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> These lyrics always bothered me for their apparent vacuousness. Christ was born on Christmas Day – well, yeah. Christmas just is the day that Christ was born,

> These lyrics always bothered me for their apparent vacuousness. Christ was born on Christmas Day – well, yeah. Christmas just is the day that Christ was born, right? Isn’t the reason that the church makes such a big deal of repeating this whole “Christmas day is when Jesus was born” and “Jesus was born on Christmas Day” due to exactly the point that it wasn’t the day he was born. The church moved the celebration to better match the pagan celebrations, so they needed to push this lie a lot to get people on board with the fact that they moved the birthday to make the sales pitch for Christianity better match the pagan traditions. You would have though that the god of all existence could have timed the birth of his divine child a bit better, but I guess we all know that it’s easy to sometimes miss deadlines and be off by a month or so. Also the biology of virgin pregnancies, though unexplored scientifically likely followed the biology of regular pregnancies, so there might be a bit of uncertainty on the exact time of arrival even if god did impregnate Mary with the intention that she’d give birth around what is today Christmas Day.

bazoom42 4y ago
The church didn’t move the celebration as such, since nobody knew when Jesus was born in the first place. The bible does not give any date (not even a year). We dont really know how the church came up with december 25. The theory it was selected to coincide with a pagan holiday is just speculation. Probably not a coincidence it is so close to winter solstice, but there is no evidence.
082349872349872 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis suggests virgin pregnancies have been explored scientifically (but a quick skim shows no indication of any noted difference in gestation) Anyone who has ever wondered what the 'H.' stands for should consider: Haploid.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Even if virgin pregnancies we're possible, where would Jesus' Y chromosome come from?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chordalkeyboard 4y ago
    cosmic ray induced mutation
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  Another relevant scientific source is [1], which I highly recommend >Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy (table 1⇓). Perceived importance of religion was associated with virginity but not with virgin pregnancy. The prevalence of abstinence pledges was 15.5%. The virgins who reported pregnancies were more likely to have pledged chastity (30.5%) than the non-virgins who reported pregnancies (15.0%, P=0.01) or the other virgins (21.2%, P=0.007). [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102 https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102
gumby 4y ago
Should have set easter at the winter solstice, as that's the traditional spot for rebirth festival (think Sol Invictus) and leave the regular birth in the spring with all the other fertility festivals. I don't know what they were thinking, but we're stuck with it now, unless someone wants to engineer another fork over this issue.

bazoom42 4y ago

The church didn’t move the celebration as such, since nobody knew when Jesus was born in the first place. The bible does not give any date (not even a year). We dont really know how the church came up with december 25. The theory it was selected to coincide with a pagan holiday is just speculation. Probably not a coincidence it is so close to winter solstice, but there is no evidence.

082349872349872 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis suggests virgin pregnancies have been explored scientifically (but a quick skim shows no indication of any noted difference in gestation) Anyone who has ever wondered what the 'H.' stands for should consider: Haploid.

googlryas 4y ago
Even if virgin pregnancies we're possible, where would Jesus' Y chromosome come from?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chordalkeyboard 4y ago
  cosmic ray induced mutation
CrazyStat 4y ago
Another relevant scientific source is [1], which I highly recommend >Of 7870 eligible women, 5340 reported a pregnancy, of whom 45 (0.8% of pregnant women) reported a virgin pregnancy (table 1⇓). Perceived importance of religion was associated with virginity but not with virgin pregnancy. The prevalence of abstinence pledges was 15.5%. The virgins who reported pregnancies were more likely to have pledged chastity (30.5%) than the non-virgins who reported pregnancies (15.0%, P=0.01) or the other virgins (21.2%, P=0.007). [1] https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102 https://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7102

gumby 4y ago

Should have set easter at the winter solstice, as that's the traditional spot for rebirth festival (think Sol Invictus) and leave the regular birth in the spring with all the other fertility festivals. I don't know what they were thinking, but we're stuck with it now, unless someone wants to engineer another fork over this issue.