This past week I ran across someone who is surely one of the most articulate advocates of atheism on the planet, one Jaclyn Glenn. She is an astute observer of lots of stuff: she is in med school, so science is on her radar screen, as is Christianity, her former religion and the religion still practiced by her family; and courtesy of her videos, she gets lots of interaction with and feedback from people who claim to be Christians. Admittedly, where I say articulate someone else might use the word logorrhea. She definitely has no shortage of opinions when it comes to eviscerating religion, and I have to agree with her on a lot of stuff.
To take just one timely example – and I’m not trying to quote her; in fact, I can’t because I listened to dozens of her videos last week while doing other work – she made the statement that Jesus is a lie and Christmas is a scam because he is obviously an invention. Without getting into specifics, she cites countless other religions who have iconic figures who were also allegedly born on December 25, and many of them predate Jesus. That can’t be a coincidence. It has to be an invention of mythology and religion.
She makes an excellent point, one I have to agree with – except for one small detail: Jesus was not born on December 25. He wasn’t born anywhere near December 25. There’s no way. As most Bible readers know, Jesus’ ministry lasted three and a half years. Courtesy of Easter (actually an ancient non-Christian pagan fertility ritual, as evidenced by its eggs, bunnies and other symbols of prolific reproduction – but hey, minor details, right?), everyone knows the story is that Jesus died in the springtime. Three and a half years from any December 25 would have him dying in late June. Nobody believes that.
True enough, December 25 is waaaaay older than Jesus. The ancient church borrowed existing winter solstice festivals like the Saturnalia, importing all of their rituals and practices, and then rebranded them as “Christian.” It was convenient. Here’s this relatively new religion struggling to get off the ground, so the churches said, hey, why not piggyback on the Saturnalia? We’ll call it a celebration of Jesus! Brilliant marketing strategy, but strip this holiday down to its bare bones and it has nothing to do with Jesus. It is laughable when people say “Let’s keep Christ in Christmas.” He was never there to begin with.
I can hear the objections: “It doesn’t matter what day you celebrate Jesus’ birth; the important thing is that you do it.” If it was that important, why isn’t his date of birth recorded in the Bible? There are all kinds of extremely detailed references to dates in the Bible. The flood of Genesis, for example: “In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month,” the floodgates opened. Whether you believe in the flood or not is irrelevant to my point, which is: look at the detail! Why is the Bible so specific there, yet completely silent on the date of Jesus’ birth? One can only conclude that it is not important. In the “need to know” category, it didn’t make the grade.
To cut to the chase, how does this relate to belief in evolution versus belief in creation? When informed, thinking people look at the lies surrounding Christmas, parading as a Christian observance when it is nothing of the sort, it often poisons their view of everything connected to God, religion, Jesus, the Bible, et cetera. It’s completely understandable: the central observance of mainstream Christian religions isn’t even Bible-based. Then again, it’s rather unfair. The truth has been distorted, and then instead of the distortion being condemned, the distortion is viewed as the truth – and then condemned.
I say amen to condemning the distortion. Amen to Jaclyn Glenn and others like her who rightfully point out these obvious deviations from truth and fact. But don’t condemn the truth based on lies told about it.
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