Merry ... somebody ... Mas!
At a former job of mine there used to be this one older, kind of
sour, guy who would sit out all of the office Christmas parties
because: 'The Bible says there were shepherds out in the field
watching their sheep when Jesus was born, which means that he
couldn't have been born in December, so it's wrong to celebrate
his birthday now'. Well, duh. Okay. But that doesn't mean that
you can't have a few cookies and chug some egg nog anyways and
just pretend that Jesus was born December twenty fifth, just
like the rest of us are doing.
This guy, by the way, was a member of one of the more extreme
Christian evangelical faiths - I forget which one - and it was
discovered that he was misbehaving scandalously. As you probably
could have predicted. For some reason you never hear about this
sort of stuff with secular humanists. Just why do you think that
is?
Really, there is about a one in three hundred and sixty five
chance that Jesus was actually born on Christmas, so it's not
entirely wrong to celebrate on this day. It's just not very
likely that you're right. The Roman Emperor Constantine wisely
decreed that since every good Roman was celebrating Saturnalia
at this time - where people exchanged gifts and whooped it up a
lot - this would be a good time to also celebrate the birth of
Christ. Constantine wasn't himself a Christian but a worshiper
of Sol Invictus (the all conquering Sun) so, in the Good old
Roman tradition of borrowing convenient Gods from foreign lands,
he decided that Jehovah was just another name for Sol Invictus
and there you go. Problem solved.
You have to wonder how pleased the Son of God is to have his
birthday commemorated ... whenever. It's not really an honor
when your worshipers purposefully and knowingly have it all
wrong and don't seem to care much. It's nice, I guess that
people remember your birthday but it probably would be nicer if
they remembered your actual birthday, rather than just some day
they were partying, anyways. Did you ever think that maybe one
of the reasons he hasn't come back to the Earth is that he wants
us to get it right? Maybe when we do, maybe then he'll return
from Heaven.