"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message
...


Blanche wrote:

What about the winter equinox earlier this week?

That's really what we all are celebrating, regardless of what we call it.
As
nearly as anyone can tell, Christ was actually born sometime in August,
and his
birth was originally celebrated then (though the early church didn't put
much
emphasis on that holiday - Easter was the biggie).

Actually, spring. That is when shepherds are in the fields with their
flocks.

Christmas was originally not celebrated at all and I have never seen a
reference that it was ever celebrated in August. The earliest references I
can find show it being celebrated in December starting about the 4th
century. There is no indication that anyone paid any attention to it at all
before that. Church leaders wanted to convert the pagan holiday to a
Christian one. By doing that, however, they basically gave up the right to
dictate how the holiday would be celebrated, so it is celebrated the same
way as was the pagan holiday. The only thing they changed was the name and
some of the symbolism. Even then, the celebration of Christmas nearly died
out several times and the modern observance of Christmas probably bears
little resemblance to Medieval practice, which was more like Mardi Gras than
anything else.

Puritans thought that celebrating Christmas in December was pagan and
obnoxious (which it was; it had degenerated into a drunken orgy -- well, it
was always a drunken orgy, but now it was even worse), so for many years it
was actually illegal in Massachusetts to observe Christmas. Oliver Cromwell
banned the celebration of Christmas in England in 1645 and no one celebrated
Christmas there until after the coronation of Charles II. After the War of
American Independence the celebration of Christmas almost ceased, as
Christmas was widely regarded as an English custom. We still do not
celebrate Boxing Day for that reason; the very idea of lords giving gifts to
their servants is un-American. Christmas as it is celebrated in America
today was invented almost entirely out of the imagination of Washington
Irving, who had never seen a Christmas celebration but who patched together
a vision of Christmas from fragments of medieval and English traditions.
What he didn't know he simply made up. Charles Dickens inspired a similar
revival of Christmas in England, again 'inventing' traditions that may never
have existed before that time and discarding many of the seamier ones.

Be that as it may, most Christians enjoy the celebration of Christmas and
they attach considerable religious significance to it. Since no one knows
when Jesus was born, December 25 is as good as any other day. After all,
most Christians know that the wise men probably did not arrive in Bethlehem
until at least a year later, but we cheerfully pose the wise men in nativity
scenes anyway. For that matter, no one even knows how many wise men there
were or who they were, though legends and songs about them are perennial
favorites.

For the Christian, then, Christmas is a pleasant fiction that enables them
to remember the birth of the Savior through favorite stories and symbols,
exchanging of gifts and gathering of families. No one really cares whether
it is historically accurate and in fact most of them never did care.
Christians believe in the reality of Jesus Christ and his birth, but care
little about the historical accuracy of the holiday in which they remember
it. Obviously, there is no record of Jesus or any of his immediate
associates ever having celebrated it.

I say, in the spirit of Irving and Dickens, who invented Christmas as we
know it, that we should observe the traditions of Christmas related to
flying, claiming (like Irving and Dickens) that they were observed anciently
whether they were or not. I am sure the QB would have some good ideas along
this line.