Ghosts of Christmas Past

A list of a few strange things that happened on this date

• 274 CE-The Roman Emperor Aurelian opens a temple in Rome dedicated to Sol Invictus, the Invincible Unconquered Sun, a god that appears to have been a mish-mash of sun gods from several different cultures and pagan religions of the Empire. He even had coins made with this god on them, such as this one stolen by a citizen of a later Empire and now residing in the British Museum

  

• 3rd and 4th Centuries, Roman Empire. December 25 is the birthday of Mithras, a Persian soldier god. Mithraism was a serious rival to Roman Christianity.

• Entirely coincidentally, the official Imperial Roman Catholic Church starts celebrating December 25 as Jesus’ birthday no later than 352.

• There was this dude named Sextus Julius Africanus, who figured in 221 that Mary got knocked up by God on the spring equinox, 1 BCE, therefore add nine months and voila’, Jesus must have been born on December 25. Nobody in the Church paid much attention to him until after Sol Invictus started looking cool to an annoyingly large number of Romans.

• 800-Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor #1 by the Pope his own self, starting a tradition of a cast of characters having themselves crowned Emperor or King or Queen or Head Motherfucker In Charge(HMFIC) for the next thousand years plus.

• 1492-In a small illustration of instant karma, Columbus’ ship Santa Maria sank.

  

• 1621-Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony forbade the playing of games on Christmas Day. My family will honor him with a game of Sorry! later.

  

• 1656-A Dutch fellow named Christiaan Huygens invented the pendulum clock.

  

• 1741-Celsius invented the centigrade scale, sparking the C/F degree war that is over everywhere except the United States.

• 1776-George Washington led the Continental Army across the Delaware River, most assuredly sitting down while on the damned boat, to surprise a Hessian garrison at Trenton, preserving his army and the Revolution itself with the win.

• 1831-Louisiana and Arkansas become the first states to observe Christmas as a state holiday.

• 1868-President Andrew Johnson pardoned all the Confederates who were convicted of insurrection against the federal government. The reaction to that was Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, prohibiting convicted insurrectionists from holding federal office.

• 1899-Merry Christmas, invaders! The Boers fire a shell loaded with plum pudding to besieged British soldiers in Ladysmith during the First Boer War.

• 1914-British and German soldiers play football with each other during the Christmas Truce, greatly alarming officers on both sides.

• 1932-Loki strikes! King George V of Great Britain, Emperor of India and other pomposities, has his chair collapse under him while giving his Christmas speech.

• 1939-Montgomery Ward publishes Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

  

• 1962-Take this for Christmas, capitalist swine! The USSR conducts an open air nuclear test on Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic.

• 1972-Not to be outdone, Richard Nixon orders inhabited cities in North Vietnam to be bombed so that there can be peace.

• 1973-The first pictures of a comet from space are taken by astronauts on Skylab. Here’s a better one from 4 days later.

  

• 1974-A hurricane named Tracy, OK a cyclone-messes up Darwin, Australia really bad.

  

• 1979-The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

• 1989-Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena are executed for “genocide and personal enrichment.”

• 1991-Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union.

• 1995-Emmett Smith of the Dallas Cowboys had a really great game.

• 2023-Palestinian Christians pray for the day that this Christmas is only a memory.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day whatever your faith or lack thereof.