You are very much correct. The date is irrelevant, the event is not. The pagan thing is an old excuse by non Christians and lazy Christians to not celebrate His birth on ANY date. Just another insidious attempt by the devil to undermine the faith, but it just won't work. The gates of Hell will not prevail against His church.
ETA: I didn't realize my previous post stating the same thing actually made it online before WS went down for a bit, sorry.
No....you are
very much wrong. The "pagan thing" is most definitely NOT an excuse. Let's have a history lesson...
Pagans were celebrating the birth of the sun-god. Mithra, long before Christ was even born.
The winter holiday became known as Saturnalia and began the week prior to December 25th. The festival was characterized by gift-giving, feasting, singing and downright debauchery, as the priests of Saturn carried wreaths of evergreen boughs in procession throughout the Roman temples.
Variations of this pagan holiday flourished throughout the first few centuries after Jesus Christ, but it probably wasn't until 336 AD that Emperor Constantine officially converted this pagan tradition into the "Christian" holiday of Christmas.
And they took many pagan traditions and made them their own:
Many of our modern Christmas traditions began hundreds of years before Christ was born. Some of these traditions date back more than 4000 years. The addition of Christ to the celebration of the winter solstice did not occur until 300 years after Christ died and as late as 1800, some devout Christian sects, like the Puritans, forbade their members from celebrating Christmas because it was considered a pagan holiday.
The Christmas tree is derived from several solstice traditions. The Romans decked their halls with garlands of laurel and placed candles in live trees to decorate for the celebration of Saturnalia. In Scandinavia, they hung apples from evergreen trees at the winder solstice to remind themselves that spring and summer will come again. The evergreen tree was the special plant of their sun god, Baldor.
The practice of exchanging gifts at a winter celebration is also pre-Christian and is from the Roman Saturnalia. They would exchange good-luck gifts called Stenae (lucky fruits). They also would have a big feast just like we do today.
Mistletoe is from an ancient Druid custom at the winter solstice. Mistletoe was considered a divine plant and it symbolized love and peace. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe is Druid in origin.
The Scandinavian solstice traditions had a lot of influences on our celebration besides the hanging of ornaments on evergreen trees. Their ancient festival was called Yuletide and celebrated the return of the sun.
One of their traditions was the
Yule log. The log was the center of the trunk of a tree that was dragged to a large fireplace where it was supposed to burn for twelve days. From this comes
the twelve days of Christmas.
Even the date of Christmas, December 25, was borrowed from another religion. At the time Christmas was created in AD 320, Mithraism was very popular. The early Christian church had gotten tired of their futile efforts to stop people celebrating the solstice and the birthday of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Mithras birthday was December 25. So the pope at the time decided to make Jesus official birthday coincide with Mithras birthday. No one knows what time of year Jesus was actually born but there is evidence to suggest that it was in midsummer.
However, I agree the date of Christ's birth is irrelevant. I believe he was a great man and his birth deserves to be celebrated. But I don't think people should be ignorant to the facts if they don't have to be.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't celebrate Christmas. I use the word myself. "Merry Christmas" just has a more magical ring to it than any other season greeting. By the way...the "Merry" part, it's pagan too. The pagan greeting is often "Merry Meet"
Again, whether you like it or not, Christianity has alot of pagan DNA. You can choose to believe it or not....but it doesn't change what is fact.