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WHEN WAS JESUS BORN?: M. M. NINAN<br />
members of the Roman Senate. So it appears that Aurelian, who <strong>was</strong><br />
hostile to Christianity, picked a date with no pagan sun worship and<br />
created one. Why?. Some suggest that he <strong>was</strong> trying to create a pagan<br />
alternative to another festival on that day to help unite his empire. That<br />
other festival <strong>was</strong> the celebration of <strong>Jesus</strong>' birth. In fact, in spite of<br />
Aurelian's declaration, there is no record of celebrating Sol Invictus on<br />
December 25 until AD 354/362, much later than the Christian<br />
celebration in Africa and elsewhere. The only explicit reference to a<br />
celebration of Sol in late December is made by Julian the<br />
Apostate in his hymn to King Helios written 363 AD. Earlier dates<br />
of Sol Invictus celebration were August 8 and/or 9, August 28, and<br />
December 11.<br />
It <strong>was</strong> only in the 17th and 18th Centuries that secular enlightenment<br />
scholars started to suggest that Christianity had borrowed the date of<br />
Christmas from pagans.<br />
This date had no connection to pagan gods or ideas -- these were<br />
invented years later.”<br />
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Facing the East.<br />
In the book of Genesis is the story of God providing a garden in the<br />
east, in Eden. The Israelites, when they left Egypt to search for the<br />
Promised Land headed east across the Red Sea. It is from the east that<br />
we get our orientation, our direction, our warmth, our light, our energy.<br />
The east is where new things begin.<br />
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