(Image: Ben White/Unsplash.com)
Denver Newsroom, Dec 13, 2020 / 04:58 am (CNA).- ‘Tis the season to be jolly, and, perhaps, to have one’s social media inundated with memes about Christmas being nothing more than a co-opted pagan holiday – maybe a winter solstice celebration – repurposed and baptized by Christianity.
“There are dozens of religions in mythology that have had visits by wise men, kings who’ve killed children to stop the new king being born…there’s a great deal of Christianity that is traditional, and however wonderful people think the story is, it’s frankly not original,” Stephen Fry, an actor and self-proclaimed atheist, said in a mid-2000s Christmas episode of the British comedy show, QI.
Holiday Origins: Is Christmas a pagan holiday?
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Several years ago, in a documentary called “Religulous” (clever, right?), Bill Maher claimed that most of the story of Christ, especially the parts about His birth, were cribbed from pagan mythology. After all, Maher claimed, the Egyptian God Horus was born of a virgin on December 25th, was baptized, had twelve disciples, performed miracles, and ultimately died and rose again. Christianity, said Maher, is nothing but a cheap knockoff.
The problem is, as numerous critics have pointed out, Maher’s claims are complete nonsense. No original source material backs up his description of Horus or, for that matter, of Mithras or Krishna, two other deities Maher claims early Christians copied.