Merry Christmas

Two days have passed since the Mayan calendar ended and just as I predicted, the days started getting longer. The world hasn't come to an end. That reminds me of another end-times prophecy "expert" whose prediction will probably be proven false in another eight days. Jack Van Impe used to be a pretty good evangelist but he finally went off the deep end with his prophetic teachings. Back in about 2001 he declared that the Lord had shown him that He would return between 2002 and 2012. Well, we've got a week to go.

Since no one knows the day nor the hour it always irritates me when people set dates because I have an idea that even if somebody got it right, God would probably change the date just to prove him wrong. Van Impe, not wanting to sound like a date setter, hedged his bets with a ten year window, but apparently he got nervous about it because back around 2004 or 5 he had a new revelation in which God told him that Jesus would come back before 2018. Well, I always hate it when they start saying things like that because now he's claimed every possible date for the next six years which means we'll have to wait at least that long for the rapture! I was really hoping I could count on it happening sometime in the next year before our country falls completely apart with the inept vacationing leaders we've got. (Heavy sigh!)

On a lighter note, we've finally reached Christmas Eve. Ethan's been begging me to let him open his presents for the last five days, but tonight he'll finally be able to do it (our family tradition has always been Christmas Eve). Tomorrow of course is Christmas, the day we celebrate the Lord's birth. You may have heard preachers or people say through the years that we really don't know when the actual day of Christ's birth is. We had "Christmas in July" once in our church to compensate for that.

You may also be aware that the Jehovah's Witnesses and other very strict groups, even some Baptists I've met along the way, don't celebrate Christmas because the December 25 is actually the date of a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice and all that. The Druids worshipped trees therefore the practice of putting up a tree is pagan. Well, I've done a little studying on the subject and here's what I've come up with.

Right off the bat, the winter solstice is December 21, so unless the argument is based on general timing and nearness to the date, Christmas is not the same day as the Druid holiday. Druids were around from at least 200 BC in England, Wales, and France, but the Druids as a religious practice mostly died out around the 13th century. There has been a revival of interest in the last 250 years or so. The opera composer, Vincenzo Bellini may have helped revive the interest with his opera, Norma, about a Druid priestess, first performed at La Scala December 26, 1831.

The Druids worshipped trees as part of their practice, but they also made human sacrifices. The word, Druid, comes from a Latin root referring to the oak tree. The Druids had a calendar that was divided into 22 segments, each honoring a specific type of tree. None of the trees even remotely resembled an evergreen tree. The modern practice of a Christmas tree actually has nothing to do with the Druids. It began with Martin Luther about 500 years ago, who saw the shape of the pine trees as resembling a star, and so added lights to it to show that the Light of the World had come.

As for the actual day of Christmas, there is a formula to figure it out. The Day of Atonement in the Jewish Calendar comes on September 25. Since that is the only time in the year that the high priest would enter into the Holy of Holies, that had to be the time when Zacharias encountered the angel who told him his wife would bear a son. Assuming that an excited Zacharias, old as he and his wife Elizabeth were, went home and got things started that night, it would have been around March 25 when Mary came to visit Elizabeth in her sixth month. Assuming again that March would have been the time the angel brought the news to Mary, the 25th to be exact, go forward nine months and you have December 25. So really, we have every reason to believe that December 25, if not the exact day, is very close to the exact day of Jesus' birth.

Along with that you may have wondered where the Twelve Days of Christmas came from. Well, although the western church accepted December 25, the Eastern Orthodox church accepted January 6 as the day of Jesus' birth. The difference is 12 days. The Twelve Days of Christmas came about as an effort to reconcile the differences between the two dates. The twelve days were referred to as "Holy Days," which over time has come down to us as "holidays." So in essence, even though the ACLU and the American Atheists are pushing to remove Christmas from any greetings, even if you say "Happy Holidays," you are still giving a Christian greeting, and the mockers don't even know it!

So celebrate away. The date is accurate, the tree represents the Light of the World, and it is a Holy season. HAPPY HOLIDAYS, but especially,

MERRY CHRISTMAS.