In the deepest darkness

 Tim Woodcock writes: I am just (re-)reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s book The First Christmas, which seeks to chip away at the sentimentality that surrounds Christmas and to rediscover the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke primarily as stories.

Encountering this passage about why December 25 is the date on the calendar has become Christmas Day, I thought it would be worth sharing. Borg and Crossan write:

Nobody knows the day, the month, or the season of the year of Jesus’s birth. The date of December 25 was not decided upon until the middle of the 300s. Before then Christians celebrated his birth at different times – including March, April, May and November. But around the year 350 Pope Julius in Rome declared December 25 as the date, thereby integrating it with a Roman winter solstice festival celebrating the “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.”

… To say the obvious, light in the darkness is central to the Christian celebration of Christmas. Jesus is born in the deepest darkness – in the middle of the night at the winter solstice. This is not historical time, not a historical fact about the date of Jesus’s birth, but parabolic time, metaphorical time, sacred time, symbolic time. The symbolism is perfect.