Jeremiah 51-52

Reading for Tuesday August 27, 2019

Jeremiah 52:31
 And in the thirty-seventh year of the exile of Jehoiachin king of Judah, in the twelfth month, on the twenty-fifth day of the month, Evil-merodach king of Babylon, in the year that he became king, graciously freed Jehoiachin king of Judah and brought him out of prison

By my calculations, the 25th day of the 12th month is Christmas.  Is the date of any significance in Babylon 1000 years before it would be celebrated as Christmas?

Historical Context

     The name Babylon comes from the tower of babel which was being built until God dispersed the people and confounded their languages.  The story of babel takes place not long after people came off the ark.  When these people dispersed to all parts of the world, they took with them the oral traditions which told of the creation and the flood.   Over time, theses stories would become a part of the legends of many cultures around the world.  They also took with them a religion which unfortunately was not the one of God.  The great grandson of Noah, Nimrod, had though himself a god greater than God.  The building of the tower was an attempt to defy God.  He sought to build a tower that would reach above any attempt by God to again flood the earth.  When Nimrod was killed his body was diced up and left in a field.  His wife, who was his mother, claimed that an evergreen tree grew overnight on that spot and that the spirit of Nimrod would come and leave gifts under that tree every December 25th.  The worship of Nimrod would become the worship of baal, and parts of his story would be the basis for pagan religions around the world.  The Romans celebrated December 25th as saturnalia and many of the practices carried into Christianity in the 4th century.


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