Letter to the editor: The importance of Dec. 25

Christmas has been hijacked from a Christian holy day to a day of commercial self-gratification, and few people seem to care. When examining the roots of Christmas, one finds that by the fourth century, the Christian church had established itself as the official faith of the Roman Empire and had as one of its objectives the elimination of paganism.

To accomplish this the church adopted many pagan holidays and beliefs and rebranded them as Christian holy days. In essence they absorbed the pagan masses while simultaneously growing their numbers. One such rebranding took place in the late 330s AD when Pope Julius 1 declared, “December 25th, Christ born in Bethlehem, Judea.” Dec. 25 was chosen because many pagan gods were supposedly born on that day. It only made sense to substitute Christ in place of the pagan gods’ birthdays, and while the church didn’t know it, they were actually incorporating a day when the Immaculate Conception took place.

A quick internet search shows that human life begins at conception, not birth, and a normal human pregnancy is approximately 280 days.

Many scholars debate the year Jesus Christ was born but agree that it was in the fall. It is my opinion, when facts and dates are aligned with Holy Scripture, that Christ was born Sept. 29, 2 B.C., which was, according to God’s holy calendar, the Feast of Trumpets, a time to repent, a new beginning, a new year. In light of Christ’s human life beginning at conception I believe Christmas, Dec. 25, is a much more important date than most Christian churches realize.

Joseph Krill

Murrysville