</div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (DB_Hunter @ Dec 24 2003, 01:35 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> I think the birth of Jesus is actually sometime in Jan.... that&#39;s when the Orthodox xmas is... I think. The reason why christmas is more famously celebrated in December as far as I know is because when the original Christian Missionaries came to Europe (and/or Britain) they found Pagan tree worshippers. During December the Pagans would celebrate a festival of their own. The missionaries, in their attempt to make Christianity more palatable to the local Pagan populace, decided to actually do a sort of compramise and they reached an agreement of sorts (if you can call it that) that the newly &#39;converted&#39; christians would celebrate the birth of Jesus in December, and I&#39;m not sure on this one but I think 25th was the date of their festival.

I am not aware if this was the only compramise done at the time or not. </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'>
You&#39;ve got it close.

It originated with Saturnalia, the Latin Festival to the God of Saturn (who, if you look into that kind of stuff, also rules over gardening). Then, they would decorate all their trees and decorate with foilage, and all that stuff.. they would light candles, and here&#39;s the kicker.

Roles would be reversed. Slaves would become masters for the day and vice versa. I think the only one exempt might&#39;ve been the emperor/Ceaser/whatever.

And then yeah, Christians came and did the compromise thingie.

However, if you figure that Jesus was 33 1/2 years old when he died, and he died in March/April.. doesn&#39;t that kinda make it so that he was born in Sept. or October? Remember, it was warm enough to have Sheep out on the pastures, so it couldn&#39;t have been too cold then...


By the way, I know this is a nice heart-warming thread, but I&#39;m gonna move it to the General Discussion folder, leaving a link to it in here.

Merry X-Mas&#33; I still gotta get Gai something