I’m sure most who read the general side of my blog (hi Mom!) instead of the dedicated Cal Bears portion know of the common knowledge that Christmas is December 25th is because Christians co-opted a Pagan holiday and instead celebrated Christ’s birth on that day.

Well, here’s an interesting blog entry from an author who researched the topic that says not so fast.  (Make sure to read the entire post because the end part is critical to keeping the info in the right frame of mind.)

I think what I take away from this is how much “common knowledge” can be dangerously inaccurate.  I’ve read tons of other examples as well.

In almost all cases the truth of the matter is far more complicated than anything “common knowledge” could possible transmit.  As such, whenever “common knowledge” is used to debunk or win debates, it’s a recipe for disaster.  Generally what it means is that there are entire aspects of the situation are being glossed over and furthermore, that often the discussion is focusing on something likely irrelevant to what should really be important.

In this case that relevant point is the joy of Christ’s coming into the world.  I really don’t care if the actual day was what we today call Dec. 25th, Feb. 14, July 4, Sept. 22, Oct. 31, or whatever.  I similarly don’t care if the day we celebrate it is because of pagan holidays, jewish guesswork, Muslim calendar manipulation, bad mid-evil calendars, or Monks without enough fingers to properly count the days of the week.  All that I care about is that the Universal Church has set aside some day, any day, for us to reflect on and celebrate Christ’s birth.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Catholicism, Catholicism - Liturgy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.