Miscellaneous Rambling
Welcome to the shortest day of the year. * * * * * * * It's the day when the sun stops waning and starts exerting its strength, hence I suppose the Roman holiday, The Birth of the Unconquered Sun (of Sol Invictus). There are lots of arguments about whether the Catholic Church put Christmas on the 25th to ride on Sol's coattails or vice-versa. We know the Roman holiday didn't get started until the late third century. We don't know for sure when the Church started celebrating Christmas, but we know it was commonly accepted that Jesus was conceived in March, and we know Christianity was gaining serious traction by the late third century (1.1 million Catholics in 250 to 6.3 million in 300), much to the alarm of the pagans. Obviously, the Christians were doing something right and paganism was waning. Why would the uncompromising dogmatic Catholic Church adopt a custom of the losing and damned pagans? It simply doesn't ring true to me. The more likely theory: The pagans, knowing they were losing, tried to adopt the tactics of the side that was winning. * * * * * * * The argument that the Catholic Church would bend to accommodate pagans reminds me of Chesterton's observation that any stick is good enough if it beats the Church, even if inconsistent sticks are used. We are always assured that the Church is dogmatic, intolerant, and uncompromising, but when it comes to its second most important Holy Day, we're told it was flexible, tolerant of pagan practices, and compromising. * * * * * * * I found this at Wikipedia: "The idea, particularly popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, that the solstice date of 25 December for Christmas was selected because it was also the date of a Roman festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Birthday of the Unconquered Sun) is challenged by the church." Someone ought to assemble a book of falsehoods perpetuated by the Enlightenment and continued through the nineteenth century. The obscene Galileo exaggerations, the idea that the Catholic Church taught that the Earth was flat, and pretty much every single thing you've ever heard about the Middle Ages. * * * * * * * Light blogging this week . . . for obvious reasons.
