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Old Christmas & Coptic Christians There are times when I have some random thoughts that do not make a complete article but may be worthy of print. This article falls into that category. Old Christmas My sister was telling me about a conversation she had with our Grandpa Beasley. He was talking about "Old Christmas" and people observing Christmas in January as opposed to December 25th. I decided to look this up and found that there was something called "Old Christmas." One source said this was on January 6th which is 12 days after December 25th. This was supposedly the day the wise men showed up to see Jesus. Therefore January 6th is the day Jesus appeared to the gentiles (the wise men) as Christ the Savior. Another and probably more reliable site gives this information. Until the time of Julius Caesar the Roman year was organized around the phases of the moon. For many reasons this was hopelessly inaccurate, so on the advice of his astronomers, Julius instituted a calendar centered around the sun. It was decreed that one year was to consist of three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days, divided into twelve months; the month of Quirinus was renamed 'July' to commemorate the Julian reform. Unfortunately, despite the introduction of leap years, the Julian calendar overestimated the length of the year by eleven minutes fifteen seconds, which comes to one day every one hundred and twenty-eight years. By the sixteenth century the calendar was ten days out. In 1582, reforms instituted by Pope Gregory XIII, lopped the eleven minutes fifteen seconds off the length of a year and deleted the spare ten days. This new Gregorian calendar was adopted throughout Catholic Europe. Protestant Europe was not going to be told what day it was by the Pope, so it kept to the old Julian calendar. This meant that London was a full ten days ahead of Paris. By the time England adopted the Gregorian calendar in the middle of the eighteenth century, England was eleven days ahead of the Continent. A Calendar Act was passed in 1751 which stated that in order to bring England into line, the day following the 2nd of September 1752 was to be called the 14th, rather than the 3rd of September. Unfortunately, many people were not able to understand this simple maneuver and thought that the government had stolen eleven days of their lives. In some parts there were riots and shouts of 'give us back our eleven days!' Before the calendar was reformed, England celebrated Christmas on the equivalent of the 6th of January by our modern, Gregorian reckoning. That is why in some parts of Great Britain people still call the 6th of January, Old Christmas Day. --http://www.christmas-time.com/cp-old.html I can add that due to the time it took for news to travel in the 1700's a lot of people were not aware of the change from January 6th to December 25th for a number of years. A lot of people in Kentucky came from North Carolina and those traditions continued for a number of years. What I find interesting is that people are still bound by human traditions. "Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2.8). Early Christians did not celebrate the birth of Jesus, period. They recognized the fulfillment of prophecies concerning his birth, but they did not observe a special day to remember His birth. That came about many years later. We as Christians observe His death every first day of every week, as taught in the Bible, see Matthew 26.26-28; Acts 20.7; 1 Corinthians 11.24-26. Coptic Christians? Last year we saw and heard of the "Arab Spring." This was a time of uprising in numerous Middle East countries such as Egypt and Libya. This resulted in new governments controlled by fundamental Muslims. News reports stated that "Coptic Christians" were facing persecution. They had church buildings set on fire and were being beaten. I had never heard of these "Coptic Christians" so here is what I found. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria[1] is the official name for the largest Christian church in Egypt and the Middle East. The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different position over Christological theology from that of the body of churches that would later split into Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_Orthodox_Church_of_Alexandria In Church History we read of the formation of the Catholic Church. This did not happen overnight, but took many years to occur. One group that split off during this time period was this group which later came to be called "The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria." The split was over the nature of Jesus. Coptic refers to the first "Christians" in Egypt speaking Coptic Egyptian. It is estimated there are 20 million members of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the world and about 7 million live in Egypt. About 95% of those claiming to be Christians in Egypt are identified with the Coptic Church. Once again we see the prayer of Jesus in John 17.20-21 for unity among His people being ignored. On the Day of Pentecost there were no "Coptic Christians." The Ethiopian Eunuch did not start a new branch of Christianity in Ethiopia, he was simply a Christian. Such is true today. We are not Campbellites or Stone-ites or any other "ite." We are simply Christians. -- Dennis Tucker |