The Great Christmas Scam Circa 323 AD

All the hue and cry about Christmas being sacred is nonsense. The celebrations and feasting on December 25th always were and continue to be a pagan ritual. Which is fine. But let’s call it what it is. When was Christ actually born? No one knows. There is general agreement among scholars that it was sometime between January and March. Although it could have been as early as October or November. Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus, better known as Constantine the Great--the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire--started the whole mess. His regime was all about politics, superstition and war. Sound familiar? In the year 312 AD, Turkish warlord Constantine had a vision. He saw a circle and a cross. Later, he saw the same symbol in a dream. Based on this vision, he decided to wage all his wars in the name of Christianity. In 313 AD when he named Rome the seat of Christianity, he didn’t mean Rome, Italy. Constantine meant the city that bore his name, Constantinople (now called Istanbul). However much Constantine envisioned Constantinople as the Rome of Turkey, the name was never accepted outside of Turkey and in a few Asian provinces. Even the real Rome--the one in Italy--didn’t become the base of the Holy Roman Empire until 800 AD. In 323 AD Constantine declared himself a Christian (although he was not baptized until his deathbed conversion in 337). In order to unify his empire, Constantine commanded that all the people under his rule had to believe that Jesus Christ was God or else. Constantine was master of all he surveyed and he renamed pagan festivals to honor Christian leaders. But his subjects were not happy. When Constantine was the supreme authority of the Byzantine Empire, he ruled over a fairly benign agrarian populace. Its economy and its people had a matriarchal belief structure. The people were left high and dry when he suddenly switched allegiance to a patriarchal deity. Where had their goddesses gone? Who would ensure that the crops would grow? Suddenly, god was male and the people were not only unhappy, they were fearful their goddesses would be so pissed off that the crops would fail. In an inspired move which would gain him acceptance among the Christians, appease his own people and also would appease the goddesses who regulated the seasons, Constantine elevated Christ’s mother Mary to goddess status. Before Constantine, Mary had been given little respect in male-dominated Christian lore. However misguided and superstitious and war-minded Constantine may have been, he is remembered with gratitude for one act he performed in 313 AD. In the name of two Roman generals he had defeated--Licinius and Maximin Daia--Constantine issued a decree that granted toleration to all religions, and restored property to the Christians. He also continued the tradition of celebrations and feasting on December 25. It was on this date at sunrise that the winter solstice was believed to occur. Constantine thought the Roman Sun God and Jesus Christ were one and the same. He therefore decided to honor Sun God Jesus on December 25th. The first reference to December 25 being the birth of Jesus was in 336 AD. As is particularly evident this year, pagan celebrations on December 25th have only gotten bigger and more obnoxious as time has passed. Decorating trees and sending cards started in Great Britain around 1840. The first State to declare Christmas to be a legal holiday was Alabama in 1836, the last was Oklahoma in 1907. On June 26, 1870, the US Congress declared Christmas to be a legal holiday. Hallmark made the first commercially-sold Christmas cards in 1915. Celebrating Christmas is a relatively new holiday. It’s a commercial holiday. It’s a politically useful holiday. So just put a sock in it with whining about people not being allowed to venerate Christ by saying Merry Christmas or by singing Christmas Carols. Celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25 never was about Christ. It’s always been about politics, appeasing social factions and making money. Just as Constantine used Christianity as a cynical political ploy, so the current administration is using Christianity as a cynical political ploy. The man who deemed December 25th the day that Christ was born because he thought Jesus and the Sun God were the same person would have applauded the idea of charging $250,000 to get into an inauguration ball.