December 25, 2004
A Yuletide Reconciliation
At Web of Mimicry we believe that all persons can and should be a little happier around Christmas. We could all use a little less Humbug in our lives, so here is our Yuletide reconciliation between Godless Atheism and Pious Observance.
In the latter part of the 4th Century the Roman Church ordered that December 25 be celebrated as the day of the birth of Christ, though prior to that it had been assumed (according to Biblical clues, common logic and arithmetic) that Christ was born sometime in the Fall. December 25 happened also to be the same day of the old Roman feast of Sol - the Sun God, and as Frazer points out in The Golden Bough, "The largest pagan religious cult which fostered the celebration of December 25 as a holiday throughout the Roman and Greek worlds was the pagan sun worship - Mithraism... this winter festival was called the Nativity' - the Nativity of the Sun." And none other than the Catholic Encyclopedia states that "the well-known solar feast of Natalis Invicti (the Nativity of the Unconquered Sun) celebrated on 25 December, has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date."
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