Maybe David used to worship the day? Or maybe he knows people who worship days rather than God?

I wonder what David defines as worship.

In Canada we have a holiday known as Victoria Day in honour of the Queen's birthday.

It is interesting that it isn't even the Queen's birthday.

In like manner, Christ's birth is being celebrated on December 25th. If I correctly read what EGW had to say about that, there isn't anything wrong with doing that.

Getting to be that time of the year again... Once again I encourage people to look for the Bible Review (Published by the Biblical Archaeological Society) of 2003 or 2002 which has quite an impressive article. Although Jesus most likely was not born on December 25, the church cellebrated it as the birth of Jesus a century earlier than our tradition and older histories said it was first kept, and was based on a second century tradition that came from intertestamental Judiasm.

The traditional understanding was that the church began celebrating Christmas in the 4th century after Constintine made the church leagle and there was compromise with Paganism which had a major holiday on December 25.

However Bible Review points out that although this is the popular understanding, from historys which was good for the information availble to them, that it is now known by scholars that December 25 was cellebrated from the third century, at a time the church was hiding in the catacomes and wanted nothing to do with paganism.

And in the Second Century AD, 100 years before December 25 was celebrated as the birth of Jesus and 200 years before Constintine and the dates that most of us think the church started celebrating Dec 25, the church celebrated the feast of the anounciation on March 25.

Bible Review points out that durring the intertestamental period the Jews developed a tradition that the conception of Isaac was on what was to latter become Passover (I'm saying later to be Passover because Isaac was born before the Exodus, however, according to some of the archaeology classes I've had at AUC, the Seminary and in some books I've had to read decades ago in college and Seminary, and in some of the defences of Mrs. White from the Walter Rea criticizisms, Passover was a major Baal festival that pre-dates Abraham.) and that Isaac was born in the winter. Not only did they teach that Isaac was conceved on Passover, but that when Abraham took Isaac to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice him and God provided the lamb also took place on Passover.

The Jewish calender varies compaired to ours so based the celebration of the conception of Isaac at Issac, the Jews celebrated the birth of Isaac around the time of our December 25, depending how the Jewish calander lined up.

Until 135 AD Christians were a subgroup of Judaism. In 135 AD Christianity and Judaism became two sepperate religions. It was similar to a divorce with sadness as well as anger and hurts on both sides. In this painful time Christians began to say that they were better than the Jews because Isaac was only conseved on Passover, Jesus was like Isaac by their mothers becoming pregnant on Passover, but Jesus died on Passover, making him even greater than Isaac as Jesus was the lamb that God provided in Isaac's place. Around this time Passover occured on March 25, with the sepperation the church stopped using the Jewish calender and started using the Roman calender and instead of addapting passover and the celebration of the conception of Isaac and Jesus with the Jewish calender, the church began celebrating the annunciation to Mary on March 25 every year.

The feast of the annunciation was celebrated on March 25 for about 100 years, then they added 9 months to the feast of the annunciation and came up with December 25 that they started to celebrate as the birth of Jesus. It was a a taking over of the Jewish traditon of the birth of Issac and applied it to Jesus.

I know when I post this there are a few who say "No, everyone knows that Christmas did not come into the church before Constitine in the 4th century." but how do you expalin why December 25 was celebrated 100 years earlier than the date you want to defend as it's start.

P. S. If you feel uncomfortable celebrating the birth of Jesus around December 25, the Bible, in the Book of John does give you something to celebrate durring that season... Although the event was probably in February (sometime between Hanukkah and Passover) John ties the raising of Lazarus to Hannukkah and was expecting us to think about Lazarus and look forward to the resurection every year durring Hannukkah. Since my beloved Grandmother died in December 1993, then learning about the connection between Hannukkah and Lazarus early in 1994, Lazarus and looking forward to the Second Coming and the resurection of our loved ones has become as much a part of the Holiday celebration as any other aspect. I wish that more people would include the story of Lazarus and celebrate Jesus, the Resurection and the Life during this season.

The fact that we are still worrying about whether to celebrate the Savior's birthday in this earth should be the least of our problems. Why are we not concerned about the fact that the church is doing nothing to ensure that the Savior can establish His kingdom of glory on earth? This is another case of fiddling while Rome burns.