Today's holiday culture wars continue an ancient struggle, as Nat Parry explores in this adaptation from his book, How Christmas Became Christmas: The Pagan and Christian Origins of the Beloved Holiday.
By Nat Parry
Medium
By focusing their wrath on what they perceive as “creeping secular
Today's holiday culture wars continue an ancient struggle, as Nat Parry explores in this adaptation from his new book, How Christmas Became Christmas: The Pagan and Christian Origins of the Beloved Holiday.
By Nat Parry
Medium
In what may be the first salvo in this year’s War on Christmas,
Holiday Origins: Is Christmas a pagan holiday?
Posted on
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.