Talk:Festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun

message: Note: the brief information here has now been integrated at Sol Invictus, for your approval. If it's okay, the merge can be made. --Wetman 07:36, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Read up on Constantine. He specifically and explicitely changed the date of Jesus' birth to 25th December as it was the date of Saturnalia, and other identical festivals dedicated to the birth of Bacchus (a form of Osiris-Dionysus) and Mithras (another form). He also EXPLICITELY moved the Christian Sabbath from Saturday (as held by Jews) to SUNday, as it was the Sabbath for Mithras Sol Invictus. CheeseDreams 11:39, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

message: The first (and only) time that December 25th is attested as natalis invicti is in the calendar of Philocalus, which dates to AD 354. That the Romans marked the winter solstice (December 25th in the Julian calendar) long before this is clear, but there is no evidence that it was deemed a festival of the sun god. In fact, the traditional feast days of the sun god (attested in festive calendars as early as the 1st c. BC) were August 8th and/or 9th, August 28th, possibly October 19th, and December 11th. Note that none of these dates are astronomically significant - neither the solstices nor the equinoxes are marked as feast days of the sun in any of the traditional roman religious calendars. Likewise there is, in fact, no source that corroborates the often repeated assertion that December 25th was a feast in Mithraism. What all this adds up to, is that December 25th is attested as a Christian feast day earlier than as a feast day of the sun god - namely in the 330s. Initially Christmas is attested only in Rome itself. It did not show up in the East until the 380s, some 50 years after Constantine's death, when John Chrysostom discusses the festival as having been introduced in that part of the Roman Empire within the last decade. This makes it unlikely in the extreme that the establishment of Christmas was an initiative of Constantine, for it would imply that large, and important, parts of the Empire had ignored that decree for decades. There is, in any case, no source that indicates that Constantine established the Christian festival on December 25th, and the suggestion that he did so is pure speculation.
As for Aurelian, he established (or expanded) an important quadrennial festival for Sol from October 19th-22nd. It is often stated that he established the festival for Sol on December 25th, but this is a modern myth that is not corroborated by any ancient source.
In short: the Christian feast of December 25th is first attested in the 330s in Rome, and a few decades later a feast for the sun on that day is mentioned in the same city. As Martin Wallraff, in his recent study Christus Verus Sol, points out, it may well be that the pagans were copying the Christians here rather than the other way around. We just don't know.
:Aurelian dedicated the Sol Invictus Temple on Dec 25, 274. Constantine on Mar 7, 321 decreed SUNday (dies Solis) as the Roman day of rest [CJ3.12.2].
:The date of December 25th is too close to the winter solstice to completely discount the pagan origin of Christmas. Saturnalia also ended on the winter solstice around 2 days before the 25th. It would be highly suspicious if the Christians had come up with this date on their own which was so close to the existing Roman festivals. Seneca the Younger, advised Nero for 5 years, and he commented on there being days dedicated to Saturn. Since Christian influence was low during Nero's reign, I think this rules out a Christian origin of the pagan festivals. --Darthanakin 08:07, 25 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birth of the unconquered sun