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What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in Education?
Toppling Dominos
Anti-Christians don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of Secularism
"Don't Impose Your Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death Warrant?
Court Ordered Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
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"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for Catholics in this Election
Christians Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay Marriage
Whose Side are You on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
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Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
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Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby
The Incarnational Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well, Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong Side
"These are the Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few are Married
"...Prepare him for additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a Person?
The Point of a Point of View
Politically Correct, Morally Depraved
Population Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

We do not know what year Jesus was born but we are now certain that it was possibly 6 to 4 BC. How could Christ have been born from four to six years before Christ? The feast of Christmas is celebrated December 25 in the Western Church. What is the origin of that date? Christmas is also celebrated with exchanges of gifts, greenery in houses, singing, and special food. Why? These are perplexing questions to which you will not find completely satisfactory answers here (nor I suspect anywhere else). But let us see what answers there are.

We know for certain that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great on the authority of Matthew 2:1 and Luke 1:5. We know from other historical sources that Herod the Great ruled from 37 BC to 4 BC. If that is so then Jesus could have been born no later than 4 BC. Obviously the calculation of the year of his birth is incorrect. A monk named Dionysius (Dennis) Exiguus calculated it in the year 532 and numbered the years of the Christian era from that point. The practice became general in Christian countries by 1400. For reasons that need not concern us here Dennis missed by a minimum of four years. The result is that the third millenium has already begun although according to our present enumeration we still have two more years to go. Even though we know that Dionysius was in error, the numeration of the years is so well established that it would cause great historical confusion to correct it now. Besides, to what year would we correct it?

We have no date for Jesus' birth. Why was the choice December 25? There are several theories from which I will list two. First, the conventional wisdom is that December 25 was selected because the Roman Emperor Aurelian in 274 established a feast throughout the empire in honor of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun (Natale solis invicti) to be celebrated December 25, the day of the winter solstice. This was an attempt on his part to unify and strengthen his vast empire around a monotheistic god that would be acceptable to all. Some theorists say that Christians transformed this feast into the feast of the birth of Jesus who was the "sun of justice" (see Malachi 3:20) and "the true light, which enlightens everyone" (see John 1:9). The purpose was to give Christians an alternative to the pagan feast.

A second theory explains the choice of December 25 with no reference to pagan feasts, but to computations based on scripture. The anchor for this theory is based on the conception of John the Baptizer. This was supposed to have occurred during the feast of Booths during which his father Zechariah was ministering in the temple. This would have occurred during the month of tishri (corresponding to part of our September and October) at approximately the time of the autumn equinox, September 23. The date for his conception was supposed to be September 25. He would have been born nine months later near the time of the summer solstice or June 25. Luke tells us that the angel announced to Mary that she was to conceive and that her cousin Elizabeth, John's mother, was in her sixth month. That would have been March 25. Since Jesus was conceived on March 25 his birth would then have been nine months later on December 25. It is quite possible that Christians were guided by this sort of scriptural reckoning (however inappropriately used) in choosing a date for the birth of Jesus rather than reacting to pagan feasts.

How did it happen that Christmas observances included exchange of gifts, introduction of greenery into homes, special music, and gift giving? These probably are the remnants of the year-end celebrations in honor of Saturn (the harvest god) and Mithras (the god of light) of which these revelries were a part. This part of our Christmas celebration is definitely pagan in origin. The Church took these pagan practices and baptized them, so to speak, by bending them to Christian interpretations. Thus the Christmas tree was the tree of life; the giving of gifts was in imitation of God who gave us the gift of his Son, etc.

There is danger of reversion to the old pagan interpretation of Christmas. Many persons celebrate Christmas with no thought of Christ. This is true of Japan, for example, which is far from being a Christian country. Since the American occupation after World War II Christmas is widely celebrated there as a time of feasting, gift giving, and commerce. There is no question of putting Christ back into Christmas there because he was never in their Christmas observance. The Japanese imported only the trappings of the pagan festival without the Christian interpretation. The same can happen to us. All that people seem to need for a festival is a signal; it matters little to some what the signal may mean.

We do not know what year Jesus was born or the date. But we do know that the event was the greatest that could occur in our universe. Christians should keep this feast with great joy but always with the realization that Jesus is the reason for the season. If we celebrate Christmas without a vital union with Jesus we might as well be celebrating Saturn or Mithras or even the birth of the sun. An enlightened observance of Christmas will be one that follows the "light of the world."