Christmas and Hanukkah

The idea that Christmas is Pagan in origin is thoroughly debunked by people much better at that then I am, including YouTubers like ReligionForBreakfast and InspiringPhilosophy.  

The Pagan Holidays that were observed around the Winter Solstice in the BC Era were not Birthdays but if anything usually that pagan god's equivalent to Easter being when The Sun kinda dies and rises again.  Osiris and Horus had birthdays in September and Apollo's was in May.

And none including Sol Invictus were tied to December 25th specifically till 354 AD by which time Christmas being observed then was firmly established.  The Donatists also observing it on December 25th proves that association has Pre-Nicene Origins.

I'm not invested in trying to prove this time of year is in fact accurate.  I consider some of the arguments against it silly and weak, but The Bible didn't tell us exactly when Jesus was born (at least not directly) therefore it's not something we need to know.

What I do believe is that way more early Christian practices had their origins in evolving from continued Jewish practices filtered through certain New Testament concepts then most people realize.  I'll try to talk more about that in future posts next year.  For now though I do think there is logic to seeing Christmas and Hanukkah happening around the same time of year as not mere coincidence.

Jesus observed Hanukkah in John 10:22 so logic dictates early Christians who included that book in their Canon would have done the same.  I suspect the mysterious origins of Michaelmas similarly have their roots in Christian observances of one of the Tishri Holidays possibly via John 7.

Hanukkah is the only prior precedent for any Late Fall/Early Winter religious observance being on the 25th day of the month.  And if when translating customs from a Jewish Calendar to a Roman Calendar you decide to equate Nisan/Aviv with April the first full month of Spring and the month in which the Romans observed their own Barley Harvest festival the Cerealia.  That makes December the Ninth Month.

Maybe Christians celebrating Hanukkah in a Christian way didn't originally identify it with Jesus's Birthday but decided that should be the basis for the Holiday once it's Jewish Roots were partly forgotten?  And/Or maybe they felt there were good thematic/symbolic reasons to associate the Nativity Narratives with Hanukkah?

Hanukkah means Dedication referring to the rededication of The Temple after the Hasmonean Revolt succeeded.  In John 2:19-21 Jesus refers to His Body as "This Temple", so the Nativity events recorded in Luke 2 and Matthew 2 could be viewed as the Dedication of that Temple.  Herod could even be viewed as a new Antiochus Epiphanes in that context.

Christians would have also noticed that if Jesus was born on the first day of Hanukkah then his Circumcision would have been on the last day since it's an Eight Day Festival bringing us down to verse 21 of Luke 2.

Now we know from cross checking with Leviticus 12 that what Luke 2:22-39 records wouldn't have happened till 33 days later.  But since Luke doesn't directly state that timeframe the way he does the Circumcision timeframe, early Christians could have felt justified in associating all of this with still being the Eight Day of Hanukkah at least thematically.  Someone at some point might have gotten what Law Luke was referencing wrong and looked at Leviticus 15:29 instead.

Hanukkah is called The Festival of Lights and Jesus is called The Light of The World at many points in The Fourth Gospel (1:4-9, 3:19-21, 5:35-36, 8:12, 9:5, 11:9-10, 12:35-46) and the Epistle known as 1 John (1:5-7 and 2:8-10), and the Light-Bringer (Day Star in the KJV) in 2 Peter 1:19, and it's even in Simeon's Prophecy in Luke 2:32.  It's called the Festival of Lights because it's tied to The Menorah(Candlestick) which is mentioned or alluded to in The New Testament in Matthew 5:15, Mark 4:21, Luke 8:16, 11:33, Hebrews 9:2 and Revelation chapters 1, 2 and 11 where the last reference connects to Zechariah 4 which is itself often associated with Hanukkah along with Haggai 2:10-23 which becomes Christmas Eve in this model. 

In Leviticus 24 Frankincense (and possibly indirectly Myrrh) are linked to the Menorah and the Shewbread.  Leviticus 23 was all about Holy Days and then chapter 25 returns to Calendar related concerns, so Leviticus 24 naturally could have become thematically linked to Hanukkah.  And of course the Menorah and the Table of Shewbread were made of Gold.  

It's also important to remember that a lot of the specifics of how we think of Hanukkah today are post Diaspora developments (just as a lot of the finer details of the modern Passover Seder are), even the Miracle of the Oil story doesn't show up till the Talmud.  It seems like Second Temple Judaism's Hanukkah was largely just a sort of second Tabernacles, principally it was a time for feasting.  There were no Dreidels yet or giving a gift on each day, and maybe not even yet the custom of lighting one additional candle every day.

Same is true with Christmas of course, most of how we think about it today even as a religious Holy Day wasn't always there.  It's main function originally was as a Feast.

Looking at the history and details of Christmastide aka The Twelve Days of Christmas I notice that Epiphany is the only day after the Circumcision that has any special observance to it, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th days of January just have readings that don't even feel very Christmas related.  The oldest reference to Epiphany we have is post Nicaea in AD 361 by Ammianus Marcelinus and it doesn't clarify the exact day just saying it's at the start of January, almsot like it was another name for the Feast of the Circumcision.  Epiphany also gets associated with Jesus's Baptism in some early references, and I feel it's worth noting here that Gentile Christianity by this time was already developing the false doctrine that Baptism replaced Circumcision to justify their false practice of Infant Baptism.

Epiphanius of Salamis said that Epiphany is the same day as the Nativity, but he represents the more obscure to the west tradition of making Christmas January 6th.

Maybe Christmastide was expanded from 8 days to 12 specifically to obscure the Hanukkah connection during this Romanizing era?