Today we will move from the worldly to the spiritual as it pertains to Christmas. Many of the things that Christians do on Christmas have been taken over or adopted from worldly practices and made holy. The Christian church took over the merriment, gifts, and lights from the saturnalia festival. The day we celebrate Jesus' birth is not just a day that is significant to us as Christians but also to the Persians and the Romans. The biggest rival to the Christian holiday was the religion of the Persians called mithraism.
Christmas as it has been celebrated by Christians has been celebrated since the year 98 AD according to tradition. The celebration was that of the birth of Christ. Christ was to be celebrated as a solemn fasting order by the bishop of Rome in 137 AD. Another bishop named Julius I of Rome choose the day of the 25th as the day that we would observe Christmas as we know it today.
Was Jesus born on this day the 25th of December? No one knows for sure. They can pinpoint when He was actually born. So, they make the day that we celebrate His birth as the 25th of December according to History and from then it just became that day that we celebrate Jesu and His birth.
The name of Christmas comes from the old English term Cristes Maesse which means Christ mass. As I said the first Christmas was to be a solemn fasting where after 12 days it was marked by a midnight mass that transition the people who were Christians from fasting to feasting. the service as II said from what I researched was called Christ mass. This was all taking place in the Middle Ages.
This is a start to the history of Christmas as it pertains to Christianity. There is so much history that I will leave it there for today and pick it up where I left off tomorrow.
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