Chris' Christian Blog

December 17, 2018

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"Prompt: Write about a birthday. It can be anyone's birthday. Just tell us why that particular birthday is special."

The only birthday that is really special to me is the birthday of our Messiah. I can guarantee you though that His birthday was not on December 25, like it is usually celebrated. His birthday was more than likely June 17, 4BC since that was the first time the star of Bethlehem appeared in the sky. The Bible predicted this star and today's astronomers can chart the positions of the stars so closely that they can tell us exactly when the Star of Bethlehem appeared. They date its first appearance to June 17, 4 BC and say it occurred again in August of 2BC, which coincides with the travel time and visit of the magi from Persia. So December 25 is not the day of Jesus birth. We celebrate Jesus' birth in December for the same reason we celebrate Halloween and Easter. Halloween is the fall solstice, Christmas is the winter solstice, and Easter coincides with the celebration of the spring solstice. I know that we have given Christian meanings to the celebrations but that does not eliminate their pagan roots. Yes we are to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus but not just on Easter. We are to celebrate it every first day of the week at regular worship service. There will be some who say that Easter has its roots in the Jewish Passover because we normally celebrate it around the same time. Maybe so but Jesus was crucified during the Passover celebration so His resurrection coincides with Passover. Today's celebration of Easter has more to do with the spring solstice as the church was losing Gentile Christians who had converted from paganism. The Christians wanted to maintain their solstice feasts and who doesn't like to eat and celebrate? To keep from losing these members the church adopted Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. In fact most of our religious holidays are adaptations of some pagan celebration made as compromises with Christian pagan converts. The question we must ask ourselves is if we honestly think God is pleased with these holidays or for that matter if we believe the "saints" some of them are named for would be pleased to know we adopted a pagan celebration and named it after them?