December 23, 2010, at 11:47 am
If the woman is really that annoyed about her newly-pagan family member not wanting to celebrate the Christian festival, then she could (1) postpone the gift-gifting until the Feast of the Epiphany (the Three Kings) or (2) do it on December 6th, Feast of St. Nicholas of Myra (Santa Claus).
Or make sure that all the family descends upon the pagan to celebrate both Solstices and the Equinoxes
I agree; it can be very annoying when a family member up and decides they’re doing something completely different to everyone else (this year, I may have a vegan for dinner. So newly pure in his conversion to whole-hearted veganism from vegetarianism that he won’t even eat honey, because that’s animal-derived. Oh, the cooking is going to be *so* much fun this year, hey?)
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December 23, 2010, at 11:48 am
By “having a vegan for dinner”, I meant the vegan turning up to eat dinner with the rest of the family, not that I’d be turning cannibal.
Although the prospect *is* very tempting…
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December 23, 2010, at 11:51 am
Mike, I was thinking along the same lines.
My birthday, September 17th, is Constitution Day.
Does that mean I’m trying to co-opt the Constitution by having a birthday party?
This is like the comparison to the ubiquitous Blessed Mother holding the child Jesus paintings and statues that are supposedly traced to Isis and her son Horus. Say what?
Check this out
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/out-of-egypt.html
In my collection of family & friends photos, guess how many photos are of a mother holding her child on her lap. Over 100. Are my family and friends aping Isis holding Horus?
For that matter: Are the millions of photos of Santas holding a child on his lap trying to do a trans-gender take-over of Isis & Horus and Mary & baby Jesus?
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December 23, 2010, at 12:27 pm
Tighe’s explanation makes the most sense to me. The Feast of the Nativity [AKA Christmas] was not a big feast day with partying in early Christian times. So even copying Saturnalia is questionable.
The symbolic timing of births and deaths is very important in the liturgical calendar. Saints’ days are usually tied to the dates of their martyrdoms or other significant days.
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December 23, 2010, at 1:05 pm
I took her statement about 12/25 as being accurate based on what I’ve read including sites like http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_Jesus%27_real_birthday http://www.christiananswers.net/christmas/mythsaboutchristmas.html http://www.worldofchristmas.net/actual-christ-birth.html and a gazillion other sites. So I take her explanation as following what many, including Christian theologians have said.
But she also made what I think is a very important point about how we celebrate Christmas to Washington Irving and others which is, as I understand it, historically accurate. I’m sure many here decry the commercial nature of Christmas which she was alluding to as well.
But you made a very critical mistake in calling her a journalist when she’s an advice columnist, something very different. And even here, she was following the consensus of scholars, at least as I understand it.
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December 23, 2010, at 1:54 pm
Since Hax is an advice columnist rather than a journalist I’d judge her reply on the basis of whether it’s likely to soothe the ruffled feathers within this family. I’d give her a C+.
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December 23, 2010, at 2:37 pm
Hi, Martha and all
People who have recently changed religion and are not yet fully comfortable with their new identity are the ones most likely to have problems about participating in family festivities. I saw the same thing years ago with a new born again Christian who refused to participate in her family’s Rosh Hashana observance. It’s just new convert zeal, and, thankfully, most people grow out of it as they settle down and mature into whatever their new Path may be.
You may find Dar Williams’ song “The Christians and the Pagans,” which is about a shared Christmas Eve dinner, relevant. Here’s the You Tube link.
Also, I got a giggle about your having a vegan for dinner. My best friend is a vegan, and they are a royal pain to feed.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate that festival, on either date!
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December 23, 2010, at 2:54 pm
The problem here is not so much the assumption that religion has nothing to do with Christmas as the assumption that religion has nothing to do with reality.
As an antidote to that assumption that sheds some light on the tired old ‘origin and purity of Christmas’ argument, might I suggest then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp. 92-111, especially pp. 103-9?
Merry Christ…er…Happy Holidays everybody!
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December 23, 2010, at 3:48 pm
Here’s Pope Benedict’s explanation of Christmas to the crowds in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday December 23, 2009.
source: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1341521?eng=y
Most of the rest of it is about St Francis and the Nativity scenes that he made popular.
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December 23, 2010, at 4:33 pm
Re: Quite early on, [William] Tighe [, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College] said, Christians applied this idea to Jesus and set the Passover period’s March 25 for the Feast of the Annunciation, marking the angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she would give birth. Add nine months to the conception date and we get Dec. 25.
While that theory seems quite clearly true to me, it’s unlikely it will convince too many of the Upper West Side cultural liberals. For them, a person’s life magically springs into existence at birth, and the date of one’s conception is totally irrelevant and meaningless. Everyone knows that the idea of life beginning at conception was just thought up by the nasty, patriarchal puritans in Rome a hundred years ago, who just wanted to stop the rest of us from having some good, clean fun.
The real story behind the dating of Christmas is indissolubly linked to Christian thought about the beginning of life, and for that very reason the culture-of-death and its apostles in Georgetown, Manhattan and Santa Monica will despise and oppose it to the last.
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December 23, 2010, at 8:43 pm
Historical considerations as to when Jesus was in fact born may (or may not) have been the reason for selecting December 25 as the holy day for celebrating the Nativity of Our Lord. Holy days, however, do not venerate a date for its historical association in the same way we venerate, for example, December 7 as Pearl Harbor Day or February 12 as Lincolon’s birthday. As a holy day, December 25 is no different in nature than, say, December 8 (the Immaculate Conception) or August 15 (the Assumption of the virgin Mary). When we celebrate the Immaculate Conception on December 8 or the Assumption on August 15, it is not because we suppose that Mary was conceived on December 8 and assumed into heaven on August 15. Similarly, the purpose and focus of Christmas is not to mark the historical date of the birth of Jesus. This is true even if the date was originally fixed with some thought given to approximating the historical date of Jesus’s birth.
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December 24, 2010, at 9:47 am
Anyway, the point is not that one theory about Dec. 25 is right and one is wrong but that journalists should not decide from the pulpit that one theory is right and ignore the other.
True. But truth be told, in many discussions of history, it comes down to picking one interpretation over another. Which one you pick will probably say more about several beliefs and ideals you have, than it will just where the evidence obviously points.
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December 24, 2010, at 2:44 pm
Dave G. says “it comes down to picking one interpretation over another.” In this case it appears that all the MSM have picked one interpretation and give no indication that the other interpretation exists.
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