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Replying to post 44 by nightshadetwine]
Howdy Nightshade, and welcome to the forum
nightshadetwine wrote:
Mithrae wrote:
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Replying to post 41 by Zzyzx]
While there is little or no clear attestation to the specific date of December 25th (a few days after the solstice) prior to both Christian and then Roman use in the 3rd century CE, midwinter and solstice celebrations are more or less culturally universal, for fairly obvious reasons. So saying that all of those cultures "stole" the idea off another would obviously be absurd, while saying that only Christians stole it would be special pleading.
There seems to be a pre-Christian tradition of the sun being born/reborn on the 25th of December or around the time of the winter solstice. . . .
The Antiochus calendar says the sun is born on December 25th. Antiochus lived sometime around the end of the 1st century CE to the beginning of the 2nd century CE.
Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World: Parapegmata and Related Texts in Classical and Near-Eastern Societies(Cambridge University Press, 2007), Daryn Lehoux
Month of December...
22: Winter Solstice.
23: Procyon sets in the morning.
25: The birth of the sun, light increases
A Brief History of Ancient Astrology(Wiley, 2008), Roger Beck
Speaking of the differences in age of the representation of various gods, the fourth-century (ce) polymath Macrobius said that these all ‘‘relate to the Sun, who is made to appear very small at the winter solstice’’ (Saturnalia 1.18.10). ‘‘In this form,’’ he continues, ‘‘the Egyptians bring him forth from the shrine on the set date to appear like a tiny infant on the shortest day of the year.’’ By the same metaphorical logic, the Calendar of Antiochus of Athens named December 25 the ‘‘Sun’s birthday,’’ with the notation ‘‘light increases.’
That's certainly possible, but not certain. If the winter solstice were on the 22nd, by definition the days are getting longer from the 23rd onward; so why would a single author mark the shortest, darkest day of the year on the 22nd and then "light increases" on the 25th? While not touching on that point specifically, Roger Pearse notes the distinct possibility of later changes made to extant copies of Antiochus' work, particularly in the 4th-6th centuries CE; a later copyist's notation about the "birth of the sun" on December 25th would certainly make sense in that timeframe, after the establishment of the Sol Invictus festival.
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/201 ... anslation/
- Daryn Lehoux, “Astronomy, weather, and calendars in the ancient world: parapegmata and related texts in classical and Near Eastern societies�, CUP, 2007. . . .
Lehoux catalogues these sort of texts, and describes each, and then — I nearly missed this — gives the text and translates them. The calendar of Antiochus is described on p.162, and is item A.x in Lehoux’s classification. Here is what he says.
- " A.x. The Antiochus parapegma [27] is a short Greek parapegma that correlates stellar phases with changes in the weather and occasionally with causal statements such as ‘July 14: The whole of Orion rises at the same time as the sun; it causes (poiei=) rain and wind.’ All dates are in what I call the modified Julian calendar (i.e., dates are given as 1 July, 2 July, etc. rather than by the traditional method of counting down to the Kalends, Nones and Ides), which system seems to have begun to be used in the fourth century ad, rather than the sixth, as Mommsen thought.[28]
27. Extant in six manuscripts, of which the earliest is fourteenth-century, and the latest is seventeenth. Edition: Boll, 1910a.
28. For this argument see Ferrua, 1985."
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/201 ... anslation/
- I’ve been reading a 1977 article by David Pingree entitled Antiochus and Rhetorius. It highlights some of the peculiar features of the transmission of technical works. Such works are peculiarly liable to acquire additions, subtractions, and revisions. There is a simple reason for this. You go to Tacitus to read about the history of the first century. But you go to Antiochus of Athens because you want to draw up a horoscope. And if you find Antiochus’ work is a bit unsatisfactory in some respect, you’re quite liable to write notes in the margin of your copy, or to produce a shortened version of the useful bits, or whatever. You don’t care so much about Antiochus. It’s what he has to say that matters. You’re only interested in whether the book helps you do that horoscope or not. . . .
- " The object of this paper is to eliminate the confusion that has been created regarding Antiochus and Rhetorius, and to establish a program for editing Rhetorius that may seem unusual to a classicist, but that is necessary in the editing of Greek astrological texts.
" The manuscripts cannot be relied on to preserve the original compositions of ancient authors; Ptolemy’s Apotelesmatika is virtually the only such text that seems to have survived relatively unscathed by the “improvements� of scribes, though the variant readings of Hephaestio of Thebes and of “Proclus� indicate that even its text is not completely pure. It is of the utmost importance for understanding the history of the transmission of the texts and the history of Byzantine scholarship in astrology that the various epitomes of each work be carefully distinguished and separately edited."
So I don't think that the Antiochus calendar alone would be sufficient to establish any significance to the date of December 25th specifically prior to Christian usage.
nightshadetwine wrote:
Mark J. Smith, “P. Carlsberg 462: A Fragmentary Account of a Rebellion Against the Sun of God,�
A Miscellany of Demotic Texts and Studies(Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000)
According to one Egyptian tradition, the solar deity was born at the winter solstice. Plutarch identifies that day as the one on which Isis gave birth to Harpocrates[Horus].
The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt(Thames & Hudson, 2003), Richard H. Wilkinson
Furthermore, at the time of the winter solstice the sun would have risen in the area of the [sky]goddess's figure--her pudendum--from which it would be imagined to be born, just as nine months earlier, at the spring equinox, the sun would have set in the positions of the goddess's head--suggesting it was being swallowed.
The solstice, as we've just seen from Antiochus, occurred on December 22nd not the 25th. Solstice celebrations of any variety are hardly surprising and obviously don't imply any pagan influence on the date of Christmas. But it's also worth noting that the deity under discussion here - Harpocrates or 'Horus' - is a
very specific iteration and interpretation of the many guises under which Horus was seen throughout thousands of years of Egyptian history. There was probably quite a lot of diversity in worship and depictions of Horus even within the imperial Roman period alone, for that matter! The name Horus apparently means 'falcon,' so there's a discernible but hardly obvious series of steps from falcon > sky god > god whose eye is the sun > solar deity born at the solstice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus
- Horus or Her, Heru, Hor in Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably god of kingship and the sky. He was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists.[2]
nightshadetwine wrote:
The sun god Horus's birth was celebrated on December 25th.
Isis Regina--Zeus Sarapis(Walter de Gruyter, 2001), Reinhold Merkelbach
Then the nocturnal Osiris consecration takes place, during the night of the 24th to the 25th of December. We know from Epiphanios that the Isis worshipers celebrated a big festival on December 25, the Kikellia. In the context of a discussion of the day of the birth of Christ, he speaks of the day of the winter solstice and the increase of the light and says the Hellenes (= the Gentiles) celebrate this day on the eighth day before the calends of January (= December 25), on the day known to the Romans as Saturnalia, to the Agyptians, Kronia, in Alexandria, Kikellia. The Kikellia occurs only once in the texts known to us, in the Greek version of the Kanoposdekretes, which was written on the 29th of Choiach in 238 BC... Since the 29th Choiach fell on the 25th of December in the Alexandrian calendar of the imperial period, there is little doubt that the imperial age was identical with the Ptolemaic festival. In Ptolemaic times, the time of Kikellia was calculated after the Egyptian year of conversion, which lost one day every 4 years. So this Isis festival fell in the year 238 on the 17th of February of the Julian year. In the year 30 BC when Augustus conquered Egypt, the 29th Choiach fell on the 25th of December. Augustus had the Egyptian year fixed by adding a leap day every 4 years. The Kikellia were celebrated on December 25th.
Medieval Nubia: A Social and Economic History(OUP USA, 2012), Giovanni R. Ruffini
Modern scholars have suggested that the role of the Choiak festival in "popular consciousness" survived in the liturgical practice of the Coptic Church, which intensifies at the end of Choiak with the celebration of Christmas. Some aspects of modern Coptic religious festivals are believed to be direct continuations of ancient Egyptian Osirian rites from the month of Choiak. Chronologically, the assimilation of the Choiak festival with Christmas would have been easy: Celebration of Osiris's victory over death on 30 Choiak fell shortly after the ultimate date for Christmas, December 25 or 28 or 29 Choiak, and celebration of the Choiak festival continued at Philae in southern Egypt into the fourth and fifth centuries. December 25 proper was the date of the Kikellia, the celebration of the birth of Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris. The Kikellia is frequently attested in the third and early fourth centuries and is documented as late as the writings of Epiphanios of Salamis at the end of the fourth century.
This is the most fascinating part of your post, and I'm glad you shared it!

I'm not sure whether it convincingly shows a pre-Christian veneration of December 25th, however. For example there's some pretty worrying discrepancies in the comments I've highlighted in green:
- Eight days before the calends of January would seem to be December 24th, not 25th
-
Saturnalia at the time went from December 17th through 23rd
-
Kronia (the feast of Chronus, Greek equivalent to Saturn and with some similarities in celebration) was held in late July/early August!
With apparent imprecisions such as this, how can we be sure that Epiphanius in a discussion of the birth of Christ was not approximating (perhaps even moreso) in the case of 'Kikellia' also?
The Kanoposdekretes (
Canopus Decree) is obviously pre-Christian, but from a quick look doesn't seem to give us a lot to go on. It says that "
The entry of Osiris in the holy barque takes place here yearly at the defined time, at the temple at Akar bamara in die month Choiak 29th day" and "
when are solemnized the days of Kaaubek back in the month Choiak before the procession of Osiris" (emphasis mine).
Choiak 29th does indeed seem to correspond with December 25th after Augustus' rule: But assuming that S. Birch is correct in identifying Ptolemaic Kaaubek as a precursor to the Kikellia festival documented five centuries later, this would seem to imply that imperial-era Kikellia lasted multiple days ending by December 24th (if not earlier).
But more importantly, from some quick googling of the Khoiak festivals I can't see any clear reference to the birth of Horus at all.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities ... ival-drama
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/di ... hoiak.html
https://www.ancient.eu/article/1032/fes ... ent-egypt/
Rather, the festival seems to have had a largely agricultural rather than solar significance for virtually all of Egypt's history. And while it's unclear whether or not a loose seasonal alignment was maintained throughout the Old, Middle and New kingdoms through use of intercalary months (apparently there's little or no evidence for their
systematic use, at least, though it's hard to imagine they could have failed to do so), it seems clear that any such seasonal alignment was lost by the Greek period (perhaps diminished in significance by that stage?). As your quote suggests and some other sources I've seen confirmed, in 238 BCE the end of Khoiak occurred in February: So not only is there little evidence for a 'birth of Horus' aspect to earlier Khoiak festivals, but given the solstice association made by later writers it actually seems quite improbable that such an element existed in pre-Roman Khoiak celebrations.
Your second quote notes that "
The Kikellia is frequently attested in the third and early fourth centuries and is documented as late as the writings of Epiphanios of Salamis at the end of the fourth century." So the only clear(?) reference prior to the 3rd century CE seems to be the comment in the Canopus Decree about 'Kaaubek,' which provides no real details as to the festival's content/meaning and seems to imply a date
before Khoiak 29th.
In short, from the material you've provided and my own subsequent research, it seems that all I can conclude with confidence is that
sometime between 30BCE and 300CE - on a now-fixed calendar - some people in Egypt began celebrating the birth of Horus as part of 'Kikellia' near the end of Khoiak (the last day of which corresponded to Dec. 26th), causing writers such as Epiphanius to loosely associate the festival with Saturnalia (Dec. 17th to 23rd), the solstice (Dec. 22nd) and Christmas (Dec. 25th). Apparently Plutarch identifies the 'birth of Harpocrates' on the solstice specifically, which would considerably undermine the idea of influence on Christmas.
Fascinating topic either way

Thanks for the opportunity to learn, and looking forward to your reply.