So Freakin' What?

Among the hot news items on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" the other night was the revelation (if that is the word!) that an Australian astronomer has pinpointed the date of Christ's birth to... no, not December 25 in the year zero, or 1 B.C., or whatever it would have been... but to June 17, 2 B.C. Summer! And two years early! Which, of course, impacts on Christian faith and doctrine... not at all. You know, it's amazing how the "debunkers" come out of the woodwork, just like clockwork, twice a year, i.e. at Christmas and Easter, with all sorts of pronouncements designed to shake the faith of the faithful. But not only does most of it fall on deaf ears, as it should, but most of it is at least as speculative as what they accuse the Bible of being. You know it's time to put on your skeptic helmet when Time comes out with its annual Lenten cover story on "the search for the real Jesus", and some hand-picked liberal "scientist", usually from Harvard or of similar persuasion, starts making wild inferences based on a few bone fragments or pottery shards, or on an inscription on a tomb written in a language they haven't yet quite deciphered, but what it "most likely" says is... etc. It's amazing how liberals in the media, and in science, and in that corrupt area of overlap between the two, continue to obsess about the teachings of the Church, which they otherwise dismiss as "irrelevant", "superstition", "myth", and the fearsome foursome, "sexist, racist, homophobic, and in violation of the wall of separation between church and state" -- as if any of those concepts were of the least interest to people 2000 years ago.

In any case, the current alleged shot off the bow of the Church is nothing of the sort. Here is an article describing the finding:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/3687843/Jesus-was-born-in-June-astronomers-claim.html

Now, to begin with, the Church has hosted a lively scholarly dialogue, for decades, as to the year of Christ's birth. The date I hear most often is 3 B.C. This is not considered heretical. The "absolute" in the equation is that Christ was, indeed, born... i.e. that He was an actual, historical, human being. If there are any errors in the matter (the "relative" part) they are in the matter of who decided what year A.D. it was when they first started using that term. Even if you connect Christ's birth to Caesar Augustus, and the decree that "all the world should be taxed", i.e. a census taken, that doesn't narrow it down conclusively. It's amazing how many historical events that are significant in the Gospels get little or no play in contemporary secular histories -- especially when they deal with events in what was then a backwater of the Roman Empire. (Think of what history in 2000 years will say about events in Washington, D.C. vs. in Idaho.)

Then, do the Gospels say a word about the time of year of Christ's birth? Well, no. There is some mention of shepherds in fields, and of people traveling overland, so the weather couldn't have been all that inclement. But remember that we're dealing with what is today the West Bank, and even in winter the weather is not all that harsh; snow is a real novelty, for example. And it can get cool at night even in midsummer (I know 'cause I was right near there in midsummer). Even assuming climate change over 2000 years, it does not seem to have been radically different -- if anything, less dry, but no cooler.

So what's December 25 all about? Well, the Churh, in its wisdom, made a habit of adapting -- one might say co-opting -- various pagan festivals they encountered in the process of spreading the Gospel, and changing them for Christian use. Countless societies had, and still have, midwinter festivals to celebrate the "return of the light" -- and this made for a very fitting metaphor for the birth of Christ, the "light of the world". So midwinter (Dec. 21 nowadays) and/or the new year (Jan. 1 nowadays) gets morphed into Christmas, and by rights they should all be on the same day, but you know how people are about calendars and dates -- they get fixated. Plus, even the calendar has gone through many changes since the year 1 A.D. So what we have now is a patchwork of sorts, but it seems to satisfy everyone (and -- it separates the celebration of Christmas from the drunken brawl of New Year's, which is certainly very appropriate).

And besides, the Church has never claimed, as far as I know, that Christ was actually born on Dec. 25, or whatever the equivalent was at that time in that place. Dec. 25 was chosen as the date of the "Christ Mass", i.e. for the _commemoration_ of Christ's birth. That is not the same as saying it's His actual birthday. (Think of "President's Day".) In other words, rather than worry over the exact date (before we had astronomical models and computers to fall back on) they simply picked a date, which resonated with the season, i.e. with the turning of the year, and declared it "Christ Mass Day". Very neat, very practical. And so any scientific data that come up with a different date, or time of year, or even year, cannot constitute a threat, and the media people who jump on things like this as "proof that Christianity is wrong" are simply fools. Nuff said!