Christmas has been syncretist and is more so today. We had a right to claim the winter solstice for Christ and Nicholas, but we didn't do a clean sweep of that enemy-occupied territory. The Puritans did a much better job by trying to model Thanksgiving after Tabernacles and you'll notice that (though consumerist) isn't pagan.
Hebrew roots students know that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah ("Dedication") and all the Jewish feasts. But Protestants are happy to take the blame for everything as Paul did.
Just watch the video. The winter solstice doesn't even coincide with Christmas in the Julian calendar. The nativity of Christ was determined by calculating the date of the Annunciation and adding 9 months. This happened in early 3th c. Sol Invictus was instituted by Aurelian to counter Christianity decades after Christians celebrated Christmas.
"I
0:34
wanted to think of how what is a new
0:36
angle that I could present to people
0:38
about Santa Claus"
So blaming the Protestants is new.
"most
2:50
der will say yeah but don't you know,
2:54
don't you know that December 25th is is
2:57
the winter solstice, right? .... Actually,
3:12
that's not the case. Actually during
3:15
that time December 25th was on the
3:19
Julian calendar which today would be
3:22
January 7th"
His review of the Julian doesn't disprove the solstitial origin of Dec 25. In the 3rd century (only), the Gregorian and Julian calendars are the same. Because the Julian regresses against the seasons more rapidly, Julian "Dec 25" is now 2-3 weeks after the solstice, but in the 1st century and a little prior Julian (Roman) "Dec 25" was right at the solstice; it was also remembered as the week before kalends. So the sequence is that celebrating the solstice came first, setting it to Dec 25 came next, and the name "sol invictus" came later, and by the 3rd century it was stuck on the week before calends (Dec 25) even though that was no longer the solstice. So when Dionysius (and others) tried to set a date by imagining Jesus was conceived at the spring equinox, he got Dec 25 and not the actual solstice.
Upshot: Trying to justify that Dec 25 was in no way pagan fails; it was syncretist from the start (I believe it was Ambrose that admitted this).
"The
3:55
Christians calculated from the
3:58
enunciation of Christ in March 25th"
That's what proves they were working from the equinoxes and not the actual date of Passover (2 weeks after the calculated new moon of the equinox, e.g. 1 Apr 33 AD Julian or 3 Apr Gregorian). Since they worked from the equinox, they got the solstice, open and shut. (They also assumed Christ's conception was the same day as his birth, which was symbolic but also not justified, especially because shepherds didn't watch their flocks by night in winter.)
"yeah,
4:17
Christians incorporated the symbolism
4:19
because it then corresponded with the
4:21
celebration that they themselves were
4:24
participating in regarding the nativity,
4:26
but it didn't go the other way around"
Both factors contributed. It was syncretist, like many other things that happened in those days. So the first clause of OP title is disproven, Protestants didn't give rise to the pagan roots of Christmas, they were there from the start. In the same way, (my research shows) the first uses of the word "Easter" had confluent roots: it means "rising" and was used for both the sunrise (Eos, pagan) and the resurrection. Those who say the word "Easter" is all Christian, and those who say it is all pagan, are both wrong; same applies to the date Dec 25.
"what we see today as
4:59
Santa Claus is a concoction of
5:02
Protestant Christians reforming the
5:05
figure of St. Nicholas because they
5:07
hated the veneration of saints so much"
Okay, let's hear it.
"St.
5:51
Nicholas
5:53
who destroyed the pagans, who gave gifts
5:56
to the children, protected the innocents
5:59
and the travelers gets repaganized"
Okay, let me provisionally accept the second clause then, that "antichristian propaganda and Protestant's rejection of saint veneration led to ... today's secular X-mas Coca-Cola Santa Claus consoomerist holiday." As a Hebrew-roots guy I would grant that Protestants need to teach who Nicholas was, what wonders he did, and how he inspired generosity so as to combat the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Santa image that has been templated over him. However, I also note that many Protestants do that debunking quite successfully, such as the VeggieTales team in Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving.
"They then begin to develop and add
6:05
aspects of Odin"
In the 19th century? Sounds sketch.
"Protestantism,
6:32 .... because of it,
6:39
we now live in a commodified secular
6:42
celebration of Christmas where you can't
6:44
even say Merry Christmas anymore."
The reason people are afraid to say Merry Christmas is the opposite of Protestantism, namely rabbinical Judaism and Islam. If you merely meant Orthodox and Catholics are not afraid to say Merry Christmas, that would have a bit of correlation considering the whole world, but the fight against Christ being celebrated proceeds apace in Catholic and Orthodox countries too in its own way, so I don't know that Protestant policy is the only reason for its advances.
"once American culture and
8:29
that's where in the 19th century once we
8:32
get to Washington Irving and uh Thomas
8:36
Nast and the developing CocaCola all
8:39
this stuff comes together by the end of
8:42
the 1900s"
That's your evidence? I might just as well say that Tolkien's extremely colorful Catholic retellings of Father Christmas's adventures (and Dickens's Anglican carol, and Lewis's Anglican Father Christmas in Narnia) were just as responsible. Lewis even wrote an essay on how there were two different celebrations of the same date already, a pagan and a Christian, and he put forward his Father Christmas to direct people back to the Christian side, but it's been amalgamated into the pagan side too. So, yeah, it's syncretist and it's not the Protestants' fault.
"folk cultures reinserted
10:53
local winter giftgivers. In Germany, you
10:56
got Chris Kendall or what we would say
10:58
say is Chris Kringle. In England, you
11:01
get Father Christmas."
Christkindl means Christ child. The later Kris Kringle was taken from Father Christmas, whom I pointed out was not Protestant but Anglican.
Not going to quote the bit about how it's actually shamanism to put out red and white psychedelic mushrooms on a tree to dry because it's the favored dish of Siberian reindeer whose urine was then used religiously; that's just a failed parallel that doesn't reflect the actual European origin of decorating trees with candles. Funny attempt at convergence though.
"17:10
the Christmas tree is Yigdasil"
So what if so? I thought every tree was Yggdrasil. I know that Yggdrasil is an echo of the Cross.
He's right to say that Mithras, Horus, Dionysius, Tammuz, and Adonis were only templated onto the Jesus story after it was revealed, and their origins and connection with the solstice were only amplified after the fact; that is part of the deception, for the new to claim it is older than what God shows to be truly old. He's wrong to imply Saturnalia has nothing to do with Christmas, because it's the same solstitial celebration that was already extant and that informed the Mar 25 date used by Dionysius Exiguus.
So as to the second charge, I think it's overstated to say Protestant rejection of saint veneration was a major contributor to the secular Santa Claus. It's true that the regular waves of antichrist propaganda that keep redefining Santa (new redefinition movie every year now) keep breaking against the truth and history, but Protestants are pushing back against this. It's true that Protestant neglect of history gave more leeway for these encroachments, to which I will admit guilt, but I wouldn't say that's so strong as saying that rejection led to the modern Claus, rather it permitted others to seize the ground. If someone wants to use the second charge with sufficient context, there's blame to go around, but the first clause is still a fail and so it's still lopsided and my initial statement of the case was correct.
Totally unrelated and I think it's God's sense of humor, but it's what I've calculated: leaning on Whiston's figures, Jesus was born in fall of 4 BC, for which I've put 6 Oct (at 3 a.m.), the first of Tabernacles. That puts the Annunciation and Conception on a probable date of the 24th and 25th of Kislev, the first of Dedication, a date prophesied by Haggai as notable for beginning to measure seed in the barn. Oddly enough this date in 5 BC is 25 Dec Julian (23 Dec Gregorian). So if you want to know the solar date when the Word became incarnate, I'll tell you it was exactly 2,029 years ago as of this year's Festivus (note how Rand Paul is reclaiming Festivus for Christianity).
Upshot: Trying to justify that Dec 25 was in no way pagan fails; it was syncretist from the start (I believe it was Ambrose that admitted this).
I agree about the calendar thing. But still it doesn't follow it's syncretist. As mentioned in the video Christians did adopt the symbolism of the Sun dying and being born again but this has nothing to do with the initial reason for celebrating Christmas. The Church co-opted and baptized pagan rituals and this helped with the adoption of Christianity among the pagans. In the case with Christmas, the nativity was a purely Christian feast and it had to compete with the pagan celebrations of Sun worship.
That's what proves they were working from the equinoxes and not the actual date of Passover (2 weeks after the calculated new moon of the equinox, e.g. 1 Apr 33 AD Julian or 3 Apr Gregorian). Since they worked from the equinox, they got the solstice, open and shut. (They also assumed Christ's conception was the same day as his birth, which was symbolic but also not justified, especially because shepherds didn't watch their flocks by night in winter.)
No, Hippolytus used the jewish Temple calendar from Luke 1:5 and determined John the Baptist was conceived late September and Jesus was conceived 6 months later getting 24th Match + 9 months = Christmas.
The reason people are afraid to say Merry Christmas is the opposite of Protestantism, namely rabbinical Judaism and Islam. If you merely meant Orthodox and Catholics are not afraid to say Merry Christmas, that would have a bit of correlation considering the whole world, but the fight against Christ being celebrated proceeds apace in Catholic and Orthodox countries too in its own way, so I don't know that Protestant policy is the only reason for its advances.
It doesn't matter because the reason why the West is in this state is ultimately secularism, materialism and liberalism which was brought about by the Reformation.
That's your evidence? I might just as well say that Tolkien's extremely colorful Catholic retellings of Father Christmas's adventures (and Dickens's Anglican carol, and Lewis's Anglican Father Christmas in Narnia) were just as responsible. Lewis even wrote an essay on how there were two different celebrations of the same date already, a pagan and a Christian, and he put forward his Father Christmas to direct people back to the Christian side, but it's been amalgamated into the pagan side too. So, yeah, it's syncretist and it's not the Protestants' fault.
The evidence is that during the middle ages the figure known as Santa Claus was St. Nicholas who was a real person. Eventually his attributes and characteristics were modified which led to the Coca-Cola token fairy tale figure living in the North Pole. The reason why this happened is because Protestants weren't keen on veneration of the saints but also because of rising secularism that inevitably accompanies Protestant nations.
Y'know, I should be very cautious here, because somewhere in the notes I have the justification for the Mar 25 that frames the Dec 25, and there may be enough leeway there to say it wasn't directly the equinox/solstice link. The problem is that Jesus didn't say to celebrate his conception and birth and the Bible is generally against birthdays anyway. He said celebrate his death (because it's Passover, an established date), and he celebrated both the Levitical feasts and the added feast of Hanukkah. And Sabbath. When the Gentiles lost the original OT context of the feast calendar they started making their own (naturally inventing a date for Christ's birth), and Augustine put forward all kinds of the new feasts as if properly supplanting the old ones, with Sunday supplanting the Sabbath. But these are all by God's permission and by magisterial authority, and not by Biblical command (not even Sunday) or by actual commemoration of any Biblical event. So I'll back out the claim that Dec 25 is always syncretist, because I wasn't remembering all the details; but there is so much larded over onto the Biblical data that when I discovered it (Lev. 23) and realized that it covered the whole Bible period I wondered at how far we've strayed from its didactic symbolism.
But I learned to enjoy both Sabbath and Lord's Day, and to celebrate Christ's birth both at Tabernacles and with underinformed Christians at Christmas.
I hadn't heard of Hippolytus using the Abijah calendar to get that date. Here, among other things, are three readings that put John's conception in midsummer based on Abijah. John Parsons is a reliable source and lays out all the evidence he can find on both sides, and doesn't find Hippolytus using the Abijah calculation, jibing with my memory that he only had the solar calendar and the concept of putting the conception on the same date as the crucifixion (which wasn't necessarily indicated and ultimately cuts against Josephus). So I'm not convinced the early church fathers used Abijah; Chrysostom instead argued that Zechariah served for Day of Atonement, which is an understandable assumption but not in the text and not consonant with the Abijah evidence.
I understand if my quibbling attempt to put a little braking on a rampant charge might not sound like the most supportive. Yes, the Protestants lost the original Nicholas and let his character be heavily reworked; and we suffer for this, and are trying to work our way out of the hole. I guess my concern is that if we're both against the consumerist idol then we shouldn't regard blame for each other's camps as any more than a friendly tease, instead of using words that make it more belligerent. I'll seek to work on that myself.
We are not required to "venerate" "the saints".
How many "saints" were deemed so by the Catholic Church, which also calls old pedophiles "holy" and "father".
Saint veneration is Scriptural though.
That's why you shouldn't listen to them but to the true apostolic historic Church that Christ established which is the Eastern Orthodox Church.
200 years ago, you niggers had nothing to do with the Church.
Christmas has been syncretist and is more so today. We had a right to claim the winter solstice for Christ and Nicholas, but we didn't do a clean sweep of that enemy-occupied territory. The Puritans did a much better job by trying to model Thanksgiving after Tabernacles and you'll notice that (though consumerist) isn't pagan.
Hebrew roots students know that Jesus celebrated Hanukkah ("Dedication") and all the Jewish feasts. But Protestants are happy to take the blame for everything as Paul did.
Just watch the video. The winter solstice doesn't even coincide with Christmas in the Julian calendar. The nativity of Christ was determined by calculating the date of the Annunciation and adding 9 months. This happened in early 3th c. Sol Invictus was instituted by Aurelian to counter Christianity decades after Christians celebrated Christmas.
So blaming the Protestants is new.
His review of the Julian doesn't disprove the solstitial origin of Dec 25. In the 3rd century (only), the Gregorian and Julian calendars are the same. Because the Julian regresses against the seasons more rapidly, Julian "Dec 25" is now 2-3 weeks after the solstice, but in the 1st century and a little prior Julian (Roman) "Dec 25" was right at the solstice; it was also remembered as the week before kalends. So the sequence is that celebrating the solstice came first, setting it to Dec 25 came next, and the name "sol invictus" came later, and by the 3rd century it was stuck on the week before calends (Dec 25) even though that was no longer the solstice. So when Dionysius (and others) tried to set a date by imagining Jesus was conceived at the spring equinox, he got Dec 25 and not the actual solstice.
Upshot: Trying to justify that Dec 25 was in no way pagan fails; it was syncretist from the start (I believe it was Ambrose that admitted this).
That's what proves they were working from the equinoxes and not the actual date of Passover (2 weeks after the calculated new moon of the equinox, e.g. 1 Apr 33 AD Julian or 3 Apr Gregorian). Since they worked from the equinox, they got the solstice, open and shut. (They also assumed Christ's conception was the same day as his birth, which was symbolic but also not justified, especially because shepherds didn't watch their flocks by night in winter.)
Both factors contributed. It was syncretist, like many other things that happened in those days. So the first clause of OP title is disproven, Protestants didn't give rise to the pagan roots of Christmas, they were there from the start. In the same way, (my research shows) the first uses of the word "Easter" had confluent roots: it means "rising" and was used for both the sunrise (Eos, pagan) and the resurrection. Those who say the word "Easter" is all Christian, and those who say it is all pagan, are both wrong; same applies to the date Dec 25.
Okay, let's hear it.
Okay, let me provisionally accept the second clause then, that "antichristian propaganda and Protestant's rejection of saint veneration led to ... today's secular X-mas Coca-Cola Santa Claus consoomerist holiday." As a Hebrew-roots guy I would grant that Protestants need to teach who Nicholas was, what wonders he did, and how he inspired generosity so as to combat the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Santa image that has been templated over him. However, I also note that many Protestants do that debunking quite successfully, such as the VeggieTales team in Saint Nicholas: A Story of Joyful Giving.
In the 19th century? Sounds sketch.
The reason people are afraid to say Merry Christmas is the opposite of Protestantism, namely rabbinical Judaism and Islam. If you merely meant Orthodox and Catholics are not afraid to say Merry Christmas, that would have a bit of correlation considering the whole world, but the fight against Christ being celebrated proceeds apace in Catholic and Orthodox countries too in its own way, so I don't know that Protestant policy is the only reason for its advances.
That's your evidence? I might just as well say that Tolkien's extremely colorful Catholic retellings of Father Christmas's adventures (and Dickens's Anglican carol, and Lewis's Anglican Father Christmas in Narnia) were just as responsible. Lewis even wrote an essay on how there were two different celebrations of the same date already, a pagan and a Christian, and he put forward his Father Christmas to direct people back to the Christian side, but it's been amalgamated into the pagan side too. So, yeah, it's syncretist and it's not the Protestants' fault.
Christkindl means Christ child. The later Kris Kringle was taken from Father Christmas, whom I pointed out was not Protestant but Anglican.
Not going to quote the bit about how it's actually shamanism to put out red and white psychedelic mushrooms on a tree to dry because it's the favored dish of Siberian reindeer whose urine was then used religiously; that's just a failed parallel that doesn't reflect the actual European origin of decorating trees with candles. Funny attempt at convergence though.
So what if so? I thought every tree was Yggdrasil. I know that Yggdrasil is an echo of the Cross.
He's right to say that Mithras, Horus, Dionysius, Tammuz, and Adonis were only templated onto the Jesus story after it was revealed, and their origins and connection with the solstice were only amplified after the fact; that is part of the deception, for the new to claim it is older than what God shows to be truly old. He's wrong to imply Saturnalia has nothing to do with Christmas, because it's the same solstitial celebration that was already extant and that informed the Mar 25 date used by Dionysius Exiguus.
So as to the second charge, I think it's overstated to say Protestant rejection of saint veneration was a major contributor to the secular Santa Claus. It's true that the regular waves of antichrist propaganda that keep redefining Santa (new redefinition movie every year now) keep breaking against the truth and history, but Protestants are pushing back against this. It's true that Protestant neglect of history gave more leeway for these encroachments, to which I will admit guilt, but I wouldn't say that's so strong as saying that rejection led to the modern Claus, rather it permitted others to seize the ground. If someone wants to use the second charge with sufficient context, there's blame to go around, but the first clause is still a fail and so it's still lopsided and my initial statement of the case was correct.
Totally unrelated and I think it's God's sense of humor, but it's what I've calculated: leaning on Whiston's figures, Jesus was born in fall of 4 BC, for which I've put 6 Oct (at 3 a.m.), the first of Tabernacles. That puts the Annunciation and Conception on a probable date of the 24th and 25th of Kislev, the first of Dedication, a date prophesied by Haggai as notable for beginning to measure seed in the barn. Oddly enough this date in 5 BC is 25 Dec Julian (23 Dec Gregorian). So if you want to know the solar date when the Word became incarnate, I'll tell you it was exactly 2,029 years ago as of this year's Festivus (note how Rand Paul is reclaiming Festivus for Christianity).
I agree about the calendar thing. But still it doesn't follow it's syncretist. As mentioned in the video Christians did adopt the symbolism of the Sun dying and being born again but this has nothing to do with the initial reason for celebrating Christmas. The Church co-opted and baptized pagan rituals and this helped with the adoption of Christianity among the pagans. In the case with Christmas, the nativity was a purely Christian feast and it had to compete with the pagan celebrations of Sun worship.
No, Hippolytus used the jewish Temple calendar from Luke 1:5 and determined John the Baptist was conceived late September and Jesus was conceived 6 months later getting 24th Match + 9 months = Christmas.
It doesn't matter because the reason why the West is in this state is ultimately secularism, materialism and liberalism which was brought about by the Reformation.
The evidence is that during the middle ages the figure known as Santa Claus was St. Nicholas who was a real person. Eventually his attributes and characteristics were modified which led to the Coca-Cola token fairy tale figure living in the North Pole. The reason why this happened is because Protestants weren't keen on veneration of the saints but also because of rising secularism that inevitably accompanies Protestant nations.
Y'know, I should be very cautious here, because somewhere in the notes I have the justification for the Mar 25 that frames the Dec 25, and there may be enough leeway there to say it wasn't directly the equinox/solstice link. The problem is that Jesus didn't say to celebrate his conception and birth and the Bible is generally against birthdays anyway. He said celebrate his death (because it's Passover, an established date), and he celebrated both the Levitical feasts and the added feast of Hanukkah. And Sabbath. When the Gentiles lost the original OT context of the feast calendar they started making their own (naturally inventing a date for Christ's birth), and Augustine put forward all kinds of the new feasts as if properly supplanting the old ones, with Sunday supplanting the Sabbath. But these are all by God's permission and by magisterial authority, and not by Biblical command (not even Sunday) or by actual commemoration of any Biblical event. So I'll back out the claim that Dec 25 is always syncretist, because I wasn't remembering all the details; but there is so much larded over onto the Biblical data that when I discovered it (Lev. 23) and realized that it covered the whole Bible period I wondered at how far we've strayed from its didactic symbolism.
But I learned to enjoy both Sabbath and Lord's Day, and to celebrate Christ's birth both at Tabernacles and with underinformed Christians at Christmas.
I hadn't heard of Hippolytus using the Abijah calendar to get that date. Here, among other things, are three readings that put John's conception in midsummer based on Abijah. John Parsons is a reliable source and lays out all the evidence he can find on both sides, and doesn't find Hippolytus using the Abijah calculation, jibing with my memory that he only had the solar calendar and the concept of putting the conception on the same date as the crucifixion (which wasn't necessarily indicated and ultimately cuts against Josephus). So I'm not convinced the early church fathers used Abijah; Chrysostom instead argued that Zechariah served for Day of Atonement, which is an understandable assumption but not in the text and not consonant with the Abijah evidence.
I understand if my quibbling attempt to put a little braking on a rampant charge might not sound like the most supportive. Yes, the Protestants lost the original Nicholas and let his character be heavily reworked; and we suffer for this, and are trying to work our way out of the hole. I guess my concern is that if we're both against the consumerist idol then we shouldn't regard blame for each other's camps as any more than a friendly tease, instead of using words that make it more belligerent. I'll seek to work on that myself.