This chapter of Christ in Egypt contains the following sections.
Overview
Ancient and Modern Voices
Hieroglyphic Evidence
Calendrical Considerations
Monumental Alignments
Clockworks
Winter Solstice Festivals
Festivals of Osiris
Dual Birthdays of Horus
Festival of Ptah
Feast of Sokar
Festivals of Isis
Christian Sun Worship?
I will go through these sections one by one, starting in this post with the overview. D.M. Murdock kindly drew attention to this chapter in her post in the Christ in Egypt: Introduction thread.
This thread is devoted to discussion of all the data regarding December 25th, and analysis of its implications for Christian origins.D.M. Murdock wrote:Hi everyone!
I wanted to stop by to say that I appreciate you discussing my book here. There is so much fascinating material I've managed to dig up and share in this book. I hope you enjoy discovering it as much as I did.
For example, in the discussion of the Egyptian recognition of the winter solstice, I obtained the hieroglyphic "Wörterbücher" or dictionaries of Dr. Heinrich Karl Brugsch, handwritten in 19th-century German. These were difficult to translate even for the native German speaker whose assistance I gratefully enlisted. To my knowledge, other than Budge, no one had focused on Brugsch's fairly lengthy discussion of the Egyptian winter-solstice recognition and celebration, which is so very interesting to me.
Included in Brugsch's dictionary was the fascinating hieroglyph of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys holding the baby sun over the life-giving ankh or Egyptian cross, an obvious reference to the "birth" of the sun at the winter solstice.
In the chapter "Born on December 25th" I spend some 40 pages (79-119), including images, demonstrating that Egyptian winter-solstice motif and its relationship to the Horus the Child and other Egyptian gods.
There was much more of this sort of data that, with great difficulty at times, I was able to bring to a modern English-speaking public in my book.
In the overview to the chapter Born on December 25th, Murdock provides quotes that show the pagan origins of Christmas. Leading astronomer Edwin Krupp says the Romans had an ancient winter festival around the solstice, which he calls an important date in most parts of the world as the 'annual rebirth of the sun's light'. Krupp says that choosing this date for Christmas successfully integrated these long-standing popular traditions. The Catholic Encylopedia directly links the Roman festival of the birth of the sun with the choice of the date of Christmas. (p79)
Interestingly, the declaration of December 25 as a US public holiday in 1870 was resisted by some fundamentalists for being 'too pagan'. These guys seem to want to pretend Christianity is totally alien from nature. But as Murdock notes, the absurdity of claiming a birth date for a myth is lost on popular believers who merrily assume the myth is literal history. "In actuality, it would be highly refreshing for the facts regarding the true meaning of Christmas to be known around the world: to wit, Christmas - or the winter solstice - represents the birth of the sun god dating back thousands of years." (p80)
The politics of Christmas, and its origins in pagan sun worship, are highlighted with the observation that "Christ's birth at the winter solstice was not formalized until the fourth century - and this fact demonstrates a deliberate contrivance by Christian officials to usurp other religions, as we contend the entire Christian religion was specifically created by human beings to do."
Just as the Vatican plonked itself down on the old site of the main temple of Mithras, Christmas stole the date of the festival of the unconquered sun.
Christmas is not actually the solstice, but the first day after it, when the northward movement of the position of the sun at dawn becomes perceptible. So we have the solstice, the three days in which the sun rises in the same spot, as the death of the old year, and Christmas, the first day of movement, as the birth of the new year.
For ancients who were dependent on natural cycles, it is hardly surprising that they eagerly watched for this moment, and measured it with massive temples, to celebrate the path back towards summer. The appalling thing is that Christians have destroyed popular understanding of this natural framework in the name of an alien supernatural fantasy.