We’re rapidly hurtling towards the annual Yule celebration, and I happened across this little gem, a tongue-in-cheek look at the mingling of religious traditions in modern holiday celebrations. Thought you might get a kick out of a little fun-poking at our conglomeration of traditions…
A sample…
The word “yule,” like the word “dog,” is so old that nobody really knows where it came from…
I can always tell when solstice is coming because the newspapers fill up with mopes from Christians about how the heathens have all appropriated Christmas. You know: all that biblical stuff like putting lights on pine trees and making wreaths and celebrating it in December (Latin for “tenth month,” which just goes to show something or other). Basically, the early Christians grabbed the existing holiday, filed off the serial numbers, and started accusing everyone else of stealing it.
I really like how he ends the piece, though, with a deep reflection on why it is we need solace… solstice… in the midst of the grip of the longest dark of the year. Nice piece.
Comment
Just a bit of a comment on that one. I doubt that Christians got the idea of December 25th from Hanukkah, since it’s a completely insignificant holiday, and probably was not even celebrated until the 3rd or 4th century AD (since the temple itself wasn’t destroyed until 70 AD).
However, it’s significant to point out that one of the most popular pagan cults in the Roman/Judean world at the time was the cult of Mithras, a “Sun God” who was born to a virgin on, you guessed it, December 25th. I’m fuzzy on the mythology, but I think there’s a death/resurrection myth about Mithras too.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
You got it right… and Hannukah
This Wikipedia Entry goes even further, to say that Hannukah was a relatively minor holiday until the 20th century. Then it grew in importance as a December-based, gift-giving holiday.
Still a funny article 🙂 And when it comes to the dating of the celebration, you’re (partially) dead-on. It’s a conglomeration:
There are many, many more things that factor into holiday celebrations, but it’s fun to learn the evolution of the holiday.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Yup!
All correct.
And the Feast of the Son of Isis is interesting to mention because it’s another resurrection story, albeit one that’s dirtier than Jesus.
Basically, Osiris, the King of the Gods of Egypt and Isis’s husband, is murdered by his jealous brother Set, cut up in many many pieces, and hidden all over the earth. Isis, after a long search, gathers all of the pieces of Osiris and puts him back together – the only piece that’s missing is the YOU-KNOW-WHAT (it’s a family blog, after all). So Isis crafts a YOU-KNOW-WHAT out of gold, magically brings Osiris back to life for a few precious moments, and in that time proceeds to screw his brains out.
From that joining, Horus is born (on 12/25) and becomes the new king. There follows a cycle of death and rebirth, as Horus (the new king) becomes Osiris (the old king), who then dies and is replaced by a new Horus (the new king).
But there’s also other similarities between Jesus and Horus, besides just the birthday. There was a lot of intermingling between the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Hebrews at the time, so there was plenty of sharing of mythological ideas.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Either that, or…
It really happened.
Not on the 25th, mind you, but it happened nonetheless.
Yup
That is certainly possible. Although, given the prevalence of virgin birth mythologies at the time (virgin births were ascribed to everyone from pagan gods to Alexander the Great to Plato), and the absence of the birth story entirely from the gospel of Mark (the earliest-written gospel), the logical odds point to the possibility that Matthew added the virgin birth story in order to appeal to Jews, who expected their Messiah to fit the profile set down in Isaiah, the whole deal about “behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,” etc. etc. This is an example of the Jewish storytelling technique called midrash, in which contemporary stories were “jazzed up” using bits of older familiar stories, often from the Old Testament, in order to make the stories seem more familiar and accessible to the listening public.
Now, this is not to discount Christianity as a whole. After all, it’s entirely possible to be a good Christian without professing a belief in the literal absolute truth of the Bible. More and more progressive Christians today are accepting Jesus as the *metaphorical* Son of God, which makes it easier to deal with the contradictions that pop up throughout the Bible.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Another thread..
I have some really good virgin birth evidence I’d love to throw out…
BUT.. thats another thread. I’ll get it together and put it up sometime.
Meantime.. EVIDENCE!! Click here
Shaken Creeds
Another perfectly good thread hijacked 🙂 How fun!
Shaken Creeds: The Virgin Birth Doctrine. Admittedly, this is a very old text. It appears Justin’s Evidence page was made to deal with Jocelyn Rhys’ arguments in Creeds. To be an effective defender of the Virgin Birth, one should be at least passingly familiar with the book because it’s the principal work from which mainstream Catholic opposition to the doctrine stems.
It’s available in printer-friendly form, too, at http://n4m.org/book/print/9. It’s 137 pages printed though, so it may not be a good idea to spew it out at work 🙂 Also, her layout was non-traditional: her Preface is incredibly long, the Appendices follow the Preface, and the main body of the work doesn’t start for quite a few pages…
—
Matthew P. Barnson
I stopped listening to creed
After their last album. It wasnt very good.
CREED
That’s pretty funny, because I bought Zach the “Best of Creed” album for Christmas…
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Justin my friend
First off, I want to make it very clear that I do not begrudge you your faith in any way. Christianity is a beautiful religion (when not abused), and one of the central tenets of Christianity (or of any religion, for that matter) is faith — the belief in something DESPITE the lack of factual evidence. After all, none of us can *prove* the existence of God, but some of us choose to believe in him anyway.
That said, while I appreciate your attempt to prove the historical accuracy of the virgin birth, it’s circular logic to attempt to support the hypothesis using other parts of the Bible. If it’s possible to believe that the virgin birth is metaphorically true, as opposed to literally true, then it’s possible to believe the same thing about any other section of the Bible. If it’s possible that Matthew added the virgin birth story after the fact to make Jesus’s story jive with Isaiah, then it’s possible that he and the other gospel writers embellished Jesus’s own words in order to provide corroboration.
So we disagree on this – it’s not a big deal. Since I believe that all paths lead more or less to the same place, it’s not so important WHAT you believe in, but that you believe in SOMETHING (or, in Matt’s case, nothing) 🙂 What’s important is whatever gives you a feeling of higher purpose, whether it’s Jesus, Buddha, or Ayn Rand.
OK, speech over. 🙂
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
Ayn Rand
Yeah, what’s up with that? People are psycho over her.
Read “Atlas Shrugged”
See if you can slog through “Atlas Shrugged”. I made it about halfway before I gave up. Her writing sucks. Or, rather, her writing doesn’t jive with my preferred reading style. I’d tried investigating Objectivism, but once I realized how little I enjoyed her writing, I figured her philosophies probably wouldn’t match mine either.
Probably a subject for another blog entry.
It must be the holidays or something, lots of posts recently 🙂 The virtual coffee house is busy!
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead is much more fun from a storytelling point of view. Atlas Shrugged is overly long and incredibly preachy, but the Fountainhead is actually a good read.
Of course, Ayn Rand was a rabid fascist.
— Ben Schuman Mad, Mad Tenor
No Big
For the record.. I did random Yahoo Search on “Virgin Birth Evidence” and posted something.. I’ve actually got a cool book called “The Case For Christ” which examines much of the evidence of the Bible. (Matt found it thinner than I did).
I’ve always appreciated your perspective, Ben! It has caused me to challenge and explore and please, don’t stop. It makes me try to know my own faith better.
Its always welcome.
Kum By Yah and what not.
Golden ding-dong
You just explained the mystery of the golden ding-dong which is prevalent in a great deal of early Roman and Egyptian artifacts. I hadn’t really understood the significance before.
Now I know!…
(and knowing is half the battle.)
—
Matthew P. Barnson
Other interesting traditions…
Snopes.com has some details about the wise men that are interesting, too. It turns out that the popular image — celebrated at Temple Square in Salt Lake City when we recently visited to see the pretty lights — of three wise men visiting the babe in a manger is also extra-biblical. The wise men, number unknown, would have visited him when he was a boy, not a babe, and the record records three “gifts”, not three men.
Some apocryphal sources claim there were as many as twelve. Tough to imagine twelve strange men showing up in my house and me letting them in 🙂
—
Matthew P. Barnson