A Christmas Tautology (2020) | Hacker News Reader

A Christmas Tautology (2020)

nickdrozd.github.io

43 pointsnickdrozd28 comments

That Christmas is the day of Christ's birth itself was a sore subject after the Gregorian leap.

From Hervey's Book of Christmas ( https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42622/pg42622-images.ht... ):

> In various parts of England, bees are popularly said to express their veneration for the Nativity by "singing," as it is called, in their hives at midnight, upon Christmas Eve: and in some places, particularly in Derbyshire, it is asserted that the watcher may hear the ringing of subterranean bells....

> We must not omit to mention that these supposed natural testimonies to the triumph of the time have been in some places used as means of divination on a very curious question. The change of style introduced into our calendars nearly a century ago, and by which Christmas Day was displaced from its ancient position therein, gave great dissatisfaction on many accounts, and on none more than that of its interference with this ancient festival. The fifth and sixth of January continued long to be observed as the true anniversary of the Nativity and its vigil; and the kneeling of the cattle, the humming of the bees, and the ringing of subterranean bells, were anxiously watched for authentications on this subject.

I assumed that anuone who knows more about Christmas than the tune to "jingle bells" knew christ was not born on Christmas day. It's not even a 1/365 chance either since there's some evidence it was during the fall months.

The census decree by Caesar that Jesus parents traveled to their city of birth for was probably not issued when it would have been difficult to travel in Winter. Shepherd keep their sheep out in open fields in that region from early spring to late fall. Pretty light evidence but should still shifts your priors a bit.

It's far from tautologous that Christ was born on Christmas day (25th December) for a number of reasons:

1. There are no historical references to the date in the Gospels. We can have a good guess at the year, since Luke the evangelist writes that the taxation survey bringing Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem was instigated by Caesar Augustus whilst Quirinius was governed of Syria. We could make some guesses of the season due to the shepherds looking after sheep in the open country. There is nothing in the New Testament to suggest a specific cause to celebrate the birth of Christ, unlike his death commemoration in Luke chapter 22 for example, for which we have a much better idea of the time of year, since it was at the time of Passover, a Jewish festival which had a regular occasion based on the lunar cycle.

2. There are some suggestions that the Christmas festival was instigated by replacing Roman pagan festivals around that time, after the Roman Empire accepted Christianity as the state religion.

3. In modern times there are millions of people around the world who know very little about the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, or his significance. You'll find many places filled with pictures of Santa, reindeer, elves and other winter festival stuff... So many people could be forgiven for thinking Christmas is about Santa, not Jesus Christ.

As to the OP question 9, there is ample historical evidence for the existence and birth of Jesus Christ, for his death by crucifixion, and even for his resurrection from the dead (unless of course you take a priori leap of faith to believe that the material world is all that exists).

The significance of the birth of Jesus Christ is far more important than the date:

'but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!' Luke 2:10‭-‬11 NLT https://bible.com/bible/116/luk.2.10-11.NLT

Merry Christmas HN!

Can you give some examples of this "ample historical evidence"? I saw quite convincing video recently where a guy goes through all, known to him, sources and debunks them (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WI72JNz0IC8 - warning: might be offensive for a diehard believer).

The list starts with things that may well have considerable historical evidence, but ends by proposing an argument that would not even be logically valid: one could rationally hold that the material world is not all that exists, without accepting that Christ’s resurrection occurred.

As for calling materialism an a priori leap of faith, well, that hardly distinguishes it from the alternatives, though maybe that’s the point.

Nevertheless, a merry Christmas to one and all!

Yeah, just as an example religious Jews and Muslims do not subscribe to “material world is all that exists” but nevertheless does not belive in the ressurrection of Jesus.

For point #2, it's not exactly established, but we can probably be accurate to say the early church chose this day to convert followers of pagan traditions regarding the Winter Solstice. Whether it's Yule, Saturnalia, Natatlis Invicti, etc. It's easier to say one god is born around the same time as another and you can push towards Christianity's ideas of a Son/Father/Spirit deity.

For point #3, heck, most Western Christians for the most part unknowingly incorporate a hell of a lot of Yule traditions. Christmas Trees, wreaths, the Yule log, Mistletoe.. you get the idea.

The only historical evidenence for the ressurection of Jesus is second-hand testimony about people who allegedly saw him. And even in this testimony it is emphasised the witnesses did not recognize the person as Jesus. So outside of the question of faith, it seems very weak evidence.

From a historians perspective, there is better evidence for the ressurection of the Emperor Nero.

For 1, this is doubtful as a historical source from a non-Christian perspective. The Gospels accounts are surprisingly consistent, except for specific portions that all conveniently bolster support for the idea that Christ is the Jewish messiah. The story about his birth is Bethlehem is a prime example (it’s more likely Jesus was born in Nazareth). I would question the ability to pinpoint a birth year through likely made up details.

I'm charmed by the suggestion that these lyricists of yore would have rejected any words that were trite and obvious; after all, these are hardly constraints on their fellows today, as listening to much modern music for five minutes will confirm.

Christmas is celebrated as Christ’s birthday because 8 days later is New Year’s. This was set so that each year starts with a spiritual circumcision to consecrate it in Jewish law, and to “embrace and extend” existing pagan festivals. Source: Butler’s Lives of Saints, summarizing the commentaries of the Church Fathers.

This is not a tautology.

And the reason for this is because Vitamin K (a major clotting agent) is at its highest levels in humans around the 8th day of their life. Ancient societies didn't know what Vitamin K was, but through trial and error they no doubt discovered that the best day to circumcise a child was therefore on the 8th day of their life.

Since circumcision represents "a new beginning, a new covenant" it made sense for this to begin the New Year. Or conversely, counting back from January 1st it would make sense to have Jesus being born on December 25th.

Can someone help me with how the words are pronounced for DEER and CHOIR to rhyme

Both rhymed with the modern word TIER.

Choir would have sounded similar to queer.

Remember this is from middle English before the vowel shift.

He's just parsing the whole thing wrong.

It's a pretty standard rhetorical device in everyday speech. Consider Passover, "why is this night different?" The answer is not "because it's Passover". Your attention is being directed to why the night is different, why is it remembered, what does it commemorate, or why is it commemorated?

The birth of Jesus, death, and resurrection are meaningful events at the core of Christianity, that's why they get holidays. Let me direct your attention to what happened on Christmas and why we celebrate it, Jesus was born. It's just not a strange construction in English or any language. Even if it was called Jesus's Birthday, what happened on that day? The Son of God was born.

What happend on your birthday? Well, N years ago, you came out of mommy's tummy. I'm sure virtually every parent has said that to their child at some point. Only the autistic kids said "that's a tautology" (I can say that, I'm autistic)

Yeah maybe the point of the post is to be snarky and pedantic, but it seems like it’s deliberately missing the point.

The criticism of the rhymes sounds off to me. I don't particularly like perfect rhymes. Author suggests that these rhymes might have been "perfect" in Middle English; I have no idea. But I like rhymes that are a bit wonky, because they reflect ancient pronunciations or local dialects or whatever.

Wonky rhymes feel more "real" to me.

Blood and good rhymed at some point! Holy shit, maybe English pronunciation wasn't always so broken, then!

Was Christmas day invented on the very same day Jesus was born then?

> These lyrics always bothered me for their apparent vacuousness. Christ was born on Christmas Day – well, yeah. Christmas just is the day that Christ was born, right?

Isn’t the reason that the church makes such a big deal of repeating this whole “Christmas day is when Jesus was born” and “Jesus was born on Christmas Day” due to exactly the point that it wasn’t the day he was born.

The church moved the celebration to better match the pagan celebrations, so they needed to push this lie a lot to get people on board with the fact that they moved the birthday to make the sales pitch for Christianity better match the pagan traditions.

You would have though that the god of all existence could have timed the birth of his divine child a bit better, but I guess we all know that it’s easy to sometimes miss deadlines and be off by a month or so. Also the biology of virgin pregnancies, though unexplored scientifically likely followed the biology of regular pregnancies, so there might be a bit of uncertainty on the exact time of arrival even if god did impregnate Mary with the intention that she’d give birth around what is today Christmas Day.

The church didn’t move the celebration as such, since nobody knew when Jesus was born in the first place. The bible does not give any date (not even a year).

We dont really know how the church came up with december 25. The theory it was selected to coincide with a pagan holiday is just speculation. Probably not a coincidence it is so close to winter solstice, but there is no evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis suggests virgin pregnancies have been explored scientifically (but a quick skim shows no indication of any noted difference in gestation)

Anyone who has ever wondered what the 'H.' stands for should consider: Haploid.

Even if virgin pregnancies we're possible, where would Jesus' Y chromosome come from?

cosmic ray induced mutation

Another relevant scientific source is [1], which I highly recommend

>Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy (table 1⇓). Perceived importance of religion was associated with virginity but not with virgin pregnancy. The prevalence of abstinence pledges was 15.5%. The virgins who reported pregnancies were more likely to have pledged chastity (30.5%) than the non-virgins who reported pregnancies (15.0%, P=0.01) or the other virgins (21.2%, P=0.007).

[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102

Should have set easter at the winter solstice, as that's the traditional spot for rebirth festival (think Sol Invictus) and leave the regular birth in the spring with all the other fertility festivals. I don't know what they were thinking, but we're stuck with it now, unless someone wants to engineer another fork over this issue.

Well, this banning thing is true for only parts of the Protestant Christian world. Catholic and Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Christianity by numbers.

> Well, this banning thing is true for only parts of the Protestant Christian world

Unsurprisingly, the same part where the carol in question was invented.

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