Ave Maria!
This is a great explanation of how the dating of Christmas is based on the date of the Incarnation in Mary’s womb and the birth of John the Baptist not on some acquiescence to paganism as is so often claimed.
From Locuta Est:
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As we approach the Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord, periodicals both secular and religious attempt the task of explaining the dating of Christmas. It never ceases to amaze me how even when theories have been sufficiently debunked they continue to persist in popular myth. The myth is that placing the birth of Jesus on December 25 was a Christian response to a pagan Roman festival honoring the “unconquered sun god.”
In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger argues against the thesis of the pagan festival. “The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion. However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception” (Ratzinger, 108).
