Christmas - Pagan or Religious?

Christmas Part 1

This Christmas has been something different all around.  For the first time, I've started to consider (thanks Brian. . .) whether the religious holiday we have all been brought up to celebrate is really what we think it is at all.  The long story short: Christmas eve morning, Brian and I were discussing several things in the Bible.  He stated that he watched a documentary once that showed Christmas as being invented by the Romans (it was actually the Winter Solstice) and the day of Christmas actually falls on the 25th because that was the last day of the Winter Solstice.  During the Winter Solstice, people were permitted to commit any mortal sin they wished to, and on the 25th they had to remember Christ who died for their sins and repent.  I agree that Christmas today is not what it was meant to be originally, but really?  Am I supposed to believe that we are not supposed to celebrate the birth of Christ at all? 

The debate found its way to Facebook, where two other friends joined in.  My brother's high school English Teacher brought up the point (with a source, of course!) that according to "The Man Who Invented Christmas" by Chip Wood (I'm sure that's a made up name, by the way),  Christmas was made to be a "big deal" (more or less) by Charles Dickens who wrote A Christmas Carol. Before 1843, Christmas wasn't really a holiday.  After self-publishing the book, it was adapted to a play - and the rest is history!  Everyone knows the story, and it's been remade year after year.  I even participated in the play when I was in 6th grade.  (Not a main role, of course.)

About the same time, a friend from my Lon Morris College Days (Meghan) said: "It's not the fact that it's pagan, it's the fact that the early Christians adopted a lot of pagan traditions a). because that was all they knew and b). because they wanted people to convert. The date December 25th was actually the birthday of the god Mithras, who was the god of Mithraism, a competing monotheistic religion during the same time as early Christianity. The actual date of Jesus Christ's birthday has been known to be in the summer time. Therefore the Christians adopted the December 25th date to try and outshine Mithraism. Certainly the tradition of decorating a tree is pagan."

Personally, I do not disagree that we definitely have adopted some very materialistic traditions, but the fact remainst that every Christmas morning, my dad would wake my brother and I up, and after all the excitement of opening our presents was over, he would sit us down at the kitchen table and read us the Christmas story straight from the bible.  I think that maybe we should remember Christmas for the real reason for the season, whether we choose to celebrate it in December, or otherwise, and that is that God gave us his son, he was a gift to this world.  My point still remains: yes, the Roman Catholics may have invented Christmas to atone themselves for their dirty-rotten sinning, but remembering that God gave his son is still important.  If we remember that, it doesn't matter what silly pagan traditions we adopt - our hearts are in the right place.  You might call me silly, or ignorant, but I have faith!  And I wont call you silly or ignorant for what you believe in. 

http://www.personalliberty.com/straight-talk/the-man-who-invented-christmas/

http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/mithraism.html
http://www.religioustolerance.org/xmas_tree.htm

Christmas Part 2

On Christmas Day, I ate dinner twice.  Something I don't normally do.  I ate with my family, and then that evening I ate with Brian's family (his dad's side).  He didn't tell me before we went that I was the first girl he'd ever brought to ANY family event, but his uncles told me.  I'm not sure exactly what to think about it, and he claims that he didn't tell me that because he didn't want it to go to my head.  But it did - not in a negative way, but in a "he actually really does care about me, enough to bring me around his family, and even if he doesn't always act like he cares" kind of way. 

People never cease to surprise me.