The origins of the first Christmas?????
Three
centuries before Christ's birth, people celebrated 25 December,
archaeologists claim
By David Keys
Archaelology Correspondent; Independent Magazine
24
December 2003 Archeologists say they have
traced the origins of the first Christmas to be celebrated on 25 December,
300 years before the birth of Christ. The original event marked the
consecration of the ancient world's largest sun god statue, the 34m
tall, 200 ton It has long
been known that 25 December was not the real date of Christ's
birth and that the decision to turn it into Jesus's
birthday was made by Constantine, the Roman Emperor, in the early 4th
century AD. But experts believe the origins
of that decision go back to 283 BC, when, in The event was
preserved by academics on Rhodes or in The date was chosen because the
emperor seems to have believed that the Roman sun god and Christ were
virtually one and the same, and the sun's
birthday had been decreed as 25 December some 50 years earlier by one of
Dr Alaric Watson,
one of the British historians involved in the current research and
author of the major book on the period, Aurelian
and the Third Century, said: "Constantine's choice of 25
December as the day on which to celebrate the birth of his divine
patron, Christ, must be viewed in terms of the tradition on which Aurelian
had drawn and which may well have originated in the celebration of the
winter solstice at Rhodes some six centuries earlier. " Jesus's real date of birth is not known, although various different pre-4th century traditions and computations put it either in the January to March period or in November
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