All Saints of North America Orthodox Church · Phoenix, Arizona

Orthodox Church on the west side of Phoenix Arizona including Sun City, Surprise, Peoria, Glendale, Litchfield Park, Buckeye, Tonopah, and more

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Calculating Christmas: The Story Behind December 25th

November 30, 2017 By All Saints of North America [edit]

William J. Tighe  Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals. Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: General Tagged With: christmas, december 25, William Tighe [post-edit]

All Saints of North America Orthodox Church

18700 N. 107th Ave Unit#5
Sun City, AZ 85373

(928) 910-2186

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