[thechat] Gee, that time again...

Jonathon Isaac Swiderski jswiders at cs.oberlin.edu
Fri Dec 6 00:50:00 CST 2002


Today, the cows mooved Lauri Vain to write:

> A way bit out of the topic -- the Catholic Church "made" Christmas and
> set it to the 25th of December to leave a pagan holiday (celebrated all
> over Europe), which was very near to that date, into the shadow. Anybody
> knows what that holiday was about -- just curious (the church apparently
> made a good marketing decision).

The holiday was Saturnalia, organised round the Solstice (21 Dec., give or
take, on the modern calendar).  Pretty much your basic pagan party, this
one celebrated the death of the old year and the birth of the next.

--
Jonathon Isaac Swiderski \\ dangercat-20 at dangercat.net
cs.oberlin.edu/~jswiders  \\  www.dangercat.net/?id=mt

Alcohol and Calculus do not mix.
                               Never drink and derive.




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