It’s the time of the year that pious Christians remind we holiday-celebrating pagans not to forget the “Christ in Christmas”.
Yes, we’ve all heard the fable about Jesus, the manger, the angels, the Wise Men, etc. It is a story for the ages… that is easily proven to have been made up out of whole cloth, but it makes for nice yuletide songs, solemn Church ceremonies, and lofty praise of God’s Son, the so-called “Prince of Peace”.
Surprisingly (to many curious people), at the time of Jesus’ alleged birth, no note was taken of the sacred event by anyone. The fables of his miraculous conception and all his Holy activities leading to the ignominious death on the Cross were fabricated by unknown persons many decades (and, in some cases, centuries) after his demise. The Gospels (called “the gospel truth” by the faithful) are full of inaccuracies and falsehoods that have had historians derisively shaking their heads for hundreds of years.
None of the events of Jesus’ alleged life were documented by any reputable scribe at the time…and there were many working in the Middle East at the time. For example, one would think that hundreds of dead people, rising from their graves (Matthew 27:51-54), would have been noticed by the general population and historians of the time. Nope. No temple scribe, no historian, no one in government…absolutely no one in Jerusalem…noticed this odd event except an unknown writer (who obviously wasn’t there) who put the fable to pen at least a century later.
Truth be told: there is more evidence that Paul Bunyan dug the Grand Canyon with his ox Babe pulling a plow than there is the alleged “facts” that the Son of God was born in Bethelem, carried out his ministry, and was put to death by the Romans. Or, that the Apostle Paul did anything that he claimed to do.
Of course, people can believe whatever they want to believe if it makes them feel better or justifies actions that they want to take. (Take, for example, the “stolen” Presidential election of 2020.)
It is ironic that the Hebrew people (the folks who invented the God of Abraham) have absorbed so much misery from Christianity (the religion that they invented).
Long before Christianity was born, power-hungry “holy men” devised a one-God religion which, not surprisingly, anointed the Hebrew folks “God’s chosen people”, justified them confiscating property that they desired (the “Promised Land”), and gave the creators of the Old Testament (the clergy) vast powers over the faithful. Although the Old Testament stories that the clergy devised to sell this theology are almost entirely fabricated events, the Hebrew faithful wanted to believe them because they: (1) made them feel specially blessed by God; and, (2) promised them good times ahead if they obeyed God (and, importantly, the rabbis who concocted the holy fable).
The whole thing fell apart when the Hebrew people were regularly overrun, slaughtered, and made destitute by conquering armies. The Babylonian and Roman conquerors exiled vast numbers of Jews from Palestine. The Hebrew concept of a “messiah” who would rescue the Jews from their woes arose during the Roman occupation, but that savior never materialized. The God of Abraham had evidently given up on the Jews, and the Hebrew peoples were losing their faith.
Enter “Jesus Christ”.
If one is to believe the New Testament fables, Jesus was born of Jews, was a devout Jew, and became a rabbi (a teacher of the faith). All of his friends were Jews, as were his disciples. Even the Apostle Paul, who supposedly wrote many of the books of the New Testament, was a Jew. As is clear in the Biblical story, Jesus was never a “Christian”: he was a Jew until his death, never denouncing the faith of his parents and relatives.
The numerous New Testament fables (none of which have any factual basis) were devised by Jewish clergy to re-imagine the faith into a more salable product. The God of Abraham was still the Boss, but the promise to the faithful was no longer freedom from oppression from enemies (currently the Romans) but, rather, the promise of a happy and everlasting life in Heaven. That was the “new Covenant” from God, according to the Jewish/now-renamed “Christian” clergy. Keep listening to us, keep those collection plates full, and good things will happen (“Thank You, Jesus!”). Of course, if bad things happen, it’s the Devil’s work, you haven’t been praying hard enough, or its “God’s Plan” (that you’ve contracted leprosy!}.
The legacy of the construct “Jesus Christ” has a lot to do with the ministry that he supposedly carried out. According to the Gospels, Jesus spoke to thousands of people at a time, said a lot of nice things, made a lot of promises to people in need of hope, etc. No historian of the time noted throngs of people attending said orations, nor did any historian note a character of “Jesus” speaking to multitudes, walking on water, miraculously making wine out of water, and so forth. All of these fables were invented later on. As were Jesus’ quotes in the Gospels: supposedly verbatim speeches, many of which are quite lengthy, and are highlighted in the New Testament (“Jesus said it, so I believe it!”) Let’s be serious, folks: there were no tape recorders back then, scribes had to painstakingly etch expensive papyrus, etc. There was no evidence of these events, or anyone making the extensive effort to record them, until generations later…when someone made all the stories up. Nowadays, we call this type of literary product “fiction”.
No one, even Biblical scholars, knows who wrote anything in the New Testament.
Based upon all of this, it’s pretty evident that a bunch of ex-Jewish clergy devised these stories to make a clean break from the failed Hebrew religion…to keep their jobs and the power that those jobs enjoyed. Christianity was, essentially, the “new, improved Tide”, available now at your supermarket.
The message was this: not only should everyone purchase the new product, but they should shun the old version (i.e. Judaism).
Hence, we see the beginning of the two-thousand-year conflict between Christians and Jews. As Christians obtained more power, they employed that power to discriminate against, punish, and even kill Jews. The Jewish people became scapegoats for every lost war, plague, economic hardship, and such. Annihilation of Jewish populations became popular in Christian nations, particularly in Europe. Adolph Hitler (a Catholic choirboy in his youth), with the Vatican turning a deaf ear, took this righteous cause to the extreme in the Holocaust.
Anyway, now we’re celebrating another Christmas. Whooppee!
Actually, the idea of a year-ending celebration did not begin with the fabled birth of Jesus Christ. First off, there is no evidence that Jesus Christ ever existed. And, secondly, there is no evidence that the fabled birth occurred as written or happened on December 25th. In fact, there was already an age-old celebration in the Roman world, at that time of the year, called Saturnalia, which commemorated the winter solstice and the god of agriculture, Saturn. (In Germanic countries, there was a winter solstice celebration of the pagan god Odin called “Yule”. Once Christianity arrived in force, the celebration was commandeered as in the Roman world. The term “Yuletide carols” is a nod to those ancient European traditions.)
In the fourth century A.D., when Christianity had become the state religion in Rome, the popular/pagan Saturnalia festival was appropriated by the Church and State as the “official” celebration of Jesus’ Christ’s alleged birth some 300 years earlier. It was also at around this time that the “official” stories of Jesus’ life and ministry (the four Gospel fables) were officially declared by the Catholic Church as “canon”, or the adopted truth. From that point on, if anyone challenged the officially-approved fable, he or she was a heretic, subject to punishments like confiscation of property, stoning, burning at the stake, and such. This is the impressive power that the clergy, the people who had invented the fables, possessed by that time.
As a result, for the next thousand years or so, it was a matter of faith (and law) in Christian countries that Jesus Christ, Son of God, was born on Christmas Day, December 25th.
End of discussion (unless you want to be tortured on the rack).
I am not a Christian now, although I once was a “born again” believer. Too many things have happened in my lifetime to reassure me that the God of Abraham or Jesus Christ ever existed, that a Heavenly Father watches over humankind, and/or that prayer of any kind, to any spiritual being, works to anyone’s benefit. Things happen, good and bad, to everyone, whether they are religious or not.
Moral codes existed before Judaism and Christianity: one does not have to be religious to do the right thing. Believing in God (any version) does not make a person any better than another. Christians, for example, kill people, exhibit infidelity toward their spouses, and cheat friends and neighbors out of money just as often as non-Christians. Although Christians celebrate Jesus Christ as the “Prince of Peace”, Christian nations have been responsible for as many wars of destruction in the past 1,500 years as any non-Christian nations. Does the term “crusade” ring a bell? Christian “true believers” have no problem discriminating against non-Christians and people of different races and colors (even Christians!). “Hate crimes” in the United States are perpetrated, primarily, by Christians.
So much for the “Prince of Peace” and his birthday.
I say, “Humbug”.