[larusso]

Let’s talk about Christmas then. They deliberately put it at a time where many northern folks had their own traditional end of the year / longest night (opposite to midd summer) festivals. In Germany we have Nikolaus on the 6.12 (goes back to a priest St Nikolaus who did good to people and I believe died on the 6th of December)

But the name is striking to Santa Claus which is just a Anglo version of that name. Interesting is also that half of Germany the Christ baby brings the presents or the Weihnachtsmann. The Weihnachtsmann is what we would refer as Santa. But Santa and Nikolaus are depicted the same. There some other festivals like Jule from Scandinavia etc. But compared to Christmas we at least know that the end of Jesus (or whoever it was) happened at that time due to too many religions and groups in the city. When he was born and how old he even was…

Edit: Also the fact that the holiday follows the moon calendar because it was the Sunday after the Paschal full moon. Which is celebrated by the Jewish as Passover.

[anon291]

> hey deliberately put it at a time where many northern folks had their own traditional end of the year

For most of history, Christianity is a mediterranean religion. There would be no reason to choose to put it at a time for Northern Europeans.

For example, I am the descendants of the indigenous Christians of India. The historical celebration of Christmas is called Denha, which is the native name for Epiphany, for which there is widespread textual evidence (corroborated by similar celebrations elsewhere), and which was celebrated at the usual time (Jan 6). There are numerous councils of the Church of the east that confirm this as well. Why would they possibly care what Scandinavia did. The simple truth is that this is a really old time to celebrate the birth of Christ, for reasons lost to history. Unlikely that the Northern Europeans, who were catechized many centuries after Christ played a large role in it. We have records of the date in Asian church councils well before the Northern Europeans were even contacted people.

The reason why Northern European traditions (trees, santa claus, snow, etc) became popular is due to the migration of Northern Europeans to America which is today synonymous with 'Christian' nations. even in Europe, the indigenous Catholics of South Europe don't always celebrate in this way.

But there are universals: sweets, gift-giving, celebration, stars, these are all common.

[eitland]

There is an explanation elsewhere in the thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43730944

[petesergeant]

> They deliberately put it

Who did? When?

[knome]

The Catholic Church. The fourth century.

https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas

>In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration).

>Although some evidence suggests that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival

[Amezarak]

This is a common theory but it's almost certainly wrong.

https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th...

> However, upon closer examination, this theory encounters several historical and contextual challenges. One of the key issues is the lack of any contemporary evidence from the early Christian period directly linking the choice of December 25th for Christmas to pagan festivals.

> But several decades earlier (c. 203 C.E.), a bishop from Rome, Hippolytus, wrote: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years.” (Comm. on Dan. 23.3.) [...]

> Tertullian, for example, calculated that Jesus was killed on March 25th. If Jesus had also been conceived on March 25th and you count exactly nine months later from that date, you then have Jesus’ birth on December 25th. I think this is the way early Christians came to believe that Jesus’ birth happened on December 25th.

> Moreover, unlike the previous and still most popular theory, this one is mentioned in the early sources!

> A treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which comes from the 4th century states: “Therefore, our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in March, which is the day of the passion of the Lord and his conception. For on that day, he was conceived on the same he suffered.”

Note that regardless, December 25th was regarded as the date by at least some Christians long before the fourth century. As for the mention of shepherds in the article, we have independent attestations of shepherding in winter in the area, so the question of "why would they be there in winter" is "because that's normal".

[anon291]

Hmm... why would the church in asia have chosen jan 6 as their epiphany date and main celebration of christmas if it were for Saturnalia. These are questions no one can answer, and we all just assume a Euro-centric perspective for little reason.

[Aloisius]

The earliest references to Epiphany come from the Roman Empire.

[petesergeant]

The "history.com editors" using a phrase like "it is commonly believed" doesn't feel like a citation to me. My understanding is that the date is derived from the date of the Annunciation.

[knome]

Expecting a formally reviewed citation in response to a vague three word query in an informal conversation on a forum wholly unrelated to specialization in that topic is a bit silly, but if you do bother to do the legwork and find a citation for either what I linked or your own notion, it may be of interest to other readers.

[larusso]

Well the Bible was written some 300 years after all of this happened. Jesus didn’t own a birth certificate nor was it ever officially written down. As to who decides when what happened and wrote it down I don‘t know.

We have historical figures where we don‘t know exactly when their born. But we don‘t just write a data down.

Here is a link going in more detail and actually contradicts what I wrote. But points about the Santa Claus etc still stand. And I see no real hard evidence to the contrary either.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-decembe...

[boredhedgehog]

> Well the Bible was written some 300 years after all of this happened.

Are you perhaps confusing writing with the process of canonization? Common estimates would place the writing of the youngest book of the Bible at 95-120 AD.

[Amezarak]

Yeah, usual dates for the new Testament are all first century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible#Table_IV:_New...

I think it's important to note the primary argument for even that "later" dating of the end of the first/beginning of the second century is that the gospels predict the destruction of Jerusalem. There is no "hard" argument on the lower bound, only the upper bound (earliest known physical evidence.) I don't think it's particularly wild to suggest, even for a secular historiographer, that the vague, flowery language taken to prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem could have been written without any supernatural influence. It had happened before, and tensions were high.

Luke-Acts claims to be written by an eyewitness (the latter part of the narrative of Acts shifts to first person as he describes events he allegedly participated in versus just heard and read about) and John also claims to have been written by an eyewitness. I don't think there's any particularly strong argument against that, but the scholarly consensus goes back and forth over time.

[petesergeant]

I think it’s worth pointing out you’re both talking about the Gospel rather than the Bible, a chunk of which predates Jesus

[larusso]

Yes. You‘re correct. When I wrote written I meant put together. Because the process was more to put a compilation together. I‘m not Christian and also atheist so please forgive any wording that my sound like a debunk the whole process. For me the scientific truth is not given that this person as stated in these gospels ever existed. But I‘m very interested in und history and the history of religions. I visited many churches because of the combination of power, rituals and believe. Even though the first is graspable for me.

[Amezarak]

The formal canonicalization happened later, but most people were using the almost the compilation for centuries beforehand.