I see a lot of debate on whether to celebrate Isaac Newton's birthday on December 25th, or January 4th, because with today's (Gregorian) calendar Jan 4th is his birthday, but translated back to the Julian Calendar it would be Dec 25th. (according to online sources)
So, my question is for those who believe Jesus was born on December 25th, which would be before the common era, (BCE) wouldn't that have been a different date, using the Julian calendar of the time? Or if on that date, wouldn't it really be Jan 4th using the current calendar? I'm so confused, haha!
Personally I think the date celebrated as Jesus' birth was just pulled out of the sky to coincide with all the previous "gods" supposedly "born" on Dec 25h, but those would also have been using a different calendar. Just making waves about celebrating this particular day as being holier than any other.
Use different calendars all you want to and you will never find a suitable date for anything involving Jesus. We do not know when he was born or when he died. His birth could have been April or early Spring, and his death is surrounded by an ever changing religious holiday. The dates change one year to the next. December 25th is a pagan holiday and it was set up for Jesus being born at that time so as to draw pagans to Christianity. Image you have a relative who died but you are unable to go to a place that has their records on a stone somewhere. Even worse, you know your relative was real and they lived and died but you have no other info about that person.
Why not just admit that, at this time of year, the only date with any real significance, the one on which all the "god dates" are based, is the winter solstice, the day when the Earth's geographic north pole is tilted farthest from the sun, making it the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere), after which the number of hours of daylight progressively increases for exactly six months and one-eighth days? The next big date is the spring equinox; no surprise that religious rites of renewal, rebirth, and resurrection are so often placed in this part of the calendar. Imagine trying to sell a myth of rebirth in, say, October, when the leaves are falling off the trees and every new day is bleaker than the last. It would be pretty hard to get buy-in from the community, I would think. Bad for business. Bottom line, when designing a mythological framework, pay attention to the Earth's movements. It has to make sense to the lay people, who rely on the seasonal cycle for their very survival.
Hundreds of thousands of historically significant people were born before the Adoption of the Gregorian calendar and all of their dates of birth are always listed as the date that they knew it as.
What makes Newton and Jesus so different I have no idea.
Various celebrations of the winter solstice all over the northern hemisphere tend to fall between Dec 21st and Jan 5th, the early Christards just jumped on the bandwagon.
If the synoptic Gospels are to be believed Jesus was born somewhere between 5 BC (death of Herod the great) and The Census of Quirinius of the Roman province of Judaea, taken in 6 CE.
Most of us know that December 25th is not the birthday of Jesus. With that said why do we celebrate anything on that day? Newton is dead a long time and I do not think dead people have any ongoing birthdays. This day became what it is to us today in an attempt to get pagans into Christianity. I celebrate nothing and this year I did not even go to the family dinner my kids had. I told them in advance that I was not going.
I stayed home alone today, while my son went off to his dad's family dinner. I prefer to be alone on Dec 25th. It's the anniversary of my dad's death, Christmas morning, and although he's dead it's a day to try to perpetuate some of the good things I learned from him. He loved tools and I did some stuff with tools today. Check!
Tomorrow is both the anniversary of my mom's death and my son's birthday. Since I'm staying with my son, I'm able to celebrate him. He's grown into a fine man. I'm sending him off to get a massage, and while he's doing that I'll likely listen to some music my mom loved, while I do some stuff around the house. The anniversary of a birth or death is just a day to celebrate the good things that person brought into this world.
I'm not sure if what Jesus is said to have taught really has much significance in today's world. We have far better teachers nowadays to help us to be better, more thoughtful, contributors to society.
Seeing how the most religious of our society who want to demand everyone (believers or not) celebrate their savior are the least kind, least peaceful, least fair minded people, I don't feel bad at all not celebrating their myth-man. There are a whole lot of people (or the memory of people) I'd prefer to celebrate instead. So, happy to stay home while others gather and argue about politics, etc.
Newton is dead so he doesn't care which day you celebrate but regardless of the day he probably won't be coming to the party.
The date was just pulled out of a hat, probably to be in line with Saturnalia, and the birth of Osiris etc.. The early church did not even consider the birthday of Jesus to be an event, certainly not one worth recording or celebrating, for at least three centuries. The Nativity story, does not even appear in the two early gospels Mark and John, but only the later and more fanciful ones of Mathew and Luke, which are thought to be very late, possible by at least one or even two centuries, and they do not bother with the date.
There is also considerable doubt about the year of his birth, and a lot of the dating evidence in the Bible, such as the reign of Herod, the census, and the governorship of Pilot do not line up. So if they could not even fix even the year, what chance is there, they fixed the day ?
There are some who think the errors in the dates, etc., were purposeful to intentionally show that it fictional, not to be believed literally. I sure as heck don't know, but there are indeed lots of errors, whether in the translations or in the original texts.