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okileggs1992 t1_j15xi6r wrote

I don't get the issue, it was approved by facilities along with the manager regardless of the wording and all of you should know that the Winter Solstice was hijacked by the Catholic Church to convert the pagans just like Easter and every other holiday.

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iamlucky13 t1_j16f3ko wrote

> and all of you should know that the Winter Solstice was hijacked by the Catholic Church to convert the pagans just like Easter and every other holiday.

There's not much need to know it since it really has no effect whether a person considers Christmas important or not.

Also, while that suggestion might not be completely without relevance, it's also not an argument with historical evidence, and it's far from the full background on how, lacking any records of a date when Jesus was born, various groups of Christians around the Roman world gradually consolidated on December 25 as the mutual date to celebrate it. The solstice is naturally significant to almost every non-tropical culture. Early Christian writers sometimes drew on traditional titles for Jesus like "Light of the World" to suggest the solstice - the beginning of days of increasing light - was a fitting time to celebrate His birth.

For a short summary of some of the theories on how December 25th was settled on, you could start with the Wikipedia article on Christmas,

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okileggs1992 t1_j1ahji0 wrote

Why would I read Wikipedia, as for the birth of Christ it was not Christmas Eve and I'm pretty sure his resurrection wasn't the beginning of spring aka Easter

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iamlucky13 t1_j1al8st wrote

> Why would I read Wikipedia

Because it was a convenient place for me to suggest for some further discussion of the challenge of knowing when Jesus' birth actually took place (I ask you to at least consider for the sake of discussion Jesus as a real person, regardless of whether you personally believe He existed), and how Christmas came to be celebrated when it is.

> as for the birth of Christ it was not Christmas Eve

Don't you think there is at least a 1 in 365 chance?

Personally as a Christian, I never worried about whether we identified the correct date to celebrate Christmas. Who we believe Jesus to be and why His birth would be worth celebrating is really the point.

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Final-Mycologist7785 t1_j183mpj wrote

Ahh yes Wikipedia! A 100% authentic source of information!

/s

Granted they've gotten better. But,

Going deeper than that, if you think things have been construed by people in power and/or office, and STILL choose to belive a book that has been in circulation for hundreds of years. And been a key role in government policies over litteral decades...

I'm not sure you know what you're talking about.

If laws are manipulated to achieve what those in power desire, what the fuck makes you think that hasn't been done a hundred times over in a book, that literally dictates how the majority of people live?

'Translated' by those in a convenient power place in history.

What places such a holy fucking artifact, that anyone can purchase mind you, above the rest of all else?

Shouldn't at least a couple of those raise a red flag?

I won't link a Wikipedia article. Find your own rabbit hole.

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iamlucky13 t1_j1ajb54 wrote

  1. I will start by restating my main point to be more clear. Your comment on solstice being chosen to convert pagans is not need to know information because:

A) A person who considers the birth of Jesus to be significant (presumably due to their religious beliefs) is not going to find their beliefs challenged by the point, "nobody recorded the actual date Jesus was born, but because some early Christians thought celebrating it on a date that pagans already used for a holiday might help convert some of them* they chose to also use that holiday."

If you think the theory that Christians would want to convert pagans is shocking news to Christians that will scandalize them away from their faith, you don't seem to know much about Christianity.

B) Nobody who doesn't consider the birth of Jesus significant is going to change their observance or non-observance of Christmas based on the same.

  1. I didn't offer a Wikipedia reference as proof. I offered it as a place where there is a summary of some of the discussion illustrating the complexity of understanding how Christmas came to be celebrate around the time of the solstice.

There are two very common corallary forms of the argumentum ad hominem fallacy that I like to call "argumentum ad Wikipediam" and "argumentum contra Wikipediam." You are demonstrating the latter.

Which is ironic, because the alternative that has been presented is to accept the authority of an unknown person posting on the internet. Or to follow the argument back to its known source with the 18th century Lutheran preacher Paul Jablonski who promoted the idea the date was chosen for pagan reasons in order to portray Catholicism as a pagan-influenced corruption of Christianity.

  1. The rest of your post seems like it might be in reference to the Bible. You really didn't clarify what you're talking about. But the topic now at hand was about the date of Christmas, which the Bible does not give any obvious clues about, and I don't see a useful reason to expand the discussion to the Bible in this thread.

* Edit - I apologize for not noticing before your are not the same poster as I previously respond to. I have edited my post to remove an reference to the prior poster's words as your own.

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