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The First Recorded Christmas Was The Latest Birthday Party Ever
Update: 2024-12-24
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Whether or not you yourself celebrate Christmas, there's no denying it's one of the world's most well'known holidays -- in fact, this commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ may be the most famous birthday in the Western world. Yet, as Ben, Noel and Max discover in this holiday episode, experts still don't know when Jesus was actually born. Humans didn't really celebrate Christ's birthday as December 25th until centuries after his death... which means one of the world's most famous birthdays was also one of the absolute latest birthday parties ever.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
00:00:00
"Radiculous History" is a production of "I Heart" Radio.
00:00:02
Welcome back to the show of fellow Radiculous Historians.
00:00:29
Thank you as always so much for tuning in.
00:00:32
-Falice Navidad.
00:00:33
-Let's hear it for our number one super producer, Mr.
00:00:37
Max Williams.
00:00:38
-Hazah.
00:00:40
-There's Mr.
00:00:41
Noel Brown.
00:00:42
They often call me Ben in these parts.
00:00:45
Guys, this is our holiday episode.
00:00:48
-It's true.
00:00:49
And would you guys believe that I was not born anywhere near Christmas, despite my name?
00:00:53
I get that all the time.
00:00:54
Just not the case.
00:00:55
I'm an August baby.
00:00:56
Malia.
00:00:57
I'll tell you what, the thing that sticks out to me as a fellow Leo and a fan of the human experiment is that we have a bone to pick with history.
00:01:09
We have something that we think is a little bit ridiculous.
00:01:13
We're going to dive into it here first and foremost.
00:01:16
We hope you and your family are well whether or not you celebrate Christmas.
00:01:22
We have to tell you, even if you're listening to this thousands or millions of years after the episode publishes.
00:01:29
Christmas was slash is a pretty big deal.
00:01:34
It is ultimately a birthday celebration.
00:01:37
You guys have heard it, right?
00:01:39
Here in the United States, people often say, "Jesus is the reason for the season."
00:01:46
-They do say that, it's true.
00:01:47
Unless you think we're going to be a couple of old grinches trying to steal Christmas, that's not the case at all.
00:01:54
Though Jesus has become a little less of the reason for the season here in the United States anyway, in favor of a bit more of a massive commercial gift giving below out.
00:02:04
But you know, things change.
00:02:06
That's just how it goes.
00:02:07
What we see here in the US currently, as we record at the very end of 2024, is that Christmas has become an economic necessity for a lot of businesses.
00:02:21
It turns out, by the way, this is what we're doing.
00:02:25
I love your point, Neil.
00:02:26
We are not denigrating any spiritual belief system.
00:02:30
We are, in fact, sticking up for this one guy because it turns out that Christmas, the most important birthday in Western discourse,
00:02:40
it happened about 300 years after the fact this is the latest birthday party ever.
00:02:47
Today's episode is brought to you by Shipped.
00:02:51
With Shipped Same Day Delivery, you get more than just fresh groceries delivered to your door.
00:02:56
You get time to do the things you love with the people you love.
00:02:59
And one of the things I love is making a cheese plate and sharing it with my friends and playing games.
00:03:05
Oh yes, good game sessions always.
00:03:08
And with Shipped, there's a shopper waiting to check off your grocery list or make that last minute trip to the store so you can relish the greatest gift of all.
00:03:16
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00:03:18
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00:03:19
That's SHIPT and let an expert handle the shopping.
00:03:23
Hi, this is Ruthie Rogers, host of our podcast Ruthie's Table 4.
00:03:27
There are many luxuries in life, but I have to say that going to see Ian McKellen was one of the great days of my life.
00:03:35
It's a joke that actors in the old days were not being paid enough money or getting enough to eat would say, we're doing check off.
00:03:42
There's a practical poor pie in the third act.
00:03:45
Free, free food.
00:03:47
Listen to Ruthie's Table 4 on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:03:52
See you there.
00:03:53
Welcome to the criminelia podcast.
00:03:56
I'm Maria Tremarke and I'm Holly Frye.
00:03:59
Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.
00:04:04
Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves.
00:04:09
We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching.
00:04:16
And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.
00:04:22
Listen to criminelia on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:04:31
Jesus needs all the help he can get ban.
00:04:36
It's true.
00:04:37
First off, heathens.
00:04:39
Oh, yeah.
00:04:40
Oh, geez.
00:04:41
Yeah.
00:04:42
We're not theologians.
00:04:43
We're not priests, pastors, a mom store, rabbis.
00:04:46
Wait, let's check with Max.
00:04:48
Max, do you have any theological qualifications?
00:04:53
I do not know.
00:04:55
Okay.
00:04:55
All right.
00:04:56
Then we're all we're all on the same.
00:04:58
We're all the same wavelength.
00:05:00
Yeah.
00:05:00
That's right.
00:05:01
No.
00:05:01
Jesus Christ.
00:05:03
That's right.
00:05:03
Haters.
00:05:04
Technically, the world's most famous Jew.
00:05:07
So take that Nazis.
00:05:08
So likely you've heard tell of JC, there are a lot of stories about him.
00:05:14
And you may or may not be amazed to know that he was, what's that guy?
00:05:18
There's the meme now.
00:05:19
It's a super chill guy.
00:05:21
Yeah.
00:05:21
Yeah.
00:05:22
Very big Lebowski, right?
00:05:24
This guy, this one individual exhibited phenomenal dare say divine abilities.
00:05:33
No, we're talking about a guy who has power over time, creation, angels, death, destiny, truth, and of course, churches.
00:05:41
True story one time, one unshield time.
00:05:45
He cursed a fig tree that is a tale the Jedi will not share with you.
00:05:49
Well, maybe a more popular story of him being unshield was when he flipped the tables of the money changers and the in the bizarre and the markets, you know, because he was against the kind of greed and manipulation that they represented.
00:06:01
So probably, you know, a pretty chill unshield action, if you ask me.
00:06:06
Yeah.
00:06:06
Acting with righteousness did not care for you serious people.
00:06:11
And whether or not you believe in Jesus' mystical or divine abilities, the fact remains that he was a dude who was believed in by many and absolutely accomplished some pretty fantastic things even outside of the realm of the divine,
00:06:26
right?
00:06:27
Yeah.
00:06:28
The individual called Jesus today was according to the story born in a town called Bethlehem in a manger, basically a barn,
00:06:39
a place who put livestock.
00:06:40
His parents were not the one percent, but the baby was on the way.
00:06:45
They couldn't find a better place for his mom, the famous Mary to give birth.
00:06:50
Right.
00:06:50
So room at the end, all that right.
00:06:52
One of the famous Mary's.
00:06:54
And so as the story goes, a bunch of people showed up right on time for this birth in Bethlehem and get this instead of helping the family get better shelter,
00:07:06
everybody showed up, hung out in the barn, and they gave the family a series of what we would call dramatically expensive, often unhelpful gifts.
00:07:17
Yeah.
00:07:17
When's the last time you needed some murder?
00:07:20
What even is murder?
00:07:21
I know it's like a fine oil or lotion or linaments.
00:07:25
What is it?
00:07:25
It's like a spice.
00:07:27
What is murder again?
00:07:28
I think it's like a precious metal.
00:07:31
It's a gum resin.
00:07:32
Yeah.
00:07:33
Okay.
00:07:33
So it's like incense, kind of, right?
00:07:36
You would maybe burn it, and it would smell good.
00:07:39
Yeah.
00:07:39
Yeah.
00:07:40
Yeah.
00:07:40
It's medicinal.
00:07:41
It's also used for perfume.
00:07:44
And as you said, incense.
00:07:46
Got it.
00:07:47
So Jesus was a Galilean from Nazareth.
00:07:52
And this is a village near Sephirus.
00:07:55
One of two major cities there in Galilee, the other being Tiberius.
00:08:01
And he was born to essentially the laborer, you know, a carpenter, a construction worker, the name of Joseph.
00:08:10
And of course, the aforementioned famous Mary, somewhere around six BCE.
00:08:15
And shortly before the death of Herod the great, who is a real pain in the keyster, if I'm if I'm not mistaken, Ben.
00:08:23
Yeah.
00:08:23
No, let's be honest.
00:08:24
History is written by the victors first off.
00:08:28
So every story you will read about Herod in the West shows him being a real beat me here, Max.
00:08:35
A real piece of shit.
00:08:36
He could change.
00:08:38
He could change.
00:08:39
He had slick back hair, you know, he did sloppy steaks, but he could change.
00:08:43
No, I don't think he changed.
00:08:44
He didn't change.
00:08:45
And the job been here real quick.
00:08:46
I didn't write about it because I wasn't able to find good enough sources, but there are some rumors out there that how Herod went was very fitting for our ridiculous world deaths episode.
00:08:58
Yes.
00:08:58
I'm glad you mentioned that, Max.
00:09:01
Perhaps we will resurrect that idea in the future.
00:09:06
No joke left behind hashtag.
00:09:09
So look, we could imagine Herod had his own series of things going on, but for our purposes today, he's kind of a bad guy,
00:09:20
he's kind of not cool.
00:09:22
If you go to the later writing of the disciples of Jesus, who is not yet in his childhood called the Christ, we see that Matthew and Luke are,
00:09:34
you know, they're part of the whootang of Christ when he becomes known as the Messiah, and they are the ones who tell the world yesterday and today that this carpenter,
00:09:46
this itinerant carpenter, you mentioned, no Joseph is only legally the father of Jesus.
00:09:54
Instead, they argue Mary was a physical virgin, meaning she had never had or encountered sexual intimacy.
00:10:03
And then boom, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.
00:10:08
The Virgin birth.
00:10:09
It's a miracle in Bethlehem.
00:10:11
And if I'm not mistaken, Ben, all of these folks, the three wise men and the like, followed a shooting star and they heard tell of the coming of this Messiah and they followed the star that led them directly to this cow shed.
00:10:24
Pretty interesting stuff.
00:10:26
Not to mention that the whole virgin birth thing, of course, if anyone's seen the last temptation of Christ, for example, by good old Marty Scorsaza.
00:10:35
You know, there are other controversial takes on this, the story.
00:10:40
So plenty of stuff to explore on your own if you want to.
00:10:43
Yeah.
00:10:44
And originally, there was not a guy doing a kickass backbeat.
00:10:48
There was not a little drummer boy.
00:10:50
That comes later in the great game of telephone.
00:10:53
Yeah.
00:10:53
I mean, that's to me like, I think a bit of a clearly, some of this is in the realm of fiction, but I think the little drummer boy was almost like just a representation of the Christmas spirit.
00:11:03
I do, I do love it though.
00:11:05
I love the idea of a kid showing up and just doing some drums.
00:11:09
By all accounts, our young individual Jesus was percusious.
00:11:18
We do not know a ton about this individual's childhood including, can I get a spoiler sound cue?
00:11:27
His actual birthday, thank you, Max.
00:11:33
He appeared to learn things at a prodigious rate.
00:11:36
He was a very quick kid and ancient Judaism at this time.
00:11:41
You usually only have one name.
00:11:45
If you need a greater specificity, you would add the father's name or the place of the individual's origin.
00:11:53
So for example, we would say, Max of Michigan, right?
00:11:57
I would say, no love Augusta, something like that.
00:12:00
And that kind of nomenclature, I guess, goes back way further than this story.
00:12:04
I mean, it is an ancient holdover.
00:12:06
Instead of having last names, even people were identified from where they were born.
00:12:10
Yeah.
00:12:11
Yeah.
00:12:11
They're provenance.
00:12:13
That's a patrilineal origins.
00:12:15
So in his time, on earth, in this moment in history, Jesus is called things like Jesus, son of Joseph makes sense.
00:12:26
Jesus of Nazareth makes sense or Jesus, the Nazarene, which is, you know, Jesus, the guy from Nazareth.
00:12:35
He ultimately becomes the most famous Jesus.
00:12:38
So eventually, all that stuff could probably just drop off like Madonna or share.
00:12:42
Absolutely.
00:12:43
And we could do an entire etymology spin off episode on the nature of translation here and that great game of etymological and linguistic telephone that we kind of just explored a good bit and that two-parter we did on the English alphabet.
00:12:56
But for now, we just need to know, at some point, there was a brilliant child of uncertain patrilineal origin for the time.
00:13:06
And he wanted to just take everything in he could, like a sponge.
00:13:12
And with some help from our good friends at Britannica, we'll give you the following quote about the young Jesus later called Christ.
00:13:24
As a young adult, he went to be baptized by the prophet John the Baptist.
00:13:30
And shortly thereafter became an itinerant preacher and healer.
00:13:34
This goes back to Mark 12 to 28.
00:13:38
Anyway, in Britannica did not say anyway, I said anyway, that's editorializing.
00:13:46
So Britannica continues in his mid 30s, Jesus had a short public career, lasting perhaps less than one year during which he attracted considerable attention.
00:13:58
Null, do you want to finish us out with this quote?
00:14:01
Oh, I'd be honored.
00:14:02
Britannica is one of my favorites.
00:14:04
And Boo to ye who say they are not a valid source.
00:14:07
Y'all need to get a hobby.
00:14:09
Sometime between 29 and 33 CE, possibly 30 CE, he went to observe Passover in Jerusalem, where his entrance, according to the Gospels, was triumphant and confused with eschatological significance.
00:14:22
Get your minds out of the gutter that word doesn't mean what you think it means.
00:14:25
It's like, it's almost like ecclesiastical.
00:14:27
Right?
00:14:28
They're like having religious, imbued with religious fervor kind of.
00:14:32
It's the branch of theology or philosophy that is associated with the end of the world humanity.
00:14:40
Okay.
00:14:41
Yeah, relating to death judgment and the final destiny of the soul.
00:14:45
Okay, this is a new word for me.
00:14:47
Yeah, it's a good one.
00:14:49
You don't get to use it all the time, but it is a fun one.
00:14:52
We do your best to use it with gusto.
00:14:55
Bro, we should accuse people of being eschatological.
00:14:58
They're going to think we're calling them sh*tty.
00:15:00
Oh, that's scatology.
00:15:02
Right now, but it really, it really sounds similar.
00:15:05
I'm sorry.
00:15:05
How different does one, uh, one sound make a word?
00:15:10
What a difference the day makes.
00:15:11
It's kind of man.
00:15:12
We're still high off our alphabet.
00:15:14
Seriously.
00:15:15
So this, uh, this story, this early story will be familiar to any, what are called people of the book, uh, practitioners, adherents of Judaism,
00:15:26
Islam or Christianity.
00:15:28
As you know, and we hope we're not the first way you learned this, the man called Jesus was apprehended and he sat through a kangaroo court.
00:15:38
No one to be fair.
00:15:40
No one in the area had heard of kangaroos by this point.
00:15:43
Yeah, it's a great concept, though, that we explore a little bit on a listener mail of of recent times over on stuff that I want you to know.
00:15:50
We had a listener write in about the origins of the concept of a kangaroo court, meaning a court where the outcome is determined ahead of time.
00:15:57
And it is all but symbolic for the purposes of saying, no, we did that.
00:16:00
We did the thing.
00:16:01
We gave you a trial, but basically there is a pre-determined outcome.
00:16:05
And for Jesus, that was crucifixion after like saw two levels of torture and brutalization.
00:16:12
Yeah, it was super gross.
00:16:13
It was undeserved.
00:16:15
The guy was innocent.
00:16:18
And I love the point you're bringing up.
00:16:20
He was killed due to political machinations of the Romans at the time.
00:16:26
And this is why this this death via crucifixion.
00:16:32
This is why Christians today will have a cross in homes on flags on missiles and perhaps in tattoos on the moons.
00:16:44
Yeah, yeah, why not the disciples of Jesus now called Christ.
00:16:49
They proliferated what they saw as his teachings throughout the world.
00:16:55
The problem is that the disciples of Jesus Christ didn't always agree with one another.
00:17:01
Yeah, they had differences of opinion.
00:17:04
They had one thing.
00:17:06
They had one thing they agreed on.
00:17:08
They said our guy, Jesus Christ, did not in fact permanently die.
00:17:14
No, he was in fact resurrected on the third day where he rolled aside the stone on the cave where his body lay in state to the proclamations.
00:17:26
He has risen, you know, all of that good stuff.
00:17:29
So this was a really big deal for any followers of Jesus after going through such a PTSD inducing situation, having to watch their guy JC just get his absolute not beaten out of them by that Kato nine tales.
00:17:42
Did you you guys see the male Gibson movie?
00:17:44
I never bothered.
00:17:45
Yeah, you just seem like torture porn.
00:17:47
Yeah, the passion of the Christ.
00:17:49
I actually did, you know, I love a little bit of discordianism.
00:17:55
Sure.
00:17:55
You back now, back when, uh, back when DVDs and blu-rays and physical media were more of a thing.
00:18:02
I printed up a series of stickers that just said is tonight the night and I stuck them on a bunch of passion of the Christ DVDs.
00:18:11
It's tonight the night that what will happen?
00:18:14
I don't understand.
00:18:15
It's tonight the night that you watched that you watched.
00:18:17
Okay, get it.
00:18:18
I remember when that, I mean, I'm sorry, not to get two side travel when that film came out.
00:18:22
There was a golden moment for Christian merch.
00:18:26
Remember, there were like little nails, the bracelets and things and it all felt a little commercial and weird.
00:18:32
I don't know.
00:18:33
What?
00:18:33
I guess it's good for the faith, you know, probably it was as was Mel Gibson's intent, him being a card carry in Christian and potentially a virulent anti-Semite.
00:18:43
Oh, no potential about it.
00:18:44
Yeah.
00:18:45
I think he said some things, right?
00:18:47
Yeah.
00:18:47
So all right, here we go.
00:18:49
Uh, we've got this story.
00:18:51
A guy who is holy has transcended the mortal veil and ever since he's around though.
00:19:00
He exits the, the tomb and he's there.
00:19:03
But then he ascends.
00:19:04
Is that the idea that he sort of dematerializes?
00:19:08
I've never understood the function of that scene.
00:19:11
Well, he takes on the sins of every other person who has ever lived and if you obey Jesus Christ and follow his teachings,
00:19:21
then he will stick up for you in the face of God.
00:19:25
He is God.
00:19:26
The argument goes.
00:19:27
So it's pretty important to get on his good side.
00:19:30
I guess what I'm talking about my confusion around the whole ascending into heaven thing.
00:19:34
If I'm not mistaken, there are people in the Bible who saw him like before that took place.
00:19:41
So I'm just wondering like, what did that look like when he ascended?
00:19:45
I've always just wondered like what that might have looked like.
00:19:48
If this, you know, this story were to be true.
00:19:51
If there were people that saw him, you know, in his corporeal form, and then did he like just kind of disintegrates and become like, you know, air and just right?
00:20:00
Or did he physically fly up into the cosmos?
00:20:04
Always wonder.
00:20:05
Well, people still thought the idea being forgiven was massively cool.
00:20:10
And a great many people, including several of our fellow ridiculous historians are on board with this idea today.
00:20:18
It is spiritually incredibly important.
00:20:21
We have your back folks.
00:20:23
We're never here to yucky yum.
00:20:25
We think it is objectively, regardless of your personal beliefs, we think it is very cool to be lost and to be found and loved once more.
00:20:36
That's pretty nuts.
00:20:38
Oh, absolutely.
00:20:39
And I personally to quote the band King Missile think Jesus was way cool.
00:20:44
And have always been fascinated by him and his acts, whether or not the divine aspects of it turn out to be true.
00:20:51
And I'm not here to say one way or the other.
00:20:53
And my whole, you know, questioning of the like ascension into heaven was not trying to poke fun and all there.
00:20:58
I just truly like if that were to have happened.
00:21:01
I mean, we do a critical thinking conspiracy show.
00:21:03
We talk about the stuff in the spiritual realm all the time.
00:21:05
I just wonder what that might have looked like.
00:21:07
Here's the thing.
00:21:09
People are still trying to figure out how best to commemorate, to emulate and to celebrate the life and times of Jesus Christ.
00:21:20
This episode is brought to you by shipped running low on time.
00:21:25
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00:21:31
For example, during the holidays, I would much rather be spending time with my friends eating and drinking and catching up and playing games and just getting to enjoy each other.
00:21:42
Then going to the store or sitting in traffic or whatever it is.
00:21:47
Oh, yeah.
00:21:48
Absolutely.
00:21:49
My favorite parts are like watching every movie that I watch every year and cooking those meals together that you're going to get to enjoy.
00:21:59
Those are the good parts.
00:22:00
I would say that maybe standing in line is not my favorite part of the holidays.
00:22:05
Agreed.
00:22:06
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00:22:08
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00:22:19
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00:22:24
Hi, this is Ruthie Rogers, host of our podcast Ruthie's table four.
00:22:28
There are many luxuries in life, but I have to say that going to see Ian McKellen was one of the great days of my life.
00:22:36
It's a joke that actors in the old days were not being paid enough money or getting enough to eat would say, "Oh, we're doing check off.
00:22:43
There's a practical poor pie in the third act.
00:22:46
Free, free food."
00:22:47
Listen to Ruthie's table four on iHeart, Apple Podcasts and wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:22:54
See you there.
00:22:54
Throughout the Western world and spoiler, a lot of the non-Western world,
00:23:05
there are a ton of people who celebrate the idea of the birthday of Jesus Christ as both a sacred religious holiday and as a commercial phenomenon.
00:23:16
For like more than 2,000 years at this point, people around the world have been observing our buddy Jesus' big day with traditions and practices that are both religious and secular in nature.
00:23:31
Please check out our earlier episodes on things like the Yule Lads or things like Krampus.
00:23:38
Oh, boot liquor.
00:23:39
No, doorway sniffer.
00:23:41
Window liquor.
00:23:42
Window liquor is an affection song, but do I think they're all these I think are right.
00:23:47
They're all selling things.
00:23:49
Licking, smelling.
00:23:50
They're doing a thing.
00:23:51
It's dealing food.
00:23:52
It's dealing goat milk.
00:23:54
There's a goat sucker.
00:23:56
It's noun verb and they're like 13 of them and they're very weird.
00:24:01
Yeah, it is worth a worth your time to go back and check that one out because I can't remember half of them to save my life, but they're all pretty weird and pretty delightful.
00:24:08
And we name check them regularly.
00:24:11
Popular customs in celebration of the birthday of Christ, Christmas.
00:24:18
They include things like exchanging gifts depending on where you are.
00:24:23
You might wear a little hat.
00:24:25
You might have a tree.
00:24:26
You'll probably go to church.
00:24:28
You eat a nice dinner, Christmas dinner with friends and family.
00:24:33
And then obviously post Coca-Cola.
00:24:36
You wait for Santa Claus to arrive.
00:24:38
100% and pretty much all the things you're describing are enjoyed by the secular and the faithful alike.
00:24:45
You know, me not personally being a Christian.
00:24:48
I have a Christmas tree in my house and I love exchanging gifts and I love the customs and the traditions of it all and try not to make it too grossly commercial.
00:24:56
But a lot of these things are just kind of marking the season too.
00:25:00
I just kind of hopefully encouraging a spirit of end of the year reflection and generosity.
00:25:06
Yeah, that's great.
00:25:08
And this is the thing.
00:25:10
All right.
00:25:10
So December 25th, as Christmas day has only been a federal holiday in the United States since 1870.
00:25:19
So yeah, yeah, I didn't know that.
00:25:23
I just I'm still taking a back by it.
00:25:25
It's weird.
00:25:26
And also this is the thing.
00:25:27
This is the point of our episode.
00:25:29
We hope it's pretty well known by this point.
00:25:33
December 25th, as the current Western calendar reckons was not the actual birthday of Jesus Christ.
00:25:41
In fact, if you look at the ridiculous history here, his first acknowledged birthday was 300 years late.
00:25:51
You know, you say you like the guy and you take 300 years.
00:25:56
So for the first 300 years or so of what we would call Christianity, as we know it, no one was celebrating Christmas on December 25th.
00:26:05
Yeah, the calendar you're using now in the west, the Gregorian calendar system shout out Greg wasn't created until the late 16th century and to your point,
00:26:17
no, for the first 300 years or so of the Christian Church's existence, get this.
00:26:25
They didn't really care about birthdays.
00:26:28
Right.
00:26:28
They were much more death obsessed.
00:26:31
It would seem the day on which a saint died, which makes sense kind of because saints are usually often martyred.
00:26:39
And so the death is when they become saints.
00:26:42
So it kind of does make sense to focus on that rather than the birthday.
00:26:45
That would have been considered much more important as it ushered them into the kingdom of heaven.
00:26:50
Right.
00:26:51
Right.
00:26:51
You nailed it.
00:26:52
So at the time, the baptism of Jesus Christ received way more attention that is birthday.
00:27:01
People would say, all right, he's born on January 6th.
00:27:06
That was their idea for quite some time.
00:27:09
The first recorded by which we mean written mention of the celebration of Christmas comes about in 354 CE more than three centuries after the actual guy was actually born.
00:27:24
100% and even today in 2024 as we record this, no one can really agree on when Jesus was actually born.
00:27:33
One thing that can be pretty well agreed on as that it wasn't on 25th.
00:27:38
Yeah.
00:27:40
Yeah.
00:27:40
A lot of folks will tell you that the actual birth date was somewhere in early spring, which puts it closer to Easter,
00:27:51
which is also the holiday commemorating his resurrection when as we discuss the guy somehow rises to heaven.
00:27:59
Yeah.
00:28:00
Exactly.
00:28:00
And this is something that we see all the time.
00:28:02
I believe the term being religious syncretism, the origins of Christmas and its December day much more likely lie in the ancient Greco Roman traditions and more kind of pagan celebrations.
00:28:17
Yeah.
00:28:18
There are three possible, I would say competing celebrations for this rough, calendrical, parking space.
00:28:27
The Roman Christian historian, sexist, Julius, African as killer name.
00:28:34
Wow.
00:28:35
Yeah.
00:28:35
Yeah.
00:28:36
Well, he didn't know it was hilarious.
00:28:38
I don't think it's hilarious.
00:28:39
I think it's badass.
00:28:41
I want to be sexist, Julius Afrocanas.
00:28:43
That is my drop right after saying that name.
00:28:45
I believe in you, man.
00:28:46
I got your back.
00:28:46
I got your six on that.
00:28:48
So this guy traces the conception of Jesus later called Christ to March 25th.
00:28:57
By the way, that's the same date this guy argued the world itself was created.
00:29:04
Yeah.
00:29:05
I know.
00:29:05
I know.
00:29:06
I know.
00:29:06
I know.
00:29:07
No, I was just laughing at a word that I just clocked a little further down in the outline.
00:29:12
Yeah, I should poopy.
00:29:14
Yeah, I should poopy.
00:29:15
That's just fun to say and fun and I saw it and I just immediately couldn't help a giggle.
00:29:19
But generally, if you're looking for another guy to pin this whole reason for the season on, you're going to have to look at a guy named Dionysus exegis.
00:29:29
Do we just have not cool names?
00:29:32
I think that's true, Ben.
00:29:33
I think names have gotten less cool.
00:29:35
We need cooler names.
00:29:36
I don't think that's a hot take.
00:29:38
I think names have gotten less cool over time.
00:29:41
But Dionysus exegis was, in fact, a sixth century monk who was the first to date all of history from December 25th.
00:29:50
Viver watched a period piece and you've got some fancy lads talking about the year of our Lord.
00:29:55
Well, here you go.
00:29:56
Yeah.
00:29:57
Yeah.
00:29:57
Other traditions disagreed with all exegis and they said, maybe it was mid-November.
00:30:06
Maybe it was March.
00:30:07
It is, as we noted earlier, a real Shippupi.
00:30:11
Just please look that word up and give our regards to family guys.
00:30:17
Isn't Shippupi also a thing from Seinfeld?
00:30:20
I know it's a family guy thing.
00:30:21
You've got a great clip here and you should look at it, but I swear it was something.
00:30:25
Maybe it was Shmoopy.
00:30:26
I think I'm thinking of Shmoopy.
00:30:28
Shippupi is different, but Shmoopy is also fun.
00:30:30
So, hey, travel with us back in time to the Roman Empire during what they had no idea was going to be referred to historically as the third century sea.
00:30:39
Yeah.
00:30:40
It was just that day for that.
00:30:43
Spoiler, Rome as an empire was not immediately on board with this whole Jesus thing.
00:30:52
They were first off superantisomatic.
00:30:55
And second, they had a bunch of other competing holidays.
00:30:59
They're an empire.
00:31:00
So, there was something called Soul Invictus, the celebration of the Unconquered Sun, which occurred around the same time.
00:31:11
This was a very busy day, as holidays go, because it marked the natural passage of the seasons, the return of longer days after the winter solstice.
00:31:24
Also, additionally, the Roman Empire had a festival called the Saturnalia.
00:31:31
And folks, if you can guess what people did back then during Saturnalia, we're just going to give you the truth.
00:31:40
They had big parties.
00:31:41
They ate a lot of family meals and they exchanged gifts with each other.
00:31:47
What, no orgies?
00:31:47
Well, you know, for a treat.
00:31:51
Okay, fair enough.
00:31:53
It was also the birthday of the Indo-European deity Mithra, God of Light, Lord of Light.
00:32:00
It's very Game of Thrones.
00:32:02
The Red Woman.
00:32:03
Yeah.
00:32:04
Yeah.
00:32:05
Mithra, who is kind of the Pepsi to the Tokyo, an ancient deity of covenants, light, as you said, no oaths,
00:32:16
justice, the sign, and friendship.
00:32:18
The Roman soldiers were a big fan.
00:32:21
Yes.
00:32:21
Yeah.
00:32:22
They kind of were the way that kids might wear no fear t-shirts in the 1990s.
00:32:28
Maybe a little more dense than that, but I'm with you Ben.
00:32:32
No question.
00:32:33
But the question does become, what's the deal with the first birthday?
00:32:37
Why December 25th at all?
00:32:39
Oh, yeah.
00:32:40
To understand this, we have to introduce a guy named Constantine.
00:32:45
His full name, if he gets in trouble, is Flavius Valerius Constantineus.
00:32:51
Also called himself Constantine one or in a burst of humility.
00:32:57
Constantine, the great.
00:32:58
Now, this guy was a real, you know, he's like Taylor Swift.
00:33:02
He's a real up-and-coming Rome.
00:33:04
He rules the place from 306 CE to 337.
00:33:10
He is the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.
00:33:15
Huge deal.
00:33:16
Big historical, more than footnote.
00:33:18
I mean, this is really what led to the proliferation of Christianity and some of the later schisms that would come out of that.
00:33:26
Yeah.
00:33:27
He plays a pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity and Rome because before Constantine, people of the Christian faith were getting treated like trash.
00:33:41
He is the guy who made it legal in the empire to practice Christianity.
00:33:47
Before him, it was illegal.
00:33:49
It was a crime to be Christian.
00:33:52
He also said, let's stop persecuting the Christians on a day-to-day basis.
00:33:57
This is called the Constantine shift and this initiated, to your point, the Christianization of the Roman Empire, leading to,
00:34:08
you know, things like the Vatican.
00:34:10
And the Rome became the seat of the religion, you know, for the entire world.
00:34:17
And back in 336 CE, again, centuries after this guy, the Church of Rome began formally celebrating Christmas on December 25th.
00:34:29
Now, we have to, we have to pause for a second because we're making Constantine sound like a super duper hero, but he probably had some other political considerations with picking December 25th as this celebration.
00:34:48
For sure.
00:34:48
And it was also not to say that his hands weren't covered in blood from like other stuff.
00:34:52
Dude had a reputation in other ways as being, you know, just as ruthless as many other people in his position.
00:34:58
Yeah.
00:34:58
Name one good emperor.
00:35:00
Exactly.
00:35:00
Then or now.
00:35:02
There's a lot of speculation that this guy in his administration purposely chose December 25th, not because they thought it was the shout out to our pal,
00:35:15
Lauren Vogelbaum, the actual facts, birth date of Jesus Christ, the argument is that they may have thought choosing this holiday for Christianity would weaken the celebrations of existing pagan schools of thought,
00:35:33
things like Saturnalia occurring around the same time.
00:35:37
The rule out was not perfect.
00:35:39
By the way, the Eastern area of the empire, they were still on this January 6th thing.
00:35:45
And it took like 50 years minimum to get them on board with December 25th.
00:35:51
Well, people are still calling X Twitter to this day.
00:35:54
So big changes sometimes take time to be fully adopted.
00:35:59
Yeah.
00:35:59
And even then, after the adoption of this idea, Christmas was not a major Christian festival, which we know sounds very strange.
00:36:11
People only started celebrating the birthday of Jesus Christ in a very big deal way around the ninth century CE,
00:36:21
almost a thousand years after the crucifixion.
00:36:26
I'd like to quote, "Chiche Marin" from Ghostbusters, where he says, "better late than never."
00:36:32
"Chiche Marin's in Ghostbusters."
00:36:34
"Chiche Marin is in Ghostbusters."
00:36:36
Does he just have like a walk on?
00:36:37
I guess I'm totally blanking on this.
00:36:39
He's the guy who sees the Titanic arriving when all the ghosts come back.
00:36:44
Okay, so it's just a quick pop on.
00:36:46
Yeah.
00:36:46
He's the guy who says, "better late than never."
00:36:48
Yeah, I know.
00:36:48
I believe you.
00:36:49
That's just, I've never clocked that.
00:36:50
Big, big, big, "Chiche Fan" actually got a crappy guitar signed by him.
00:36:54
What kind of guitar?
00:36:55
It's a, like, like a cheap kind of Fender Strat that would come in like a Strat pack.
00:37:00
You might get a kid for Christmas.
00:37:02
But it's awesome.
00:37:03
It's signed by both "Chiche and Chong."
00:37:05
And I look forward to one day upgrading some of the parts on it so I can actually play it.
00:37:10
Oh, yeah.
00:37:10
Tommy's cool, man.
00:37:11
We want to keep this brief.
00:37:15
We know everybody has a ton of stuff happening in 2025.
00:37:20
We know you have so many loved ones to get to whether or not you celebrate the reason for the season.
00:37:29
On December 25th, we're just so happy you're here.
00:37:34
And this is a great time of reflection.
00:37:38
We do have to point out, of course, it's kind of ridiculous, right?
00:37:43
That's a super late birthday party.
00:37:46
Oh, for sure.
00:37:47
We wouldn't have covered if it wasn't ridiculous.
00:37:49
That's sort of our number one criteria for this show.
00:37:52
That's not true.
00:37:53
We talk about stuff.
00:37:53
It's not ridiculous all the time.
00:37:54
We just try to bring that ridiculous flavor that you know and love, even to the heaviest of topics.
00:38:00
And big, big thanks to our own wise men, super producer, Mr.
00:38:06
Max Williams, Noel Brown, first of his name.
00:38:10
Can I say that as far as I know?
00:38:13
Can you just add like a Roman I, at the end of your name?
00:38:19
It's in a year.
00:38:20
Why not?
00:38:20
I'll try it on for size.
00:38:22
Nice, nice.
00:38:23
Thanks also to our composer, Mr.
00:38:26
Alex Williams.
00:38:27
Have we thanked his brother, Max Williams?
00:38:30
Yeah, let's think of twice.
00:38:32
Yes, and also Christopher Haseyota's and Eve's Jeff Coats, both here in Christmas spirit.
00:38:37
AJ Bahamas, Jacobs, Rachel, Big Spinach, Lance, Elizabeth, and Zared, our rude dudes over at Ridiculous Cry.
00:38:46
And not to mention our very own Ebenezer Scrooge figure, Jonathan Strickland.
00:38:51
The quister.
00:38:52
I think we're going to hear from soon if we haven't already.
00:38:56
Have we already?
00:38:58
It's got a hard nod for Max.
00:39:02
Jonathan, I know you called me a smart ass in that email.
00:39:05
I saw it.
00:39:05
I saw it.
00:39:06
We'll see you next time, folks.
00:39:08
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00:39:56
Hi, this is Ruthie Rogers, host of our podcast Ruthie's Table 4.
00:40:00
There are many luxuries in life, but I have to say that going to see Ian McKellen was one of the great days of my life.
00:40:08
It's a joke that actors in the old days not being paid enough money or getting enough to eat would say, "Oh, we're doing check off.
00:40:15
There's a practical poor pie in the third act.
00:40:18
Free, free food."
00:40:19
Listen to Ruthie's Table 4 on iHeart, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to your podcast.
00:40:25
See you there.
00:40:26
Welcome to the criminelia podcast.
00:40:29
I'm Maria Tramarki, and I'm Holly Frye.
00:40:31
Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime.
00:40:37
Each season, we explore a new theme from Poisoners to Art Thieves.
00:40:42
We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures from legal injustices to body snatching.
00:40:48
And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story.
00:40:55
Listen to criminelia on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:01