It was the Sunday before Christmas, and First Christian
church was elegantly adorned for the most festive holiday of the year. The
opening musical selections were mostly contemporary and none of the traditional
Christmas carols were included. They would be sung at the traditional Christmas
eve service.
Ed, a longtime member of First Christian was happy just
being there and noticed that nearly all of the available seats were filled with
equally joyful worshipers.
Pastor Jim moved to the front and led the congregation in an
elegant prayer, thanking God for the wonderful gift of a savior for all
mankind. This beautiful scene was interrupted greatly, in Ed’s thinking, when Pastor
Jim said to God, “We know that Christ’s birth wasn’t really this time of year”,
and proceeded to explain that we only celebrated it then as a tradition.
Now, Ed believed that Christmas was properly placed. It had
been placed by serious students of the Bible at a time much closer to the
actual day. These people included Monks in monasteries who devoted their whole
life doing nothing else.
Pastor Jim, on the other hand, had been formally trained mostly
in the fine art of working with people. His time was divided among studying
enough to prepare his weekly sermon, staff meetings, visiting the parishioners
who happened to be in the hospital, meeting with his colleagues, engaging in
appropriate pastimes such as golf in summer and bowling in the winter, and
being careful to spend appropriate time with his wife and family. Some of his
colleagues had been unfortunate enough to have gone through an embarrassing and
painful divorce, and Pastor Jim was determined to keep his marriage intact.
After the holidays, Ed left for his winter home in Arizona and forgot, or
almost forgot, about Pastor Jim’s Christmas prayer. But as time progressed he
was nagged by the question “Was Christ born at some other season after all”?
Now Ed was taught that,
”If you have a disagreement with your brother, go to your brother and discuss
it with him”. And so Ed made an appointment with the pastor’s secretary and was
given a fifteen minute time period wherein the pastor could see him.
The following
conversation ensued.
“Pastor, I was greatly disturbed by the part of your prayer
at Christmas time that inferred that Christ was born at some other time of the
year than Christmas. I have always believed that Christmas was Christ’s
birthday.”
To which Pastor Jim replied; “Think nothing of it. We don’t
really know the exact date, and we don’t want to be dogmatic about this thing.
We have doctors, lawyers, teachers, school administrators, and college
professors in our church, and the prevailing thought among them is that it was
probably not in the dead of winter. The bible says that ‘there were shepherds
abiding in the fields watching over their flocks by night.’ Now it would have
been too cold for the shepherds and there probably was snow covering the ground
preventing the sheep from grazing. No, my dear friend, they probably would have
moved inside for the winter. And besides, what difference does it make? The
important thing is that we have a savior.”
Immediately the phone rang and after a brief discussion on the phone the
pastor asked if they could continue their conversation at some other time. An
issue had come up demanding his immediate attention. Pastor Jim stood and showed Ed to the door
stating how much he appreciated Ed’s steady attendance and kind spirit.
Ed left confused and dejected. Had he, after all, been
misled all his life?
Now Ed was possessed of an inquiring mind. He couldn’t just
drop the subject. He eventually became so bothered that he began an independent
study of the subjects circling around the modern concept of Christmas.
He remembered that some twenty to thirty years ago a notion
emerged that Christ was born in the spring of the year when the lambs were
being born. After all, wasn’t Christ the Lamb of God? Now Pastor Jim was city
bred and raised, but Ed was raised on a farm. Ed had a nephew who raised sheep.
He remembered a couple of instances when his nephew couldn’t attend the family
Christmas party because an ewe was due to birth her lamb, and he needed to be
there for assistance.
Perhaps there were
several people with the same knowledge who brought about the demise of that
fantasy, and it had not been heard in the land for quite some time.
Then Ed was led to realize that the same story that might
fly at his summer home in Minnesota would not
work in his winter home in Tucson,
Arizona. He learned that Bethlehem and Tucson
were about the same distance North of the Equator and about the same height
above sea level. This left the chief difference being a mountain range versus
the Mediterranean ocean affecting the climate.
From a simple tourist information site he learned that the
wintertime low in Bethlehem
was zero degrees Celsius, which translates to thirty – two degrees Fahrenheit.
Hardly a problem for sturdy shepherds or their sheep! Furthermore, although
snow might fall, it melts quickly and the plentiful winter rains provide lush
pasture for sheep.
The fiction story
ends here.
The anti Christmas people counter this by claiming that the
winters were colder then. They offer no proof, since it doesn’t exist, but
simply raise their voices, Hitler Gestapo style, and proclaim loudly and
repeatedly that it is so. Hitler proved that if you tell a lie loud enough and
long enough, people would believe it.
This sounds like the tactics of evolutionists. But then, the chief axiom of evolutionists
is to claim that the present is the key to the past. What changed to allow
this to be reversed on the Christmas issue?
This writer begs the Christmas believer to consider this.
“Are you going to let the opposition win by constantly changing the rules and
cheating while keeping score”?
While searching the web, I found information provided by a
Christian Jew who is very well informed on the Christmas subject. The book of
Luke says the angel appeared to Mary in the sixth month. This would translate
to March – April of our calendar which is very different from the Jewish
calendar. A pregnancy begun at that point would most likely produce a birth in
late December. The same Jewish authority researched the changing rotation of
priests serving in the temple and verified that Zacharias was indeed the priest
serving at the time John, who would become john the baptist, was presented at the temple. This also agrees time wise with the birth of christ.
There is other information available, and perhaps someone
with the proper tools available will build on this brief message. Merry
Christmas.