There is perhaps no myth in the western world which is more widely accepted and yet so totally false as that according to which Jesus the Christ was born on December 25. There is, as a matter of fact, not the slightest iota of information, even in the form of a legend, which places his birth on that or any other exact date. According to the equally mythical history of Luke, shepherds were watching their flocks on that fateful night and angels appeared to them and sang a wonderful song. The same story had been told concerning Gautama five hundred years before the birth of Jesus; and it had been repeated about others who long preceded the advent of Christianity.

The word Christmas derives from the two words, Christ's Mass. In the Catholic Church. as we all know, the great liturgical ceremonial is the Mass. According to the doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and wine administered by the priest become literally the flesh and the blood of Christ during the ritual; and by eating and drinking these, the partaker becomes divine and immortal because the flesh and blood of Christ become actually those of the communicant in a mystical process. This is substantially the same eucharistic rite which by MARTIN A. Larson had been practiced in various pagan mystery cults for hundreds of years previous to Christianity. Christ's Mass was the principal High Mass celebrated in the Catholic Church in the third century; but at that time it did not occur on December 25, nor did it have and relationship to the birth of Jesus until the second half of the fourth century.

The Catholic Church finally decreed a birth date for its founder, primarily for the purpose of converting the communicants of various pagan cults; and this fact was well known to the early Christians, who accused the Roman Church. which first instituted this date, of idolatry, paganism, and sacrilege, for making December 25 the birthday of Jesus. It is interesting to note that Martin Luther tried to abolish December 25 as a Christian holiday; the English parliament outlawed it in 1644 and the Puritans in Massachusetts did the same. However, when the Episcopalian Charles II was restored to the English throne in 1660, he reinstituted December 25 as the birthday of Christ.

Let us then go back into history to see whether we can discover what this holiday really signifies; for in the northern hemisphere it had been celebrated for thousands of years before the coming of Christianity. And it originated from the solar cycle and from the fear of death which came each fall and winter with the declining sun. Savage and primitive man lived very close to nature: and his two great needs consisted in obtaining food and achieving success in rearing his children. It was very, very difficult to wring sustenance from the earth; but he understood that the In the spring the grass began to grow again; in the heavens and as the days grew longer. the leaves sprang forth on the trees; and nature came alive once more after the long winter sleep. And, as a result, the man was able to obtain food by which he, his woman, and his offspring could survive. Getting food and shelter and avoiding premature and violent death constituted the career of primitive man. And since he believed that by worshipping and placating supernatural powers, he might be successful in his objectives, the religion of our distant ancestors was the only science they knew or practiced.

Since the sun was obviously the most important visible object in the universe and since it was the ultimate source of light, heat. and food, it was inevitable that primitive man should worship the same. It became the object of fear, awe, and reverence among millions; its movements were observed most closely. When it began to decline in the late summer; when the days shortened and the nights grew chilly; when frost and ice covered the earth so that all vegetation died. -- then the hearts within these people sank in dread and fearful aboding. Perhaps the sun would disappear altogether, and the earth would be plunged in icebound, universal darkness and death.

And so they watched day by day while the great orb sank lower and lower; but at last, behold it sank no more. For a day or two it tottered at its nadir; but then a wonderful thing occurred: its motion was reversed. It began to rise again, at first almost imperceptibly, but with unmistakable certainty. Three or four days afterward, there was no longer any doubt -- the Sun Cod had been reborn; it would soon again soar higher in the heavens; the days would be warmer and longer, the grass and the leaves would again spring forth; and the human race would survive. A few months later, when vegetation had burgeoned forth in all its glory, the second great holiday was celebrated everywhere. The Jews called it the Passover; in various countries it went by different names: the Creeks called it the Lesser Mystery; and we call it Easter.

And thus in every land the god was born on or about December 25; and he was reborn or resurrected into a second life about March 21. And in the fall, when the crops were harvested, there was another great festi val. The Jews called it The Feast of Tabernacles; the Greeks called it the Greater Mystery; and we, in our pedestrian way, simply call it Thanksgiving.

The original savior-god of antiquity who was the prototype of all others was the Egyptian Osiris. According to the myth which runs back to a period earlier than 3,000 B. C., Nut the sky-goddess and Keb the earth god became the parents of quintuplets born successively on the last five days of the year; these children were said to have been conceived on the 25th of May, which was the day the waters of the Nile began to rise. Osiris, the oldest of these children, was therefore born on December 25 or 26. He was the god of the grain who brought the wheat from heaven so that men might have life and have it more abundantly. His sister Isis taught the people of Egypt how to make bread from wheat and ale from barley. Osiris was said to have been murdered by his brother Set on November 13, the day on which the grain was sown; and he was said to have been resurrected from. the grave by the help of Isis on November 18, the very day on which the wheat began to sprout. After Osiris had risen into second life, he went to Elysium in his solar ship, where he is forever the judge of the dead and the ruler of the afterlife.

This was the great savior-myth which proliferated all over the ancient world and became the basis of various mystery-cults popular among the common people for centuries before the coming of Christianity. The principal elements in all these ideologies were astronomical, agricultural, and sexual: for all these were ingredients which constituted their science of life.

As we have indicated, Isis was from the beginning, a very potent divinity in the Egyptian religion; and as time progressed, she became more and more important until she over shadowed Osiris himself, who became at last little more than a passive sacrifice. There arose also an independent Isis-cult, which spread all over the Roman Empire, and which developed into the most magnificent and awe inspiring of all the ancient mysteries. In Rome alone, there were fifty-eight splendid temples of Isis, in which tens of thousands of her adherents found their life-consolation.

At an earlier date, the character of Isis had been exported from Egypt and appeared in Sicily, Greece, and Italy under the name of Demeter and Kore; she was the goddess of the grain and the harvests. The Creeks gave her a daughter called Persephone, who became the queen of the underworld. The cult of Kare spread far and wide; and at Alexandria a magnificent temple was built for her in which the Festival of the Maiden was celebrated on January 6. Preceding the dawn of that day, the worshippers played flutes all night long; in the morning, the high priest appeared at the portals of the temple and announced that the Virgin had just given birth to the Aeon, or the Holy Emanation. This was known as the Epiphany, or the appearance of the divinity, the savior god. And it is most interesting and pertinent to note that January 6 was the day in which the wheat became ripe for the harvest in Egypt. Isis or Kore had given birth to the savior, who symbolized the grain.

The Mazdean religion, which existed for thousands of years before Christianity, was based on the worship of the sun. And its successor Zoroastrianism, worshipped a powerful deity called Ahura-Mazda, the God of Eternal Light. One of the great divinities in the religion was Mithra, who was the god of battles, and the mediator between Ahura and the human race; he was also the savior-god who performed great feats which saved mankind several times; his greatest act was the slaying of the bull, from which all good things on earth were derived. The holy day of the cult was Sunday, which the Christians began to celebrate as their Sabbath in the fourth century, instead of the Jewish seventh nature and the divinity of Jesus: the first and the oldest was Judaistic, according to day or Saturday. According to the myth, he was born in a cave of a rock of a virgin on December 25. At his birth, shepherds came and sang songs to herald his appearance.

The Mithraic cult arose as a separate religion about 175 B. C., and it became one of the most virulent competitors and enemies of Christianity in the ancient world; all night before the morning of December 25, its devotees kept vigil before their Mithraemus; and, as the first stream of sunlight draped the earth, the high priest of Mythra emerged from his inner sanctum and announced in a loud voice to the kneeling multitude: "The god is born." And then there was unrestrained rejoicing, followed by a feast commemorating the last meal which Mithra celebrated with his disciples before his ascension into heaven. This was the Last Supper of Mythraism and its sacramental feast, the high mass of the cult which was its principal ritual for five or six hundred years before the Christians adopted it.

Between 100 B. C. and 300 A. D., Mithraism spread throughout the Roman Empire. even into the British Isles. There were hundreads of Mythraeums and tens of thousands of: communicants who celebrated the high feast of Mythra on December 25, the day on which the sun god, their savior, was barn.

Before Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine, there had for centuries been a great celebration known as the Saturnalia, which lasted seven days, from December 17 to 24. This was the annual week of good will to all and equality for every one. During this period.

sexual conduct was uninhabited; slaves and masters exchanged places and traded their

normal dress; and the owners waited at table on their slaves. This was to celebrate the shortest day of the year and the arrival of the new sun. This long holiday was concluded by a climatic feast on December 25, known as the Brumalia, on which sifts were exchanged and joy and happiness prevailed. After this, normal occupations were resumed, and every one went back to work.

In the Teutonic countries for many centuries, the Germans and the Scandinavians had celebrated the passing of the winter solstice and the upward swing of the sun. Their Kris Kringle brought presents for all good children and laid them under the Yule tree; he was the granddaddy of our Santa Claus, who drives his reindeer from the far north and climbs down chimneys to fill the stockings of all obedient boys and girls with many wonderful goodies.

With this short introduction. Let us examine a little more closely the process by which an immemorial pagan festival came to be the principal Christian Holiday. Early Christians knew nothing of the birth, the boyhood, Or the life of Jesus preceding the, baptism. Even the first two chapters of Luke and Matthew, which were Forgeries added in the second centuries, made no pretense of knowing the day on which he was born.

After giving him a supernatural Conception through a virgin birth, the next great Step in making Christianity acceptable to the Creco-Roman masses was to transform him into a solar god. The first attempt to do this, so far as we know first was made by Gnostic sect about 175. About 200, Alexandrinus, father , Clemens Alesandrinus set the date of Jesus birth on November the 18, the day on which Osiris rose from the dead and the wheat sprouted from the earth in Egypt. Clemens tell us that others set the date on May 25, the time when the waters rose in the Nile.

All these, however, were only tentative attempts to establish a date for the birth of the Christian savior.

During the third century January 6 gradually came to be accepted as the date of Jesus' Epiphany: that is, the day, on which he was baptized, filled with the holy spirit, and given his mission. According to the doctrine in the early church, he was begotten spiritually by the Father as the Son of God when he appeared at the Jordan for baptism by John. Later in the western churches the Epiphany was sometimes celebrated as the day on which the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem twelve days after the birth of Jesus.

Among the early Christians, were three very different doctrines concerning the Which Jesus was born Of Mary and Joseph in the ordinary course of nature and was only made divine by spiritual adoption at his baptism; the second was the doctrine of the Gnostics, who said that Jesus was never barn, was not, in fact, human at all and had no earthy parents, He was a spiritual being sent by the Supreme God for a brief ministry to deliver the message of salvation and redemption; the third concept of Christ was that incorporated by the movement which in time became the Catholic Church: according to its doctrine, Jesus was born of a virgin birth, Very similar to what had been taught in every mystery cult for centuries.

And so January 6 was accepted almost universally as the date of the Epiphany; and a great many churches, especially in the east, began saying that this was also the physical birthday of Jesus. In various Catholic countries this is still done.

In the Latin countries, however, where the cult of Isis, Mithra, and the Manichaeans were extremely powerful, it was that the founder of Christianity be drawn into the orbit of the immemorial solar myth. In the year 354, Bishop Liberius of Rome decreed that the birth Of Jesus must thence forth be celebrated on December 25, instead of on January 6, as in previous The Mithraists had been doing precisely the same things for five hundred years and the Osirians for four thousand.

Thereafter December 25 gradually became more and more popular as the birth date of Jesus. The Church at Antioch adopted it in 370, Constantinople in 380, Alexandria in 432, and Jerusalem in 549. The Mass of Christ or Christ's Mass was celebrated almost universally on December 25

By such devious means, the immemorial Pagan rejoicing which celebrated rebirth of the various and life-giving sun became the birthday of the founder of western faith. It is one of those marvelous events, which show how human emotion and physical need are translated into religious doctrine and mythical history. For the race of man lives, not by reason, by the yearning of its aspiration.

The American Rationalist - 1963

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