On Christmas Part Two (The Historical View)

            Why do we celebrate Christmas? And what leads us, atheists, to celebrate it as well? Is there any explanation to why we spend the last days of the year like this? I think everything that has any historical background have to be explainable. But the explanations are diverse according to your country, religion or whatever can determine your life just because you believe in something.

            First, there is a well known story about a child being born in a stable somewhere in Bethlehem. There are some divine factors that are added to the story from the beginning, like the big light in the sky and angels´ singing at the time of the birth of Jesus, which is supposed to be a sign that something special was happening (literally that a messiah has been born). And then the most significant feature of the story: the mother´s virginity. This is basically what do Christians believe in. But you don´t have to be Christian to believe the story as well. As a child you believe all the stories your parents or your teachers tell you, on Christmas time you sing Christmas songs at school or in a choir, so your consciousness is full of this story and if you grow up to a Christian, it´s probable that you would still believe it.

Christians are not truth seekers. They just believe. I am a truth seeker. I don´t believe what anyone says until it´s proved. All right, I define what I mean by “truth” here – I mean something that is proved to be historically probable. In history there are only probabilities. You can´t say if something was like this if you weren´t there. Yes, there are manuscripts and other documents, however they can be fake or just wrongly interpreted due to misunderstandings. You have to search very carefully and choose those documents that are more probable by comparing them among one another. And that´s it – there´s no truth, only most probable story; and I will tell you now the most probable story.

            I´ll start with the main character of the story – Jesus. Who really was Jesus and why was his birth so special to some of us? What we can say is that there are no credible historical sources considering his life or death. But at least there´s a vast majority of contemporary historians and Bible interpreters who agree that Jesus was a real historical person. As far as we know about his parents, it was a woman called Maria and an unknown (but physically existing) man who obviously wasn´t Joseph, Maria´s husband. Maybe from there comes the strange story about a child born from a virgin – the family of Maria or/and Joseph simply couldn´t stand the shame and they just invented their version.

            But what is here of more interest is Jesus´ birth, isn´t it? So, there´s no evidence when he was really born, but it seems that it had to be at the time of the Roman census which can be historically dated to 7^th-6^th century B.C. (although that “B.C.” obviously wasn´t “B.C.” yet .. uff, it´s starting to be a bit confusing ..) under the reign of Herod the Great, the king of Judea.  So, it wasn´t a year 0 .. but of course Christians had to make from the birth of Jesus a special event, so they came with a year 0 and that´s the point.

            We can say, well, all right, but at least he could be born at December 25^th, that could have a value for us anyway. Well, I don´t like to disappoint someone, but this date is only a well developed fiction. This date was chosen by early Christian theologians on purpose to replace the old pagan festivities of the winter solstice (the Christians just envied the Romans their great Saturnalia festivities, or they just wanted to banish everything pagan and make it christian, so they made this “Grand Theft Saturnalia”).

More than illustrative!

            But hang on, we can also count the Jesus´ birth from another point of view – astronomy. There´s a speculation about the huge star (or shining of stars) that appeared when the child was born, so some contemporary specialists in astronomy tried to calculate the position of the planets at that time which could explain this appearance in the sky. And according to these calculations it could happen most probably from May to September, year 7 B.C. when a considerable light conjunction between Saturn and Jupiter occurred. Could be.

            And finally, where was baby Jesus really born? It´s not very probable he was born in Bethlehem in Judea, rather (and many New Testament´s notes tell it) he was born in Nazareth in Galilea. Once more, the place was chosen a posteriori on purpose by evangelists to fulfil a prophecy that the king of Izrael would be born in Bethlehem.

            So, we don´t know exactly when Jesus was born and the place of his birth is another fake information that many people ignore today. Also we can´t say nothing about his divinity – his mother was an ordinary woman and his pater incertus est. Another form of divinize the child could also be using a prophecy (again, a posteriori). This time it was Isaiah, chap. 7/14 where there´s said something about a virgin that conceive a son. But nothing like this had happened and can never happen, because it´s just a nonsense. So why should we believe in divinity of this child after all? Because he, as a poor step-son of a carpenter, became a well known illusionist? Come on .. Actually, I can give more space to the life of Jesus in some of the next posts. 

So, what are the conclusions about the historical meaning of Christmas? You can see that there is not much to talk about. It´s all (and its traditional habits as well) stolen from old pagan festivities and habits. So if today some atheists celebrate Christmas, it is or because they really celebrate the winter solstice, or they are so submerged in the western Christian-based society that they don´t care at all and celebrate it blindly with the majority of the people.

But, I would like to mention that also in pagan celebrations there are some divine features or rituals that shouldn´t have a place in a healthy mind of a good atheist. A good atheist is simply free from any transcendental belief or ritual. Everything that smells like rituality smells bad. And Christmas do smell.