I have never received a clear and concise answer to this, so hopefully someone here will shed some light on this. As I understand it, Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' Birthday. However, New Year's is the first day of a new year, which is also the number of years since Jesus was born. Next year will be 2003, meaning that he was born 2003 years ago on that day. Why then are the two holidays on seperate days? If Christmas celebrates Jesus' birth and New Year's represents the number of years since his birth, shouldn't they be on the same dates?
...Are you looking for the E*pass to hell? You do not want to pass go, no waiting in line, strait to hell!!
Bible chronology actually puts Jesus' birth some time in October. The date of Dec 25 came from the pagan Roman celebration of saturnalia, which was a festival marking the rebirth of the sun. I'm not sure, but I think the date of the 25th instead of the 21st is because the Romans used the gregorian calendar, which was slightly different than the one we use. The Roman emperor had decreed that christianity was to be the religion of the state. Since the Roman empire was largely pagan, many pagan and christian beliefs and rituals were blended to make the religion more acceptable to the masses. Not surprisingly the traditions of christmas have virtually nothing to do with the actual birth of Jesus, which the early christians didn't celebrate anyway.
aphex, the answer you seek is this: New year's used to be celebrated on Dec 25th in each year. But then the astronomers tapped Pope Gregory on the shoulder and whispered in his ear that there was something seriously wrong with the calendar that they were using (Julian). You see it didn't have a 'fix' for leap years. So every year that went by they were messing up a tiny bit. Not much relative to a year but a lot over time. So they devised a new calendar and inorder to 'fix' the mistake which had accumulated over a long time......you guessed it. Happy Everything!! (for more info do a search on google)
Aphie, It's Christmas, I have gratefully received new flat panel screens and some serious machine hardware upgrades. I thought I should try them out . My set up is now so fast, I have finished writing this before I started it......and I am now back in the future .....again.....so here goes....... There were many contextual stories before the one of Jesus, many taken as seriously if not very much more so. In Roman times they had numerous celebrations attached to the planets and seasons. Lescor is partly correct ! In December there were some pretty grand Winter Solstice shindigs known as Saturnalia, which included some seven festivals spanning from 17th December through January 5th. For instance in 153 BC the celebration of Janus Day , first day of the year, was made huge. Christian Church leaders were felt left out of the party and made up their minds to select the date 25th December for a âdoâ, bang in the middle of these Pagan festivals, with the intention that theirs should exceed the opposition's thrash in importance. It wasn't until 336 AD that Christmas (December 25), was officially approved by the Church to be known as Cristes Maesse . Until this time they hadn't filled in this part of the Bible's ripping yarn. Jesus missed 335 birthdays before the story writers felt the need to recognize one. Something on the possessive apostrophe: It is incorrect to write Jesus' birthday, in so far as it is lazy writing. In future please show the possessive apostrophe correctly as in Jesus's birthday. Jesus' birthday suggests there could be more than one Jesus, God forbid, one is more than enough. You would have to know you are describing a singular person when you say Jesusâ.... to know what is meant. With the correct usage there is no misunderstanding. New Year's. Another indistinct expression in communication, also known as a Bush-izm, which carries and encourages potential confusion . Known more properly as New Year - as in Happy New Year - it becomes a closed description of a definite article i.e. the New Year. Otherwise Happy New Year'sâ¦..?? what?? New Year's rant, resolution, bash, bonking (we live in hope)???.. That is where discombobulation is created. New Year's Day is correct. It is the first day belonging to the New Year. Nothing to do with a son of a godâs birthday though. I get the feeling I have written this before.....back in the present somewhere Hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy Newd Year's. doh....hick # cheers! if you can read this you may need to go and get well pissed.....hus' anyone's seen's me drink's's' hic # oops
Christmas ORIGIN OF THE WORD The word for Christmas in late Old English is Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, first found in 1038, and Cristes-messe, in 1131. In Dutch it is Kerst-misse, in Latin Dies Natalis, whence comes the French Noël, and Italian Il natale; in German Weihnachtsfest, from the preceeding sacred vigil. The term Yule is of disputed origin. It is unconnected with any word meaning "wheel". The name in Anglo-Saxon was geol, feast: geola, the name of a month (cf. Icelandic iol a feast in December). EARLY CELEBRATION Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts; Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday; Arnobius (VII, 32 in P.L., V, 1264) can still ridicule the "birthdays" of the gods. more at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm Reform of the Calendar The Year (Tropical Year) is the period in which the sun makes a complete circuit of the heavens and returns to the point in the zodiac whence it started, and the problem to be solved by those who construct calendars is to find the exact measure of this yearly period in terms of days, for the number of these occupied by the sun's annual journey is not exact. Taking the vernal equinox as a convenient starting-point, it is found that before the sun arrives there again, 365 days and something more have passed. These are, of course, solar days; of sidereal days, each shorter by four minutes, there are 366. The first attempt to find a practical solution of this problem was made by Julius Cæsar, who introduced the Julian Calendar. With the assistance of the astronomers of Alexandria, he determined the true length of the year to be 365 days and 6 hours, or a quarter of a day. From this it followed that the reckoning of the civil year began too soon, i.e. six hours before the sun had reached the point whence it started its annual cycle. In four years, therefore, the year would begin an entire day too soon. To remedy this Cæsar instituted leap-years, a 366th day being introduced in every fourth year, to cover the fractional portions of a day thus accumulated. This extra day was assigned to February, the 24th and 25th day of which were styled in leap-year the sixth before the calends (or first) of March. Hence the name Bissextile given to these years. Cæsar's reform, which was introduced in the year 46 B.C., would have been perfect had the calculation on which it was based been accurate. In reality, however, the portion of a day to be dealt with, over and above the complete 365, is not quite six hours, but 11 minutes and 14 seconds less. To add a day every fourth year was, therefore, almost three quarters of an hour too much, the following new year commencing 44 minutes and 52 seconds after the sun had passed the equinox. At the end of a century these accumulated errors amounted to about three-quarters of a day, and at the end of four centuries to three entire days. The practical inconveniences of this defect in the system were not slow in making themselves felt, the more so as, Cæsar being murdered soon after (44 B.C.), leap-year, by a misunderstanding of his play, occurred every third year, instead of every fourth. At the time of the Julian reform the sun passed the vernal equinox on 25 March, but by the time of the Council of Nicæa (A.D. 325) this had been changed For the 21st, which was then fixed upon as the proper date of the equinox--a date of great importance for the calculation of Easter, and therefore of all the moveable feasts throughout the year. But the error, of course, continued to operate and disturb such arrangements. In the thirteenth century the year was seven days behind the Nicæan computation. By the sixteenth it was ten days in arrear, so that the vernal equinox fell on 11 March, and the autumnal on 11 September; the shortest day was 11 December, and the longest 11 June, the feast of St. Barnabas, whence-the old rhyme: Barnaby bright, the longest day and the shortest night. Such alterations were too obvious to be ignored, and throughout the Middle Ages many observers both pointed them out and endeavoured to devise a remedy. For this purpose it was necessary, however, not only to determine with accuracy the exact amount of the Julian error, but also to discover a practical means of correcting it. It was this latter problem that chiefly stood in the way of reform, for the amount of error was ascertained almost exactly as early as the thirteenth century. The necessity of a reform was continually urged, especially by Church authorities, who felt the need in connexion with the ecclesiastical calendar. It was accordingly strongly pressed upon the attention of the pope by the councils of Constance, Basle, Lateran (A.D. 1511), and finally by Trent, in its last session (A.D. 1563). Nineteen years later the work was accomplished by Pope Gregory XIII (from whom the Gregorian reform takes its name) with the aid chiefly of Lilius, Clavius, and Chacon or Chaconius. There were two main objects to be attained: first, the error of ten days, already mentioned, which had crept in, had to be got rid of; second, its recurrence had to be prevented for the future. The first was attained by the omission from the calendar of the ten superfluous days, so as to bring things back to their proper position. To obviate the recurrence of the same convenience, it was decided to omit three leap years in every four centuries, and thus eliminate the three superfluous days, which, as we have seen, would be introduced in that period under the Julian system. To effect this, only those Centurial years were retained as leap years the first two figures of which are exact multiples of 4--as 1600, 2000, 2400--other centurial years 1700, 1800, 1900, 2100, etc.--becoming common years of 365 days each. By this comparatively simple device an approximation to perfect accuracy was effected, which for all practical purposes is amply sufficient; for, although the length of the Gregorian year exceeds the true astronomical measurement by twenty-six seconds, it will be about thirty-five centuries before the result will be an error of a day, and, as Lord Grimthorpe truly says, before that time arrives mankind will have abundant time to devise a mode of correction. For the actual introduction of the Gregorian Calendar or New Style, throughout Christendom, see CHRONOLOGY ... http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03738a.htm#gregorian regards wild
According to your religiously sourced cut and paste Christmas effort, â Jesus's birthday wasn't thought of until 1038 years after his imaginative birth??? â or was it before he was supposed to have been born .AD or BC there is a glaring omission here The doctrines according to the Catholic Church are even more cockamamie, spelt wrongly (Cristes-messe) and imprecise than the Christian ones. The first festival of Cristes Maesse - Christ's Mass of course - is attributed to 336 A.D Can you ever speak for yourself Wild or is everything you say cut & paste from some specious, crappy incorrect website which has it's own slanted agenda? BTW Aphie asked for a concise explanation not a load of catholic bs. Merry Cristes Maesse
This thread is really interesting. Never knew all this stuff. Just knew they put Christmas on a pagan holiday a long time ago.