LORD JESUS CHRIST, THE MESSIAH
Hurray! Merry Christmas comes off once again–just three days from now! So it’s ‘Afenhyia pa’ (Merry Merry Christmas) to all our precious readers!
However, amidst all the festive jollities that usually characterize the Christmas feast – such as partying over sumptuous meals of aponkye nkakra (goat meat with its light soup), fufu and chicken soup; dancing to music, visits to loved ones etc—there also comes a controversial question: is December 25 the real Christmas day (or the birthdate of Christ)? If not, what is the correct date then? And this year too, this question was seriously raised on two FM radio airwaves.
What is painful, even enigmatic, about this question is that, of late, some pastors and evangelists and devoted Christian laymen have adopted an escapist attitude over this issue, always dodging it or parrying it over as irrelevant, simply because it is “doctrinal”. And to them, doctrines need not be debated! Good God! Who tells them that? That’s absolutely incorrect.
In fact, this December 25 celebration is now and again being questioned by some sections of the society. And this not only seeks to make nonsense of the very essence of Christmas, but tries to hold celebrators of the feast in derision for their abysmal ignorance of the exact history of the Christian “faith” they are practising. Doubts about the precise birthday of Christ touch the very heart of Christian faith; and has St. Paul not enjoined Christians to “fight the good fight of the faith” (Timothy 6:12). Why then this lackadaisical attitude – this non-committal stance by Christians to know the exact history of Christmas?
If skepticism is allowed to engulf and even destroy the very foundation of Christmas, doesn’t the celebration of it become merely and laughably some entertaining theatricals, or an object of derision?
Yes, let me give an example of a birthday ‘feast’ which is seemingly becoming quixotic, owing to its controversial dateline. The birthday of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah is supposed to fall on September 25, 1909. Indeed, modern scientific and computerized research on dates of historical events, now depicts September 21, 1909 as being a Tuesday, but not a Saturday, the day, by which, according to the Akan custom, Dr. Nkrumah was said to have been named.
All three published booklets –‘Excellent Computer Calendar 1801 -2200’ by Kwasi Karikari, ‘The 400 Years Portable Calendar1800-2200’, compiled by Maxgee Ventures, and ‘Reference Calendar 1800-2200’ by Nana Yaw Opoku, overtly prove the incorrectness of the 21st September birthday of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. If 21st September is to be maintained, then Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah should be called Dr. Kobina Nkrumah (Tuesday-born Nkrumah) because that date falls on Tuesday.
On the other hand, if the argument that Osagyefo Dr. Nkrumah was born on Saturday of the third week of September 1909, which conduces to his name Kwame, (Saturday-born), then he must have been born on September 25, 1909. In the light of this, it is gradually becoming funny or ridiculous for Nkrumaists to continue to celebrate Nkrumah’s birthday on September 21, 1909, which is an entirely wrong date!
In like manner, some academics or theological scholars become derisive and show contempt when Christians controversially contend among themselves, or accept the proposition that the exact birthday of Christ is unknown, and that the December 25 Christmas celebration purporting to commemorate Christ’s birthday is itself doubtful.
It is most unfortunate that the first and second centuries’ acceptance to the fact that the birthday of Christ was unknown should be carried on as a good traditional belief right into the 21st century. Fact is, what is unknown is not unknowable. Everything is knowable through scientific investigation, as Marxist philosophy teaches, or through spiritual enquiries, as Christianism declares in its “seek and you shall find” assertion (Matthew 7:7).
It is on this basis that I firmly agree to the Catholic Holy nun, Mary of Agreda’s spiritual investigation and contention that Jesus was born on Sunday, December 25. She holds that it was “the time of winter solstice” when Mary and Joseph entered Bethlehem where “our savior Jesus was born true God and man, at the hour of midnight on a Sunday, in the year of creation of the world…..5199…..which date has been spiritually manifested to me as the true and certain one “(Divine Mysteries….. pages 41-42). Doesn’t that prove that everything is knowable? And that December 25th5199 BC was reckoned by the early Christian scholars as January 1st, Year One AD (Anno Domine — Year of the Lord — marking the world’s new historical epoch begun by the Lord Jesus.
“Winter solstice” referred to above, is defined by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as “the solstice at midwinter, at the time of the shortest day, about 22 December”. The use of the word “about” means that the time focus concentrically ranges between 21-27December. It is argued that if the winter solstice time-frame of that year BC 5199 is mathematically computed, that Sunday in question fell on December 25 exactly. You might thus call Jesus, “Kwesi Christ” as the Akans, Ewes and Gas would call him by the day he was born!
This December 25 argument which, over the years, has remained a conundrum to several doubting Thomases, is richly supported by the Rosicrusian author Dr. Spencer Lewis, in his book: ‘The Mystical life of Jesus’. In it, he contends that even though the ancient Christian clergy ignorantly shifted the Christmas date from somewhere in January to May 20 and then to April 20, in one of their famous Councils (at Rome in the fifth century), “made a definite decision and selected the 25th or midnight of the 24th of December as the true time for Christmas!”
Dr. Spencer Lewis beefs up this point with the argument that the December 25th birthdate is in consonance with “mystical law” of birth of children of virgins, “who were the sons of God, and who were known as redeemers and saviors who had been born on or about 25th December. The other fact that they could not fail to consider was that there was a spiritual law or a cosmic law for the birth of these great men on the 25th of December and that no redeemer of the world could have been born at any other time” (page 131).
This dismisses the funnily absurd question that if Christ was born during the winter solstice when it was absolutely cold, how could the sheep have been on the field, as according to the Bible’s assertion “shepherds were in the field caring for their flocks”? (Luke 2:8). After all, in the light of the great extraordinary events that characterized this divine birth of Christ, couldn’t God have lessened or entirely stopped the coldness of the winter frost in order to allow the shepherd and their sheep to go out on to the field for the purpose of receiving the sweet angelic messages? With God, all things are possible!
If by Dr. Spencer’s logic above (the avatar or spiritual master) Christ’s birthday of December 25, coincided with Natalis Solis Invicti (birthday of Sol, the invincible) known as a pagan god,’ how does the pagan ambience of Sol’s feast make Christmas paganish? Illogical, isn’t it? So, take it or leave it, December 25 is the actual birthday of Christ. No two ways about it! And it is not a pagan feast either! Perhaps, the skeptics don’t know this truth. They must therefore shut up over it! Again, merry merry Christmas to all my precious readers!
By Apostle Kwamena Ahinful
