Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Jeffy's Corner: Busting Christmas Myths

Episode Date: December 19, 2015

Jeff Fisher is live from 6am to 8am ET, Saturday. Listen for free on The Blaze Radio Network: www.theblaze.com/radio & www.iheart.comFollow Jeffy on Twitter: @JeffyMRA &Like Jeffy's Facebook: www.facebook.com/JeffFisherRadio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Jeff Fisher Show. This podcast brought to you by My Patriot Supply. Did you miss the chance to get a 72-hour emergency food supply with free shipping for just $10? What's wrong with you? Don't worry. Call 888-4-1-1-744. Right now, they have a few left and they're selling out fast. 888-4-1-744. What are you waiting for?

A disaster? Do it right now. 8-88-4-1-744. Let's talk about Christmas. This is the next Friday, right? This is Saturday. So it's less than a week away, so you still have a week to do your last-minute Christmas shopping. And I want to see what you have as far as your worst and best Christmas gifts ever.

You can tweet those at the Blaze Brad. The phone number, too, if you're awake this early. All six of you and Jeffey. 888-933. 888933.93, that is the phone number. Let us know. Christian myths or Christmas myths. These were, and one of these in particular, that I have avoided doing because I thought it was, I guess, sacrilegious. I just thought it was a bad thing to do this. But let's start at the top. First of all, Jesus was not born on December 25th. But I've always wondered that because it doesn't, you know, you look through the facts of the Bible. It's just, you know, there's things don't line up that way. According to scholars, it's unlikely that the Christchal

arrived over the day that we celebrate as Christmas, or even during the winter season for that matter. For one thing, it says we're told of shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night. That's in Luke 2.8. Decembers in Bethlehem are cold, regularly drop below freezing once it gets dark, which means that most shepherds only kept watch in the field from April to October. In the winter, they sheltered their flocks. and stayed inside because they were smart.

And the census decreed by Caesar Augustus, it required travel. And no self-respecting government, our governing authority would ever schedule such a major undertaking during the winter months. I think they just called the government lazy. When bad weather, muddy roads and angry citizens would foul things up, these usually took place in September or October after the harvest season. Celebrating Christ's birth on December 25th was popularized in the fourth century as a way to steal the limelight from the winter solstice. and it's linked to pagan feasts celebrating the Roman sun god

and the Persian god Mithras. There you go. Most scholars think Jesus was born toward the end of September and for those of you keeping score at home is probably the year 6 BC, not 0 AD. So that's the first myth. So I think we should rearrange the calendar.

Three wise men, this is the second myth that they're busting. They did not appear at Christ's birth. These guys' fixtures in every nativity scene that you see everywhere. They show up at every manger accompanied by camels. It is kind of strange. None of this really in the Bible, they say. Matthew 2 talks about wise men from the east.

They follow the star, looking for the king of the Jews. They make it to Jerusalem. They have a run-in with King Herod. Next stop, Bethlehem. That's where they find Jesus. Matthew describes Jesus as a young child not a baby with his mother in a house and not a manger. No indication that there were three of these wise men either.

That's the assumption apparently made because we talk about and have been taught the three gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But as this article says, could have been a dozen of these guys for all we know, each one having two or three of those gifts. Nothing about camels or flowing capes or a sparkly crown. either. They probably did all of this simply to save on nativity scenes because you can't put up like a dozen wise men. Nothing to indicate they were kings. In fact, most scholars figure they were astrologers. And since the passage specifies them meeting the young child in a house, many believe

the wise men didn't deliver the gifts immediately after the birth. It could have been a couple of years later after they checked the gift registry at Target, no doubt. So everything we think we know about wise men comes from sources other than the Bible. Isn't that funny? How things just become common knowledge even when they're not true. Wow. Where have we heard that before? The second verse of a way in a manger is a crock. This is number three. This is the third Christmas myth. The second verse being, the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. when have you ever ever heard of a baby that doesn't cry

you know what I'm saying it's not part of the original song it first appeared as a poem the song did in a Lutheran Sunday school book in 1885 verse 2 was added somewhere in the early 1900s

by a Methodist minister for children's program it implies that baby Jesus obviously didn't cry even though the cows were making a bunch of noise because they were taking up space in their home essentially. But if you think about it, one of the precepts of Christianity, Christ was fully human, not some super baby.

That means the little Lord Jesus acted just like an infant. He said, he spit up, he peed, he left a few deposits in his swaddling clothes. He cried like a baby. So that is the third myth. So we've covered three wise men. There may or may not have been. Jesus was not born on December 25th. Second verse of a way in a manger is a crock.

And people, this is the one that I've always avoided doing this simply because I thought it was, I guess, sacrilegious is the word, taking Christ out of Christmas, etc. People who call it Xmas are taking the Christ out of Christmas. That is a total myth. Wait, what? Yeah. If you start feeling the way I did, when you, you know, you, it just takes a long time to write Christmas and you can write X-Mus. It's faster. You're fast people.

Fast lives. We have no time to write those extra three or four letters. Here's the thing. The first letter in the Greek word for Christ is, is it Chia or Chi? It's one of those. It's C-H-I. It's a great TV show, by the way. CHI, Las Vegas.

And in the Roman alphabet, Chai is represented by the symbol X. So guess what? X-Mus is an entirely justifiable replacement for Christmas. And it apparently goes back a long way. People who use it are not demeaning Christ. They're appropriating usage that's probably as old as the faith itself. So if you want to write X-Mus instead of Christmas, you are not being sacrilegious, nor are you taking Christ out of Christmas.

This podcast brought to you by My Patriot Supply. Did you miss the chance to get a 72-hour emergency food supply with free shipping for just $10? What's wrong with you? Don't worry. Call 888-4-1-1-7440. Right now they have a few left and they're selling out fast. 888-4-1-744. What are you waiting for?

A disaster? Do it right now. 888-411 744.