Topical Discussions, December, 2025

Topical Discussions, December, 2025

Here I am going to take another break from our Isaiah commentary and instead endeavor to treat a few subjects which arise continually, and although I have treated them in the past, in places such as the Christogenea Forum or from various perspectives in diverse commentaries, most of those are not as complete a treatment as I may be able to do here. However for some of these subjects, which are the pagan nature of Christmas and the inaccurate dating of the birth of Christ by the churches, it is also a discussion which is seasonable. We shall also discuss our reasoning for our interpretation of the Biblical Hebrew calendar. But first I want to address something which is taken for granted because it is repeated very often in social media, and even in print media and books.

Here we shall discuss three subjects, or actually four: By Way of Deception Christians Should Not Interpret Scripture, Reckoning the Dates for the Passover and the Day of the Sabbaths, How Christmas is Pagan and Dating the Birth of Christ. Our presentation of the last two subjects is hopelessly intertwined. 

By Way of Deception Christians Should Not Interpret Scripture

That is the motto of the subversive jewish agency known as the Mossad, which is typically said to read "By way of deception you shall wage war", and it seems that most people take for granted the jewish claim that this motto is a citation from Proverbs 24:6. So first, we shall cite Proverbs chapter 24:

1 Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them. 2 For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief. 3 Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: 4 And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. 5 A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength. 6 For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counsellors there is safety. 7 Wisdom is too high for a fool: he openeth not his mouth in the gate. 8 He that deviseth to do evil shall be called a mischievous person. 9 The thought of foolishness is sin: and the scorner is an abomination to men. 10 If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. 11 If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; 12 If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?

Here we have read enough of the chapter to make the context of verse 6 quite clear, that is is speaking of wisdom, and the Hebrew word תחבלות or techbulah (# 8458) is defined by Brown-Driver-Briggs as direction or counsel, and also in relation to piloting a ship, as steering or directing it in its path. If we take the words “wise counsel”, which is the manner in which the King James Version had translated the word techbulah, and replace it with “deception”, it is clearly a departure from the context of the passage, but it is also absolutely contrary to the actual meaning of the Hebrew word. This is how jews read Scripture: they twist and corrupt it and force the perversions of their own wicked minds into its meaning. 

This word, techbulah, appears in only six passages of Scripture, and five of them are in Proverbs. First, in Job chapter 37 (37:12) where it is counsels, in reference to the operations of nature in weather, which are then attributed to God. It is counsels again in Proverbs chapter 1 where we read “5 A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels.” In Proverbs chapter 11 we read: “14 Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.” So evidently the Mossad understands that it will fall without deception, and that it has safety in an abundance of deception. But the word does not mean deception, except perhaps in the wicked mind of the jew who thinks it is wise to deceive. 

That sort of wisdom cannot be attributed to Solomon. So in Proverbs chapter 12 he wrote “5 The thoughts of the righteous are right: but the counsels of the wicked are deceit.” There the word for deceit is מרמה or mirmah (# 4820), which is deceit or treachery, and the word for counsels is once again techbulah. So indirectly, the Mossad has betrayed its own true nature as being wicked, and Solomon himself attests to their wicked perversion of his words. Finally, Solomon explains his own statement in Proverbs chapter 24 verse 6, where he wrote in Proverbs chapter 20: “18 Every purpose is established by counsel: and with good advice make war.” There is safety in a multitude of counselors because no man, even having the wisdom of Solomon, can make the most prudent decisions in all circumstances. Neither can any man have all the data necessary to make all the plans for a war, for the personnel, the strategy, the logistics and the supplies, so he would have to rely on his officers. But there is no safety in deceit but for the wicked, as Solomon had also written in Proverbs chapter 20 that “17 Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel.”

So all who blindly attribute the Mossad slogan to Solomon and Proverbs 24:6 have accepted the lies of devils, and share in the deceit and treachery of anti-Christ jews. But perhaps Solomon had also best described the motives and actions of jews in Proverbs chapter 26:

20 Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth. 21 As coals are to burning coals, and wood to fire; so is a contentious man to kindle strife. 22 The words of a talebearer are as wounds, and they go down into the innermost parts of the belly. 23 Burning lips and a wicked heart are like a potsherd covered with silver dross. 24 He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him; 25 When he speaketh fair, believe him not: for there are seven abominations in his heart. 26 Whose hatred is covered by deceit, his wickedness shall be shewed before the whole congregation. 27 Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him. 28 A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin.

This description perfectly represents all of the jewish lies and deceptions which have continually plunged Christians into various wars over the past few centuries. In the slogan of their own agency, the jews are telling Christians precisely what they have done to them. But it is not of God.

Reckoning the Dates for the Passover and the day of the Sabbaths

While I have spoken on this subject many times in the past, interwoven in various commentaries or other presentations, and while an older version of these notes has been posted in the obscure Notebook pages at Christogenea since March of 2017, where this page only has about 5,800 views, I could not find where I had treated this subject more formally, as a stand-alone subject, so here it is, and it is probably long overdue. First I will say one thing in reference to the Sabbaths: They are not always on Saturday, and they are not always on Sunday. The Israelites had no names for the days of the week. 

There is a perennial question about Passover, and if people would stop looking at the jewish calendar, or the Roman Catholic calendar which followed jewish methods, even if it does not perfectly agree, then there should be no question at all. (The fact that the Roman Catholic calendar follows jewish methods shall be discussed later.) In the ancient world there were diverse calendars. Evidently, ancient Egyptians had reckoned their new year to begin with the first appearance of the constellation Sirius in their night sky, after a seventy-day period when Sirius could not be seen from Egypt. For the Egyptians, this event occurred in our mid-July. Then both the Egyptians and the Babylonians had also had a secondary administrative calendar, similar to the modern concept of the “fiscal year” used in business, which was distinguished from the religious or cultic year. Evidently the Sumerians and later Akkadians, a term which is not equivalent to Assyrians, as well as other Mesopotamian and related societies also had this practice of different calendars.

With the ancient Egyptian new year beginning at the rising of Sirius, that could not have been the Hebrew method of reckoning the new year, since it would have left the harvest festival for early Spring, and first fruits somewhere in the first part of September. However according to the Scripture of the Old Testament, in ancient Israel planting must have been conducted in Spring, as there are frequent references to summer fruit and summer harvests. The ancient Egyptians reckoned only three seasons, and evidently neither did the Israelites have need of reckoning four.

The Babylonians reckoned their new year to begin after the vernal equinox, but not until the first visible crescent moon appeared. The Mesopotamian moon god Sin was believed to have governed the skies, and the pagan cultic year was organized according to that cultic belief. This is the most likely origin for the later method of calculating both the jewish and Roman Catholic calendars. But on account of the worship of the moon and the organization of months which did not ever equate to a full year, governments with such a system also used a separate administrative calendar for conducting business and levying taxes, as well as for calculating the dates for sowing and harvesting.

But that cannot have been the method of the ancient Hebrews. Contrary to the claims of Flavius Josephus in this regard, who only sought to justify the Judaean calendars of his own time, the Hebrew Scriptures have no evidence that a separate administrative calendar was ever implemented in the Law, the prescribed feasts were organized around and dependent upon agriculture, and there was no secular State apart from the religion of the people, so there was no need for an administrative calendar. Yet the Roman Catholic date for Easter over the past hundred years, based on a variation of the methods of reckoning the date of Passover in the jewish calendar, has been as early as March 23rd, or as late as April 25th, making any organization of the feasts to correspond with the agricultural society a practical impossibility.

The Hebrew calendar is organized around planting and the first fruits of crops, and the harvest time of Tabernacles. Therefore it could not swing back and forth from year to year by as much as a month, because in that manner it would never have been possible for the Hebrew society to be synchronized with the natural phases of agriculture. Furthermore, this possibility is also constrained by the rainy seasons in ancient Palestine, where there was an early rain and a later rain. The summer period during which the crops were developing was typically dry, which is evident in the 32nd Psalm where we read in a prayer of David: “4 For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer.” In other passages, the harvest is seen as concluding with the end of summer, such as in Jeremiah chapter 8 where we read: “20 The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

So planting and harvesting had to be coordinated with the early rain and the latter rain, which is evident in Joel chapter 2 where we read: “23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. 24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil.” The Hebrew calendar was an agrarian calendar, created to coordinate the feasts with the agricultural seasons. It could not have changed by as much as a month from year to year, as the jews and the pagans of Mesopotamia had made their calendars according to the phases of the moon, but used separate calendars for the administrative needs of the government. But for the Israelites, the Passover marked the beginning of the year in our Spring, the feast of first fruits was in early summer, and the feast of tabernacles followed the time of the harvest. There was no need for a separate administrative calendar, because their God was the ruler of the nation sand He set the appointed times for their religious festivals to coordinate with their agricultural needs. The jews were never farmers, and neither are they Hebrews or Israelites. Evidently, the Roman Catholics had followed the jews, both in the method of their calendar reckoning, and also in many other ways.

So the Hebrew year must have begun at the Vernal, or Spring Equinox, and Passover was always 14 days from the day of the Equinox.

To support this assertion, we cannot turn to Egypt or Babylon, and that is appropriate, since both empires are analogies for Israel’s punishment in captivity. Rather, we shall cite an article from a website called Calendars and Festivals of the Ancient Near East. There, in an article titled New Year (Sumerian period), we read the following, in part, where it is speaking of an akitu festival, which was a new year festival that had also been called by that same name elsewhere in Mesopotamia, even if the calendars in diverse places and times had differed somewhat (I will replace some technical terms with ellipses):

The festival … akitu … was dedicated to the change of half-years and was celebrated twice: in spring and autumn. The word, from which the name of the festival came, still does not have an adequate translation; it denoted a construction outside the city, where the deity resided for some time before his solemn return to the city. At the end of the previous half-year, he left his city, then settled into an akitu and, finally, returned back, testifying with his appearance the beginning of a new half-year.

When and where did that noteworthy ritual appear? The first mention of it is in a text from Fara (26th century BCE), where in a poorly preserved line one can read “akitu Ekura”. It refers to the festival of the temple of Enlil in Nippur. Another mention of the akitu is repeatedly found in a text of the same time from Ur (from the local temple of Nanna), and, moreover, there one of the oldest months of Ur is designated by the name of the festival. From the documents of the III Dynasty of Ur we know, firstly, that there were two types of akitu: “akitu of harvest” … and “akitu of sowing” …. It was the name of the first and seventh months of the New Ur calendar, associated respectively with the spring and autumn equinoxes.

So we see that in Mesopotamian culture the new year was reckoned by the Spring equinox, the akitu of sowing. There we also see that the time of the harvest was aligned with the 7th month, just as the Feast of Tabernacles in the law is also in the 7th month. However this is also Ur III, and as we had demonstrated in our Genesis commentary, the third dynasty of Ur had ruled much of lower Mesopotamia nearly until the time when Abraham had been born. Abraham, who had evidently lived in Ur with his father for many years, would also have kept this same calendar. 

However Abraham, and Moses, who wrote down the law, did not worship the moon god Sin, so there was no religious compulsion to tie the appearance of the moon following the equinox to the beginning of a year. If there had been, then there also would have been a need for a separate administrative calendar, and the precise timing of the religious feasts according to first fruits and harvest would have been impossible, since those functions would have to have been coordinated on the separate administrative calendar. While the ancient Israelites celebrated the new moons, the calendar which regulated the timing of the Passover and the feast of First Fruits did not depend on the timing of the moons, and neither did the cycle of the sabbaths. The phrase “new moon” does not even appear in Scripture until the time of David, where it is first mentioned in 1 Chronicles chapter 23 (23:31) and nearly everywhere it appears, it is distinguished from the Sabbaths. However although there are laws requiring Israelites to make certain sacrifices at the “beginning of your months”, for example, in Numbers chapters 10 and 28, that does not mean that the annual calendar was connected to the lunar phases. We also cannot be certain as to what phase of the moon marked the beginning of months. If it mattered, we would expect it to have been described. Was it our new moon, which is a moon that cannot be seen? Perhaps not: Academics who read the inscriptions have often described the beginning of the Babylonian year to be marked by the first waxing crescent moon after the Spring equinox. But the Israelites did not worship the moon god Sin, and the law does not make any connection of the beginning of the year to the moon. 

So while the Scriptures inform us that the Passover was celebrated in the first month of the year, it does not inform us as to when the year had begun. However from this custom at Ur, where Abraham had spent his early years, and from the need to coordinate the feasts with the agricultural season and the early and latter rains, we see that the first of day of the year must have been on a fixed date, and we can reckon that date with the spring equinox. The date could not have shifted by as much as a month from year to year, so the cultic practice of tying the new year to the appearance of a new moon, or a waxing crescent, as the ancient Babylonians and other Mesopotamian cultures had done, is not a factor. 

Each year, the sabbath-week cycle began anew on that same first day of the year, so that the Passover was always on the second Sabbath after the new year. This is how it should be calculated every year, without exception. Because the Spring Equinox on our modern calendar occurs on March 20th each year, then the first day of the year begins with the conclusion of the day on which it is observed, and then the Passover should begin with the conclusion of April 2nd each year, the Passover day thereby being celebrated on April 3rd, the fourteenth day of the year.

So properly, the Hebrew sabbaths this year are on our Thursdays. Next year, from April 3rd, they will be on our Fridays. This solar calendar is not explicitly explained in any one place in Scripture in this manner, but it is indeed fully evident in the information that we are given, once we realize that the feasts must have been synchronized with the agricultural life of the ancient Hebrews. Otherwise, an agricultural society would not be able to function in accordance with the laws of Moses. If one had to wait an additional month to collect the first fruits, they may be withered in the fields, or if Passover came as early as it possibly could, they may not be quite ready to harvest. The Scripture often refers to summer fruits, but ripened fruits could not lay out in the field for weeks during the summer.

But in this manner, where the date of the first month is fixed to the equinox, then when the Pentecost or Feast of First Fruits arrived seven weeks after Passover, there would have been first fruits of the crops available to offer to Yahweh. If the date had swung by as much as a month one way or another, the first fruits would either not be ripe, or they would be either drying out or even rotting in the fields and furthermore, people would not be able to eat the summer fruits, as the first fruits are for God and they would have to wait until after the feast. So if you must celebrate Passover on the "right" date, it is quite apparent that the Passover festival should be celebrated each year beginning on April 3rd, beginning after dusk on the night of our April 2nd, as the beginnings of days seem to have been reckoned in Scripture.

On the other hand, today we no longer sacrifice to God according to the ancient Levitical requirement. Now Christ alone is our Passover. And if you cannot take off from work every Thursday, the Spirit of the law matters more than the letter of the law, and perhaps you can designate another day for your Sabbath. There have been various pretenders who have criticized our position on this, and they would rather cling to the myths of the jews, and to the Levitical laws of the Sinai covenant which Yahweh Himself had abolished. Many people also suppose that the Hebrews had a fixed 7-day week cycle which ran perpetually and lasted indefinitely across the years, but that is simply not true. It is obvious in the Gospel that the apostles and the Judaeans had separate days for Passover, and that they were evidently using different calendars.

This is evident in three of the Gospel accounts, in Matthew, Mark and Luke. So in Matthew chapter 26 we read: “17 Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee to eat the passover?” According to the law, the Passover marked the first day of unleavened bread, a feast which was appointed to last seven days. But when the disciples asked this of Christ, they were not purposely planning an early Passover celebration, and according to the Gospels, there was no reason to plan that because they did not even truly perceive that His arrest and crucifixion were imminent. Rather, they were sincerely seeking to celebrate the Passover on the day on which they had esteemed that the Passover should be celebrated, which was two days before the date upon which it was celebrated in Jerusalem that year. So Christ had evidently celebrated the Passover according to the understanding of His disciples, but He was slaughtered as a Passover Lamb on the day when it was falsely celebrated by His enemies. The Christian calendar certainly should not emulate the jewish calendar, but it should emulate the calendar of Abraham and Moses.

For the larger segment of society, a calendar only works when the entire society is in agreement. Most people cannot tell their employers that they need every Thursday off this year, or every Friday next year. So speaking of the Sabbaths, in his epistle to the Romans Paul of Tarsus had written that “5 One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Then he instructed the Colossians to “16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: 17 Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” Rituals do not please Yahweh, but rather, a loving care for our brethren and keeping the spirit of His law, found in His commandments, that pleases Yahweh, and that is all that Christ had required of His disciples.

Our friend Ken Lent's Passover calendars, whereby he explains the calendar in his own words, are current as of 2025-2026.

How Christmas is Pagan and Dating the Birth of Christ

We have spoken before about how Christians should have a certain toleration for their kin who celebrate this Christmas holiday, and how we should try to steer it towards a celebration of Christ, rather than the mercantile and pagan ritual which it has exclusively become. Today I still stand by that assessment, since we should be as merciful to our brethren as we expected Christ to have mercy towards us. But in truth, I am of the opinion that Christmas was conceived by the Church as a cover for the concealed celebration of pagan holidays which had formerly occupied approximately timed spaces on the Roman calendar. Among these are Saturnalia, where men left gifts on the hearths of their patrons, and also Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun which was officially celebrated in the later days of the Empire, from the time of the emperor Aurelian in the late 3rd century AD.

This date of sun worship was actually celebrated on December 25th on the old Roman calendar. What is amusing, however, is this: On the Julian calendar, Christmas was celebrated on December 25th. When the Gregorian calendar was instituted in 1582, for one year, in 1582, there were 10 days which were skipped on the calendar, and there was also a leap year designated to occur every fourth year, with some exceptions, where an additional day is inserted. However the Protestant British did not catch up to change this until September of 1752, by which time they had to skip 11 days in order to align their calendar with the Gregorian calendar in use by the nations which had remained in the Roman Church. So December 25th is no longer December 25th, and nobody can say that it is, and it is all an artificial construct of men. It is only December 25th so long as rulers agree with it, until perhaps one of them desires to change it once again.

So I am addressing this, because over the past few weeks I have been dragged into several arguments in social media, by traditional Orthodox or Catholic so-called Christians who believe that December 25th is indeed the actual birthday of Christ, and that it should be celebrated for that reason. Yet they also uphold all of the pagan rituals which have nothing to do with Christ, but which had been celebrated by pre-Christian pagans in association with winter solstice festivals. In the course of these arguments, I even learned two things which were new to me. The first is a better understanding of the origin of the Christmas tree. While never in my life had I researched the actual origin of the Christmas tree, beyond having been cognizant of its presence in late Medieval Germany, I never really had a need to do that research. So here I will discuss that from the perspective of this information with which I had been presented.

An ironic aspect of this is that someone attempting to uphold the validity of the Christmas tree as a Christian phenomenon is the one who had relayed to me this information concerning its origins. So once I read what he had to say on the subject, I came to the conclusion that it is not Christian at all, although I never thought it was, and that it is actually contrary to Christ, at least in some theological aspects which we shall now discuss.

The second is the manner by which the Roman Catholic Church had come to justify its claim that the 25th of December was the day upon which Christ was born, which is something that we should not accept, because it is not true. So we shall discuss that first. This date is based on something called “integral age” theory. This theory actually comes from the jews, and examples of it are found in the Talmud, in passages such as Kiddushin 38a. There we read, in part:

It is taught in another baraita: Moses died on the seventh of Adar, and he was likewise born on the seventh of Adar. From where is it derived that Moses died on the seventh of Adar? As it is stated: “So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there” (Deuteronomy 34:5), and it is written: “And the children of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days” (Deuteronomy 34:8). And it is written: “Now it came to pass after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord” (Joshua 1:1), and it is written: “Moses, My servant, is dead; now arise, cross this Jordan” (Joshua 1:2).

So to explain this, at least in part, I am going to read a portion of an article from the website of the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, because I know that this one article is correct in this particular regard, and I do not want anyone to think that I am making this up. So while we will have to overlook the author’s validation of the trinity and a few other errors, I also really don’t want to have to pour through the countless jewish sources, but I would if I had to. This article is titled ‘Every 25th of December’: The Dating of Christmas, and we will only read the portion most relevant to our assertion here:

When I [the article was written by Dr. Rex Butler] lecture on early Christian worship in my church history classes, I teach that the liturgical celebration of Christmas Day on December 25 was instituted in Rome sometime before the year 336 A.D. Many of my students have heard from skeptics that December 25 was chosen specifically to supersede the pagan celebration of the nativity of the Sol Invinctus, the Unconquerable Sun. I am glad to correct that idea for them and for others who have listened to criticism that early Christians simply borrowed their holidays from pagans. 

In the first century of the church, Christians focused more on the death and resurrection of Christ rather than his birth. In fact, the early church father Origen criticized the celebration of birthdays as a pagan ritual. Focusing on Christ’s death, therefore, Christians in the East calculated April 6 as the date of Christ’s death, but Christians in the West chose March 25.

Here is where the unusual idea of “Integral Age” held by early Christians comes into play. First-century Judaism maintained that the great prophets of Israel died on the same day of their conception. Early Christians then applied this notion to Jesus so that the date of Christ’s death also was the date of his conception. Therefore, according to the calculations of Western Christians, if Christ’s conception occurred on March 25, then nine months later, on December 25, he was born. Similarly in the East, Christ’s birthdate was reckoned as January 6.

To this day, March 25 is commemorated in the Christian Calendar as the Feast of the Annunciation. On this day, the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary the good news that she would conceive and give birth to the holy one, the Son of God (Luke 1:30-35).

The focus of January 6 was shifted to the Feast of Epiphany, associated in the West with the visit of the Magi and in the East with Christ’s baptism. In fact, in the East, Epiphany is a holy day second only to Easter, for this day marks the presentation of the Incarnate Christ, the approval of the Voice of God, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and consequently, the revelation of the Trinity.

As a digression, the only birthday celebrated in Scripture was that of the Edomite Herod Antipas, who was the tetrarch of Galilee at the time of the ministry of Christ, so Origen had grounds for his criticism.

While there are a lot of doctrinal errors here, not all of which are necessarily accepted by the author of that article, we shall only argue with two points in this statement. The first is the idea that there is some reason to believe that the so-called Annunciation, which is the day upon which the angel of Yahweh announced to Mary that she would have a child, had actually occurred on March 25th. That is also mere conjecture. The second is the motivation for imagining that the so-called Annunciation had taken place on March 25th. It is certainly possible, since even the author admits that “Christians chose March 25”, that the date was chosen purposely, so as to justify a reason that the date of the birth of Christ could be celebrated on December 25th. The author seems not to have thought this through. As we proceed we shall provide citations from another source which establish the connection of the imagined date of the Annunciation to the imagined date of the Crucifixion in certain of the early so-called “Church Fathers”.

But as for his explanation of the “Integral Age” theory, we see that he is in agreement with its jewish origins, just as it is found in the passage which we have read from the Talmud. This “Integral Age” theory may have been an idea “held by early Christians”, as he also said, but that is evidently only because those early Christians had turned to jews for an understanding of Scripture, something which Scripture itself would admonish them for doing. As Paul had explained in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Moses cannot be understood without Christ. There is no trace in any of the words of the apostles concerning the dates of the birth, conception or Crucifixion of Christ, or of the jewish “integral age” scheme, which is a ridiculous innovation.

While the modern Roman Catholic Church has abandoned the full implementation of the “integral age theory” in relation to the life of Christ, that is also apparent in early “Church Fathers”. As we have seen from the Talmud, the theory is that the prophets of Yahweh died on the same day that they were born. Yet the Roman Catholics had counted from the supposed date of conception to begin the reckoning of the “integral age” of Christ, whereas some of the “Church Fathers” had indeed carried that through to their reckoning of the time of His death on the cross. So the following is from another article found at the website of one Roger Pearse, who is also the founder of the Tertullian Project website. The article is titled as a question: March 25 – the date of the annunciation, the crucifixion, and the origin of December 25 as the date of Christmas? We are using Pearse only for his sources, but he is obviously unaware of the jewish origin of the assertions, in the so-called “integral age” theory. 

So he wrote:

Today is March 25, Lady Day. According to various online sources, it is celebrated as the day that the angel Gabriel announced the incarnation to the virgin Mary, the Annunciation. This is also the day of Jesus’ conception. I have read that some ancient sources also considered it to be the day of Jesus’ crucifixion, in line with an ancient belief that a prophet came into the world and left it on the same date. Finally there is the idea that the date of Christmas, 25 December, probably came about because it was 9 months after the conception of Jesus.

There’s a lot in that to verify. But I thought that I would post the ancient testimonies that give 25 March as the day of the crucifixion. For this sounds odd to us. We know that Easter is the day of the resurrection, the third day after the crucifixion; but Easter moves on the lunar calendar. So where does 25 March come from?

Here we must note that Pearse is also confused with the jewish calendar which included the moon in the reckoning of the new year, after the manner of the pagans of ancient Mesopotamia. However he found three witnesses among the “Church Fathers” who believed the jewish “integral age” theory in relation to the life of Christ, so we shall continue [retaining his links to the source material]:

There is an obvious witness, which no doubt influenced all subsequent writers – St Augustine, De Trinitate book 4, chapter 5:

He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since.  But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.  (NPNF translation here.)

This was written early in the 5th century. He repeats this claim in the City of God, book 18, chapter 54 (here):

Now Christ died when the Gemini were consuls, on the eighth day before the kalends of April. He rose the third day, as the apostles have proved by the evidence of their own senses.

In that statement it is evident that Augustine, who lived until about 430 AD, had still understood the rather complex Roman calendar, and that he was still a pagan in many ways, making reference to the stars of the constellation Gemini as “consuls”. Now continuing with Pearse:

But where did he get this idea from, that the crucifixion was on the 8th day before the kalends of April, March 25?

There is a lunar calendar on the statue of Hippolytus in the Vatican Library. [source]  Apparently a note within this indicates the “Passion of Christ” was on Friday March 25.

Tertullian, Adversus Judaeos 8:18: (English)

[18] Quae passio Christi [huius exterminium] intra tempora LXX ebdomadarum perfecta est sub Tiberio Caesare, consulibus Rubellio Gemino et Rufio Gemino mense Martio temporibus paschae, die octavo Kalendarum Aprilium, die primo azymorum quo agnum occiderunt ad vesperam, sicut a Moyse fuerat praeceptum.

And the suffering of this “extermination” was perfected within the times of the lxx hebdomads, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April, on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses.

A hebdomad is merely a period of seven days. In this passage from the writings of Tertullian, the mention of the “seventy hebdomads” is seventy weeks in modern language, and it is a reference to the seventy weeks prophecy of Daniel chapter 9. So Tertullian interpreted that prophecy in the same manner in which we would interpret it, which is creditable. However Tertullian must have also been infected by the interpretations and innovations of the jews and their “integral year” theory, esteeming that Christ had been crucified on March 25th, exactly a full year from the date upon which the Roman Church claims that Christ had been conceived. While Pearse was evidently not aware of this, there is no doubt that the dates claimed by the Roman Church for the conception and birth of Christ, as well as early opinions of these “Church Fathers” concerning the date of the Crucifixion of Christ were all an artificial construction based on the incredible beliefs of Talmudic judaism. But none of this is grounded in Scripture.

Furthermore Augustine, who had also professed all of this, is usually considered by Roman Catholics to be one of the most important and influential of the “Church Fathers”. The Nashville Catholic website calls him The Great Theologian, Doctor of Grace. A decidedly non-denominational website called Reasons to Believe calls him The Last and Greatest Church Father. We should see him as a half-baked pagan who fell into the trap of following the same jews who hate Christ, and who would crucify Him repeatedly, if they ever had the opportunities. 

As for the actual birth of Christ: without getting into the prophetic reasons in Scripture as to why this is true, it is apparent in the circumstances of the birth of Christ found in the Gospel accounts, that Christ must have been born at a time of year which was somewhat warmer than late December. In the Gospels, it is described that He was born and laid in a manger, and remained there until Joseph could secure a house. The Greek word translated as manger is φάτνη, which describes a feeding trough and is in itself symbolic of His later ministry and purpose. Such feeding troughs were typically outdoors, or in very crude shelters that were not well protected from the weather. In Jerusalem in late December, the temperatures are typically in the low 40’s Fahrenheit throughout the night, and in the mid 50’s on sunny afternoons. Furthermore, December and January have relatively high rainfall compared to other months of the year, so it would be a cold and wet experience if the child were born at that time. January is typically the windiest time of year, and we do not know exactly how long it took Joseph to secure a house. 

As for weather, what is cold for a man or woman is actually quite relative. Northern Americans or northern Europeans reading this may not think that these temperatures are so cold. But here in Florida, it is winter, since people are not typically acclimated to the cold when they live in an area which usually has a very warm climate even in winter. So it is highly unlikely for this reason alone, that Christ was born in late December, or that the shepherds were still in the fields at that time. In the first century, most people would not even travel in winter, which is evident for sea travel in Acts chapter 27 (27:12) and for travel by land in several places in Paul’s epistles, in 1 Corinthians chapter 16 (16:6), 2 Timothy chapter 4 (4:21) and Titus chapter 3 (3:12). There it is evident that Paul, who customarily travelled on foot, did not travel in winter, but had instead found places where he could settle down for the winter.

So imagine a newborn baby being exposed to the elements in late December, to the cold, wind and rain. It should be known to anyone who has had children that the body temperatures of a newborn infant are sometimes difficult to stabilize, and that such infants must be kept warm. Of course we may say that “God can do anything”, but He came into this life as a man, to live the experience and trials of men as Paul had explained in Hebrews chapter 2.

So we would assert that all of the claims of December 25th for the birth of Christ were artificially contrived so that the formerly pagan Roman priests could continue their festivals of Sol Invictus and Saturnalia by painting their pagan practices with the facade of Christianity. Furthermore, it must have been rather easy for them to sell this to the Germanic and Celtic tribes, some of whom were Christians before the Romans, because it also corresponds to the ancient pagan Yule celebration, or the Solstice feasts of the Druids, or several other more general European winter solstice festivals or customs.

The Yule log symbolized protection in winter until the return of the sun. According to various sources, pagan Europeans celebrating Yule brought evergreen branches into their homes and hung them to remind them of the coming Spring, as well as for protection or good fortune. They also had a feast of wild boar on the day of the solstice called Sónargöltr, which survives in the modern tradition of the Christmas ham. 

During Saturnalia, the Romans not only brought gifts to the homes of their patrons and set them by the hearth, they also brought evergreen boughs or wreaths into their homes, which were imagined to symbolize renewal and a hope for life. The holiday was also a time of feasting and drinking, which modern Christians seem to do from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day, not only at home, but at office parties and other venues. During the festival the Romans also wore costumes, temporarily reversed roles with their servants to symbolize equality and liberty, and even gambled and abandoned other laws for the sake of revelry. For Sol Invictus, the Romans held games, and celebrated light over darkness, which is evident in modern holiday football games and Christmas lighting.

The Celtic Druids made use of evergreen boughs for similar reasons, and the mistletoe tradition originated from them, as it was described by Pliny the Elder. Pliny also described how the mistletoe was believed to heal and to endow fertility, and how it was harvested ritually with a golden sickle. Mistletoe was a ceremonial plant used in winter solstice celebrations elsewhere in pagan Europe. Rather strangely, mistletoe, which is an evergreen, is also a plant which is both parasitic to trees and bears fruit which is poisonous if ingested by men and animals, but not to birds.

These are only some of the pagan practices or rituals which are all now associated with Christmas, so the pagan nature of Christmas is undeniable. But the Christmas tree itself, while it is certainly a successor to the evergreen rituals, has an even more wayward origin. The custom of bringing an entire tree into the house and decorating it for Christmas apparently originated from medieval Germany in the late 12th century in what is called the Paradiespiel, or Paradise Play. Decorated with red or silver glass balls which represented apples, such evergreen trees were used in this fashion to represent the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the minds of those medieval Christians.

While apologists claim that the Paradise Plays taught sin and redemption through Christ, by itself the tree represents the reason for the fall of Adam, from a very naive understanding of the causes of his fall. While the trees were also decorated with white wafers which are claimed to have represented the Roman Catholic Eucharist, the Eucharist wafers themselves may be considered a heresy, and even if this meaning was evident in medieval Germany, it is completely lost on the modern world, where in modern times the white wafers are replaced with meaningless representations of snowflakes.

In any event, assigning these meanings to the same ancient pagan practice of bringing evergreen boughs into the house for the winter solstice festivals is only a folding of ancient pagan practices into what then becomes a corrupted view of Christianity. It is a merging of pagan practices with various ideas which may be found in Christianity, but it is not Christian.

For its connection to all of these pagan feasts, rituals and customs, the Puritans outlawed both Christmas and Christmas trees in England from 1644 through 1660, when the monarchy was restored. Puritans in Massachusetts outlawed Christmas from 1659 through 1681. Over the centuries, other Christian sects have also been averse to celebrating Christmas. Like the Baptists, the Puritans are not wrong about everything.

We often cite Jeremiah chapter 10 in relation to this predicament, and now we shall do that here:

1 Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. 5 They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.

The adherents to the Roman Catholic or Orthodox churches whom we encounter usually protest the association of this passage to their relatively new tradition of the Christmas tree, but the validity of the association cannot be disputed, and the Christmas tree was only another manifestation of the evergreen boughs which pagans in Rome and the rest of Europe had brought into their homes to be reminded of the return of the sun, or for good fortune. The children of Israel had become pagan, and had been worshipping the golden calves of Baal for several centuries even before the time of the Assyrian captivities. Then, after centuries of migrations into Europe, they are found bringing evergreen boughs into their homes and ascribing to them attributes which Christians should only ascribe to Christ. 

Here, in addition to the substance of the three topics I have discussed, I also hope to have illustrated the folly of following jewish interpretations of Scripture, not only in the dating of the birth of Christ and His conception, but also in the general reckoning of the Hebrew calendar, and even in the way jews read certain rather innocuous passages of Scripture, namely Proverbs 24:6, and twist them to fit their own wicked agenda. That portion of our conversation this evening should also illustrate the fact that Christians too often take jewish lies for granted and accept them as truths, just as Tertullian, Hippolytus and Augustine had evidently taken the jewish folly of the “integral age” theory for granted.

In 2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul explained that Moses could not be understood unless one has Christ. We would take that a step further and make the assertion that ever since those warnings by Paul, whenever Christians turn to jews for any understanding of Scripture, they only get jewed, they get the lies they deserve for disrespecting Christ with the assumption that jews know His Word, when actually, they are nothing but devils.