Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?

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Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?
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The date of Christmas was not determined by Church Fathers by copying the date of a pagan Roman winter solstice festival. Instead, the date was calculated from the Jewish calendar using the date of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, September 22nd, 6 BC, when Gabriel appeared to Zecharias in the Temple according to Luke 1:5. The conception of John occurred “immediately after that” when Zecharias returned home to Elizabeth to the hill country of Judea, by calculation on September 24th, 6 BC.

The conception of Jesus was calculated to have occurred when Elizabeth was “in her sixth month” (Luke 1:26,36) on March 25th, 5 BC, which was also the first day of Passover in that year. John’s birth was June 24th, 5 BC, followed by Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem on December 25th, which was also the first day of Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, in that year. The Church Father, Hippolytus of Rome, in his work Chronicon, saw that each date had allegorical significance.

So why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?

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Thanksgiving and the Purpose of History

History as Truth

If it is possible in a courtroom to judge a defendant guilty or innocent, or in a laboratory to discover the relationship between physical properties and phenomena, it must be possible to know the truth about history.

The word “history,” according to Webster, is related to the Greek historia, “a learning by inquiry.” The word “skeptic” also comes from the Greek skeptesthai, meaning to examine or consider. A true skeptic is a “considerer” who will not pass judgment before the evidence has been thoughtfully examined.

In a world of sunshine and rain and natural beauty beyond measure, who is so cynical as to refuse to examine available evidence of the work of a Creator God in the history of man? For the open minded scholar the possibility of God’s presence in history is not unthinkable.

Page Smith points out in his book, History and Historians, that the Jews discovered history. For them chronology was transcended by the relation of a people with their God. The meaning, purpose and direction of history was found in God’s will and their Messianic expectation.

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Forerunner.com Relaunch

Update: Subscribe via Followit.com.

If you are subscribed to Forerunner.com via Feedburner, you might know that Google ended this service last summer. We are using the Feedburner replacement called Followit.com. There are additional features you can now use that didn’t exist on Feedburner. You can now define filters and more delivery channels. You can receive your news via Telegram, News Page and many others. If you have not subscribed to The Forerunner, the link is Followit.com.

If you have not seen the website recently, take a look at the updated design of Forerunner.com.

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DVD

Freedom

The Model of Christian Liberty. This DVD includes “Dawn’s Early Light: A Brief History of America’s Christian Foundations” and bonus features.

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