Alrighty, to begin with, my apologies for not posting my blog on a few days. I meant this to be a daily thing, but I guess that isn’t going to work as well as I thought. So now my goal is to have at least three post per week. I think I can do that .

Today it’s a week til Christmas, and I know many of you are excited (I know I am ). I’d post about the true meaning of Christmas and everything, except Maria already did that, and I don’t want to steal her idea, so instead, I’ll talk about the beginning of Christmas as a holiday.

The earliest that there is evidence of a Christian celebration and a feast on Dec. 25 is in 354 AD. This happened in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity, the birth of Christ was celebrated as part of the Epiphany on Jan.6. (The Epiphany was a feast, which in Western Christianity, was a celebration of the visit of the magi) Dec.25 was also a pagan celebration of winter, but when some pagan populations were converted to Christianity, they changed their pagan feast to one celebrating the birth of Christ.
In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas was overshadowed by other holidays, such as Epiphany and Advent. But by the High Middle Ages, the popularity of Christmas had increased greatly, especially after 3 kings were crowned on Christmas Day.
If you want to know more, just search “Christmas” on Wikipedia, there’s a lot more info then just what I have here. Oh, and a little tidbit I thought you guys might enjoy:

The New Testament Gospel of Luke may indirectly give the date as December for the birth of Jesus, with the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist cited by John Chrysostom(c. 386) as a date for the Annunciation. Tertullian (d. 220) did not mention Christmas as a major feast day in the Church of Roman Africa.In Chronographai, a reference work published in 221, Sextus Julius Africanus suggested that Jesus was conceived on the spring equinox.The equinox was March 25 on the Roman calendar, so this implied a birth in December.
Have fun this Christmas, guys!
~Rosy