https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-columbus
[Original post: A Columbian Exchange]
1: The most popular comments were those objecting to my paragraph about holidays replacing older holidays:
All of our best holidays have begun as anti-holidays to neutralize older rites. Jesus was born in the spring; they moved Christmas to December to neutralize the pagan Solstice celebration. Easter got its name because it neutralized the rites of the spring goddess Eostre. Hanukkah was originally a minor celebration of a third-tier Bible story; American Jews bumped it up several notches of importance in order to neutralize Christmas.
Starting with Christmas, Retsam says that there are three main theories - Adraste’s plus two others:
1) March 25 + 9 months, 2) solstice symbolism, 3) co-opting paganism. (The earliest reference to this theory seems to be a millennium later in the 12th century)
Apparently the logic for March 25 is that it was calculated to be the day that Jesus died (easier to calculate since it was Passover), and Jewish tradition held that great people lived for exact, whole number of years. (i.e. were conceived and died on the same day)
This is somewhat convincing. But December 25 was literally the winter solstice on the Roman calendar (today the solstice is December 21st), and it really is suspicious that some unrelated method just happened to land on the most astronomically significant day of the year. Likewise, March 25 was the spring equinox, so the Annunciation date is significant in and of itself.
(I guess if you’re Christian you can believe that God chose to incarnate on that day because He liked the symbolism - although He must have been pretty upset when Pope Gregory rearranged the calendar so that it no longer worked).
Jesus died two days before Passover, but Passover is linked to the Hebrew calendar and can fall on a variety of Roman calendar days. So the main remaining degree of freedom is how the early Christians translated from the (Biblically fixed) Hebrew date to the (not very clear) Roman date. This seems to have been calculated by someone named Hippolytus in the 3rd century, but his calculations were wrong - March 25 did not fall on a Friday (cf. Good Friday) on any of the plausible crucifixion years. Also, as far as I can tell, the relevant Jewish tradition is that prophets die on the same day they are born, not the same day they are conceived. For example, Moses was born on, and died on, the 7th of Adar (is it worth objecting that it should be the same date on the Hebrew calendar and not the Roman?) Maybe this tradition was different in Jesus’ time? But it must be older than the split between Judaism and Islam - the Muslims also believe Mohammed died on his birth date.
So although the Annunciation story is plausible, it’s hard for me to figure out exactly how they got March 25 and December 25, and there’s room for them to have fudged it to hit the Solstice, either to compete with pagans or just because the astronomically significant dates were impressive in their own rights.
I guess I will downgrade to a 5% credence that competing with pagans was a significant factor in the date of Christmas.
Moving on to Easter. Russell Hogg writes:
You are entering a world of pain when you mention Eostre . . . https://historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter-ishtar-eostre-and-eggs/ . We should have a ‘Debunk the Eostre Myth’ day. It’s already celebrated regularly by many people.
And Feral Finster adds:
Glad others decided to debunk that particular bit of midwit received wisdom. I get tired of doing so, over and over.
