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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Whose birthday is it anyway? Merry Mithrastide By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 800 words Publication date: December 24, 2006 How many famous people were born on December 25? Isaac Newton, seventeenth century physicist (1642). His impact on our understanding of the world around us was as revolutionary as Einstein’s two hundred years later. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross (1821). Helena Rubinstein, of cosmetics fame – “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones” (1870). More recently, singer Annie Lennox, actress Sissy Spacek, assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and tv writer and presenter (in the days when television drama had meaning and impact) Rod Serling. Jesus Christ? Nope. Even the most devout Christians accept that there is no evidence that he was born on the day named after him. They are less comfortable, however, when confronted with discrepancies in the accounts of his birth. First problem? Matthew tells us that there were 28 generations between King David and J C, while Luke offers us 41 intermediates. Second problem? The names do not coincide. Third problem: Matthew implies that Mary and Joseph always lived in Bethlehem, while Luke comes up with the story – contradicted by contemporary evidence – that Mom and Pop had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the sake of a census. Mark and John make no reference to Christ’s nativity. Nor does Paul, whose writings predate the gospels by several decades. In fact, although he was active within thirty years of Jesus’ supposed ministry, the Apostle makes almost no reference to the presumed facts in Jesus’ life and little suggests that he knew anyone who had met the Son of God. With no first-hand evidence of Jesus’ existence and with circumstantial evidence either missing or contradictory, it is reasonable to doubt that he ever existed. Which means that celebration of his birth lies somewhere on a scale between misguided and hypocritical. Of course, as has been pointed out many times, Christians frequently stole other religions’ celebrations and made them their own. The chief rival to J C in the early years of the Roman Empire was Mithras, a god apparently imported by the Romans from Persia, where he may have been worshipped since the seventh century BC. The Big M was most popular in the third and fourth centuries AD, particularly among the military, but he fell out of favor when Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire. Mithraism and Christianity had much in common. Both involved baptism and a sacrament of bread and wine. Both reported that the world had once been devastated by flood and both predicted a fiery battle at the end of time. And, in contrast to some popular Greek and Roman cults, both preached sexual self-control. While some authorities claim that Mithras sprang to life from a rock on an unspecified date, others claim that he was born of a virgin on 25 December. Which means that “Merry Mithrastide” is as appropriate a greeting on that day as the upstart “Merry Christmas”. (“Tide”, for those who skipped etymology class, is the Anglo-Saxon word which was gradually replaced by “time”, from the Latin “tempus”.) Mithraism isn’t the only religion appropriated by aggressive Christians. The star in the east, the three kings, the miracles, execution, resurrection and ascension into heaven were all familiar to other faiths in the Mediterranean and Middle East. (Time out for more trivia: the Middle East was once known to us as the Near East, while the Middle East referred to Iraq, Iran and the Gulf; the Near East has since disappeared but the Far East has so far resisted attempts to move it westwards.) Even the idea of celebration in the heart of winter is not new. The Roman Saturnalia, which ended on December 24, comprised several days of drinking, feasting and present-giving. It also sometimes involved public nudity. Thankfully, given the state of many American bodies, this aspect was not taken over by Christians. December 25, which marked the solstice in Roman times, was another festival. This was the day when worshippers from various cults, Mithraism included, celebrated the sun’s rebirth. Up north, meanwhile, polytheistic Scandinavians celebrated Yule, a similar feast beginning in late December and continuing to early January. Jul persists in Nordic languages as the word for Christmas - as the heathen word “Easter” remains in English when “Christmort” would be more appropriate. With all this competition, Christ’s followers were slow on the uptake. It was only early in the third century that Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus claimed that Jesus was born on 25 December. In time, that became the officially accepted doctrine What should rational people do about December 25? Enjoy it, of course. But to be intellectually honest, we should either respect all traditions or none. With that in mind, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Wonderful Yule, a Festive Saturnalia and, of course, a Very Merry Mithrastide.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |