Sorting out the Pagan

2Kings 17: 24-41

One of the memories which will probably remain with me is that of Becky and her friend Jase being the front page picture on the Easter Sunday edition of the Houston Chronicle. Houston has a population of over 2 million, why were our little ones so special? Dressed in their Easter finery they were gathering Easter Eggs in the forest which surrounded our church. They were cute.
But what do highly coloured plastic eggs have to do with Easter? The tenuous connection is that eggs remind us of the new beginning that the resurrected life of Jesus gives us. The reality is probably that over 60 000 years ago North Africans were already in the habit of decorating eggs and placing them in graves to represent rebirth. Christianity adopted the custom.
The exact date of Jesus' birth is unknown. The year can be approximated to between 7 and 2 BC but the month is unknown. Then why 25th December?

In the early 4th century, the church calendar in Rome contained Christmas on December 25 and other holidays placed on solar dates. According to Hijmans^[99] "It is cosmic symbolism...which inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the southern solstice, December 25, as the birthday of Christ, and the northern solstice as that of John the Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception." Usener^[100] and others^[27] proposed that the Christians chose this day because it was the Roman feast celebrating the birthday of Sol Invictus. Modern scholar S. E. Hijmans, however, states that "While they were aware that pagans called this day the 'birthday' of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas."
( Hijmans, S.E., Sol, the sun in the art and religions of Rome, 2009, p. 595. ISBN 978-90-367-3931-3)

We too have an amalgamation of Christian and pagan. The problem is ensuring that the emphasis of my celebration is not the pagan element.