Monday, December 16, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 16th of December 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A very happy Monday to you- the countdown is on. It’s the 16th- I’d like to let you know that if you have any holiday yarn or knitting needs- today is my sister Lisa’s birthday- the owner of the Old Orcutt Yarnery- up in Orcutt near Santa Maria, www.oldorcuttyarnery.com Happy Birthday Lisa, and the rest of you- get your knitting supplies and tell Lisa her little brother sent you.  

We have a double mailbag today- two questions from the same family in Texas- Chris and Vianey- Vianey and the youngest have sent in questions, and this is the first time Chris and the oldest have sent in a question- let’s do the Christmas themed one first (and send me your Christmas historical and theological questions to danv@1517.org).

The younger son wanted to know if Jesus was born on the 25th of December. The answer is that we only know a few things about the birth of Jesus. For example, in Luke 2, “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.” And we read of King Herod trying to find the baby Jesus.

From these things, we can place Jesus’ birth right around 4 BC (how can Jesus be “before Christ”? Calendars, especially older ones, were hardly precise, and we get the general idea from them instead of precision).

It was not until the 300s BC- when Christianity was legalized that the Emperor, Constantine, wanted all Christians to celebrate the big holidays together- one of his most important achievements was setting the date for easter (which is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox). All the easter math has to be in place so that we always celebrate on a Sunday. But Christmas didn’t need to be celebrated on a Sunday (a Sunday service is a recreation of Easter, not Christmas), and so the same emperor, Constantine, placed Christmas on the 25th of December as it was already a common practice amongst some and then it could replace other pagan winter holidays.

You might remember Constantine’s mom as the one who made the Holy Lands and Relics popular, and this leads to a second question- this from Chris and the older son, who has been reading about King Arthur and was wondering when people started looking for the Holy Grail, and Chris wondered if this too went back to Constantine’s mother (St Helena was her name).

There is a reference to the cup in an anonymous document from around 570- but outside of that, well… no one was really looking until the 1100s. Why is this? Well, we have the Crusades and Knights and literature that makes this stuff popular- like the tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. It looks like there was an effort on behalf of these writers to make heroic and valiant and adventurous, but also deeply Christian heroes heroic valiant and adventurous, but also deeply Christian heroes,. And so, while others might go out looking for gold or love or fame, the stories about trying to find this mysterious cup (which no one cared too much about for hundreds of years) became a kind of “Christian entertainment” where our heroes are all the fun things, but ultimately looking for a relic. And this “relic” was more than just a cup- it was a way of devoting your energies to something holy and worthwhile.

In the show transcript, I will put a link to a weekend edition I did on King Arthur and the Holy Grail a while back (https://www.1517.org/podcast-overview/2023-06-10).

Thank you to the Sanchez family from El Paso, where they love their Cowboys and Whataburger… I will say, despite what I may have said in the past, I prefer Whataburger… to the Cowboys. But I do love Dr. Pepper, and that’s a Whataburger and Texas thing. It’s really fun to hear of families, couples- people who use this little show to think about and discuss the church and her history and our shared faith… emails like those remind me again what a cool thing I get to do here at 1517.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a great advent word from the Prophet Isaiah from the 11th chapter:

 There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

The Spirit of counsel and might,

The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

His delight is in the fear of the Lord,

And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes,

Nor decide by the hearing of His ears;

But with righteousness He shall judge the poor,
And decide with equity for the meek of the earth;

He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth,

And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of His loins,
And faithfulness the belt of His waist.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 16th of December 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who has found he needs some suspenders in addition to his belt of faithfulness in order to keep his trousers up… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who is really into making bread and candles these days… still pickling, but now I’ve got some paraffin wax and yeasts to play with as well… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.