Christmas
 
Christmas (christ + mass), is an annual  worldwide cultural and commercial event and the chief Christian holiday, Celebrating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a deity whose teachings form the basis of their religion. For many centuries, people around the world have been observing it with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature.  Customs include exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas trees, attending church, sharing meals with family and friends and, of course, waiting for Santa Claus to arrive.

     From the beginnings of Christian thought until the Council of Nicea in 312 AD, very few Christians believed that Christ had actually "come in the flesh" so no consideration was given to a birthday celebration.

      As Constantine's universal church of  was upon the Roman Empire, it began to be dominated by the idea thar Jesus was an incarnation of God, A birthdate was now necessary. Some favored the popular date of the Koreion, when the Holy Virgin Mother Earth gave birth to an new aeon in Alexandria in January. Now called Twelfth Night or Epiphany, this date is still the official nativity in Armenia and Coptic Catholic churches and is celebrated with more pomp than Christamas by the Greek Orthodox church.

      The Emperor Constantine, himself a worshipper of Mithra, favored the Winter Solstice festival of Mithras, called Dies Natalis Solis Invictis - birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. This date also celebrated the Greek Sun-festival of Helia, in addition to honoring such gods as Attis, Dionysius, Osiris, Baal and other versions of the "solar man" who bore such titles as Light of the World, Son of Righteousness, and Savior. Most ancient religions celebrated the birthday of the Divine Child of the Sun at the Winter Solstice. Norsemen celebrated the birthday of the god Frey at the solstice, which they called Yule. Hence the yule-log as part of today's Christmas celebration.

      With so many religions favoring this date Emperor Constantine officially declared December 25 to be the true birthday of the new universal god. Despite his edict, this date was not universally honored until 37S AD and the church at Jerusalem continued to ignore this holiday until the seventh century.

       December 25 coincided with the Roman Saturnalia, providing the basis for early Christian celebrations, a time of feasting, gift-giving and debauchery (just as it is today!)

      The traditional Christians found this type of celebration compatible with their earlier "love feasts" but this sort of Saturnalian revelry had long been condemned by the strait-laced Romans. And under this Roman influence, the Christian fathers denounced it as being ribald and heathen: But finally realizing that this celebration would never be stamped out, the church changed its policy and declared that the popular mid-winter fest would henceforth be celebrated as the birthday of the Christian god, though it was not called Christmas until about 900 A.D.

     Today we still have these conflicting elements in Christianity - the sober Romans and the fun-loving populists.

      Because Christmas was originally the celebration of the death and birth of the Sun - because at the Winter Soistice the Sun sinks to its lowest and then begins again to rise in the sky - it has always be. a feast of light. Candles and special fires have been a part of the celebration from the very beginning. There is the Yulelog and the candles on the tree which have been replaced by the safer electric light. The Jewish holiday of Hanukka celebrated at the Winter Solstice is today still often called 'The Feast of Lights"'.

      After over 2000 years of changes, the people of America seem to have recreated the spirit of the original Saturnalia, but have replaced the ancient myths and gods with new ones, such as Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the Little Drummer Boy and Frosty the Snowman.