12/30/2021
On this day, 25 December 336 CE, the first recorded celebration on this date of the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jewish refugee and radical born in what is now Palestine, took place.
The bible makes no mention of Jesus's birth date, but Christians in Egypt chose to celebrate it on 6 January. The Western church later adopted the date of 25 December – winter solstice in the Julian calendar – which some scholars believe was in order to assimilate 'heathen' celebrations of the sun on that day.
While most Christian institutions today espouse conservative views, Jesus's early followers in the Middle East practised a form of communism. Historian Roman Montero explains that: "what happened was two general kind of practices; one that we can call 'formal communism,' in that it was a regulated and formal system, and another that we can call 'informal communism' in that it was a general moral dictate that governed behavior and attitudes.
"The 'formal communism' was the collection of goods and the distribution to widows, orphans, and those in need. This was done to the extent to where there was an organised daily distribution to widows, and to the extent that they could actually live from the distribution — this was no pocket change, it was a full welfare system.
"The 'informal communism' was the idea found in Acts 4:32 where it says 'no one claimed that what they possessed was their own' (Or 'no one claimed private ownership of any possessions'). This brings us back to the moral principle of 'from each according to his ability to each according to his need,' what the Christians were doing was re-organising their framework of obligations to one another — from things like a market framework, or a patronage framework — to a communist framework. They were creating a community in which people had a primary obligation to share with his fellow; to the point to where property lines became increasingly irrelevant'."
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