Today, March 25th, Is The Most Important Date In History
NewMar 26, 2023
Welcome to the most important date in the history of the world. I do not write that sentence lightly, and I want to make sure you recognize just how staggeringly important today is. A lot of stuff happened on March 25th, and when I say “a lot of stuff” I am committing one of the greatest understatements of all time.
March 25th is the date on which God created the universe. It’s the birthday of the world. You might get some people who disagree - a lot of your Evangelical friends might agree with Irish theologian James Ussher that the world was created in October in the year 4004BC - but there’s plenty of traditional belief that March 25th was the actual date. It’s likely that March 25th came to be seen as the date of Creation because it was also the traditional date of the spring equinox during the Roman period, and the spring equinox seems like a pretty good day to have birthed the world. By the way, if you travel back in time to antiquity you’ll find a lot of argument about this point, specifically about what exactly happened on March 25th - was it the day that God separated the light from the dark? Or perhaps the day that God created the stars and the moon?
But March 25th is only getting started! There are traditions that say that Adam and Eve took their infamous bites of fruit (not an apple! The Bible never says it’s an apple. The idea that it was an apple is a tradition, like the March 25th thing, and this shows us how much traditions are just as important in religion as the actual text itself) and fell. Big day in history, the moment of Original Sin. The idea that March 25th is the anniversary of the Fall is important later in Christology, and also in this piece. Remember this one.
Tradition tells us that March 25th continues to be a banger of a day in religious history as we are told by some sources that the Binding of Isaac happened on this day. This is one of those big turning point moments in religion, and not a video game, although it is also a video game. Bob Dylan summed this story up thusly:
God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe say, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No, " Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
Next time you see me comin', you better run"As the great Troubadour of Minnesota says, God asked Abraham, the great patriarch of all the Abrahamic religions, by which we mean Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. In the story Abraham takes Isaac up to a mountain and ties him up, about to kill the kid, when God jumps in and says “JK!” and lets Abraham sacrifice a ram in his stead.
The story is pretty foundational in Judaism, and it represents a spirit of sacrifice and obedience that flows through all the Abrahamic faiths. There are some scholars who have ventured the idea that the Binding of Isaac is a story that tells us of the moment in history when the Israelites stepped away from human sacrifice and began using animals; whether this is true or not is tricky, but most human civilizations have engaged in ritual human sacrifice at one point or another in their history.
These three events are enough to make March 25th an all-timer, but we’re just getting started. There are some who say that March 25th was the day that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as they engaged in their Exodus from Egypt, but that’s a bit more fringe (which is saying something). By the way, lately I’ve become very interested in the history of the Exodus and there is absolutely no historical evidence that any piece of this tale is true. I grew up thinking that there was some kind of a germ of truth to the story, that Exodus represents a cultural memory of a real event that had been turned into a fairy tale, but there is simply nothing on record that even begins to hint at any truth to the story at all. For years I imagined the Jews building the pyramids!
The next big thing to happen on March 25th is the conception of Jesus Christ himself. This is the day that the Holy Spirit entered the womb of the virginal Mary and knocked her up with God. This is the day that Joseph became cucked in the most cosmic way imaginable.
How do we know that today is the day of the conception? Math, of course! But it doesn’t go in the direction you might think - ie, they’re not counting backwards nine months from Christmas. Rather, in the ancient world people had some pretty interesting ideas, including the idea of a perfect life being one in which you die on the day that you’re conceived. It’s like a big poetic circle.
Jesus dies on March 25th (that’s the next thing that happens on this date, obviously), and that means according to these beliefs he must have been conceived on March 25th, making his life perfect. Then you do the math and count nine months forward and you get his birth on December 25th. This might fly in the face of some stuff you believe, namely that Christmas got its date to piggyback on the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and I used to believe this too, but many scholars would disagree quite strongly. In fact early Christians were warned away from celebrating Saturnalia. Rather, it seems like the birth of Christ got that date because they calculated his birth from his death, and they did this as early as the 200 CE.
Now, some elements of pagan winter equinox-adjacent festivals did make it into Christmas. The idea of gift giving, bringing green branches (and trees) into the home, stuff like this came from pagan festivals. Were they stolen by Christians trying to convert pagans? Probably not - the most likely answer is that as pagans converted they brought with them elements of their existing celebrations. History tends to be a little less insidiously planned out than many people believe it was.
OK, so Jesus is conceived on the 25th,and if you go to a Catholic church today you’ll see this in action - it’s the Feast of the Annunciation. But the idea that Jesus also died today is hidden in Catholic feast days as well, but like I said, it’s kind of hidden. See, March 25th is also the Feast Day of the Good Thief, St. Dismas. I wrote about Dismas this past Christmas (click here https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-happened-to-76365721, it’s a good story also based in tradition as opposed to scripture), but the short of it is that according to the Gospel of Luke Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One of them mocked Jesus, the other came to his defense. Jesus told that guy “Today you will be with me in paradise,” making this thief the first person to canonically enter Heaven as a dead person (there are other people in Heaven, but it’s complicated. See the link I just shared for more).
In martyrology the feast day of a saint is usually their death/martyrdom date. So if the Feast of the Good Thief is on March 25th, that means he died on the 25th, and since he died alongside Jesus… well, it’s all there. The tradition and the orthodoxy meet.
Jesus dying on the the 25th has a lot of meaning. The fact that this is the anniversary of the Fall is probably the biggest symbolism of all - Jesus dies on the same day that we were all infected by Original Sin, saving us from damnation in the process. The connection between Jesus and Adam is very heavy in tradition - if you go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus was supposedly crucified (it almost certainly is not, but it’s still a very cool place to visit), you can take stairs down from the spot where Jesus died on Golgotha and visit what is claimed to be the tomb of Adam himself. In tradition Jesus was crucified on top of the very spot where Adam was buried! In the Gospel of Mark we are told that when Jesus died there was an earthquake; tradition says that the earthquake ripped a hole in the ground beneath the cross, a hole that went down to Adam’s bones. Jesus’ blood dripped into the hole and fell onto the skull of Adam, and in the process we were all redeemed.
This is almost certainly not true, but it is incredibly metal and cool. The Jews, by the way - you know, the people who made up Adam in the first place - believe he’s buried in Hebron. The early Christians came up with this one and the Muslims followed suit (they have a whole story where Noah dug up Adam’s bones and took them with him on the Ark).
The creation of the Earth. The Fall of Man. The ultimate proof of obedience to God. The conception of Christ, and his death. All of these things happened on March 25th - today! They all happened today! Yet somehow this is not a day we celebrate. Crazy.
By the way, one more historically important thing happened on March 25th - it was on this date in the year 3019 that Frodo Baggins had his finger bitten off by Gollum, who then plunged into the fires of Mount Doom, destroying the One Ring and with it toppling the Dark Lord Sauron and felling Barad-dûr. Today marks the end of the War of the Ring, and the beginning of the closing of the Third Age.
That this should happen on March 25th is no accident! JRR Tolkien was a devout Catholic. And Lord of the Rings was Catholic indeed, but don’t take my word on it - here’s Tolkien in a letter:
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” - Letter 142, between Tolkien and Robert Murray.
How to celebrate the 25th? Maybe a viewing of The Passion of the Christ, or perhaps popping on The Return of the King (extended edition, of course). Maybe you could tie up your pet as a sacrifice and see if God steps in at any point in the process. Or maybe recognize that it’s a helluva day to be alive and just enjoy it in as relaxed and happy a way as possible.
NewMar 26, 2023
Welcome to the most important date in the history of the world. I do not write that sentence lightly, and I want to make sure you recognize just how staggeringly important today is. A lot of stuff happened on March 25th, and when I say “a lot of stuff” I am committing one of the greatest understatements of all time.
March 25th is the date on which God created the universe. It’s the birthday of the world. You might get some people who disagree - a lot of your Evangelical friends might agree with Irish theologian James Ussher that the world was created in October in the year 4004BC - but there’s plenty of traditional belief that March 25th was the actual date. It’s likely that March 25th came to be seen as the date of Creation because it was also the traditional date of the spring equinox during the Roman period, and the spring equinox seems like a pretty good day to have birthed the world. By the way, if you travel back in time to antiquity you’ll find a lot of argument about this point, specifically about what exactly happened on March 25th - was it the day that God separated the light from the dark? Or perhaps the day that God created the stars and the moon?
But March 25th is only getting started! There are traditions that say that Adam and Eve took their infamous bites of fruit (not an apple! The Bible never says it’s an apple. The idea that it was an apple is a tradition, like the March 25th thing, and this shows us how much traditions are just as important in religion as the actual text itself) and fell. Big day in history, the moment of Original Sin. The idea that March 25th is the anniversary of the Fall is important later in Christology, and also in this piece. Remember this one.
Tradition tells us that March 25th continues to be a banger of a day in religious history as we are told by some sources that the Binding of Isaac happened on this day. This is one of those big turning point moments in religion, and not a video game, although it is also a video game. Bob Dylan summed this story up thusly:
God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe say, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No, " Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
Next time you see me comin', you better run"As the great Troubadour of Minnesota says, God asked Abraham, the great patriarch of all the Abrahamic religions, by which we mean Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to kill his son Isaac as a sacrifice. In the story Abraham takes Isaac up to a mountain and ties him up, about to kill the kid, when God jumps in and says “JK!” and lets Abraham sacrifice a ram in his stead.
The story is pretty foundational in Judaism, and it represents a spirit of sacrifice and obedience that flows through all the Abrahamic faiths. There are some scholars who have ventured the idea that the Binding of Isaac is a story that tells us of the moment in history when the Israelites stepped away from human sacrifice and began using animals; whether this is true or not is tricky, but most human civilizations have engaged in ritual human sacrifice at one point or another in their history.
These three events are enough to make March 25th an all-timer, but we’re just getting started. There are some who say that March 25th was the day that the Israelites crossed the Red Sea as they engaged in their Exodus from Egypt, but that’s a bit more fringe (which is saying something). By the way, lately I’ve become very interested in the history of the Exodus and there is absolutely no historical evidence that any piece of this tale is true. I grew up thinking that there was some kind of a germ of truth to the story, that Exodus represents a cultural memory of a real event that had been turned into a fairy tale, but there is simply nothing on record that even begins to hint at any truth to the story at all. For years I imagined the Jews building the pyramids!
The next big thing to happen on March 25th is the conception of Jesus Christ himself. This is the day that the Holy Spirit entered the womb of the virginal Mary and knocked her up with God. This is the day that Joseph became cucked in the most cosmic way imaginable.
How do we know that today is the day of the conception? Math, of course! But it doesn’t go in the direction you might think - ie, they’re not counting backwards nine months from Christmas. Rather, in the ancient world people had some pretty interesting ideas, including the idea of a perfect life being one in which you die on the day that you’re conceived. It’s like a big poetic circle.
Jesus dies on March 25th (that’s the next thing that happens on this date, obviously), and that means according to these beliefs he must have been conceived on March 25th, making his life perfect. Then you do the math and count nine months forward and you get his birth on December 25th. This might fly in the face of some stuff you believe, namely that Christmas got its date to piggyback on the pagan festival of Saturnalia, and I used to believe this too, but many scholars would disagree quite strongly. In fact early Christians were warned away from celebrating Saturnalia. Rather, it seems like the birth of Christ got that date because they calculated his birth from his death, and they did this as early as the 200 CE.
Now, some elements of pagan winter equinox-adjacent festivals did make it into Christmas. The idea of gift giving, bringing green branches (and trees) into the home, stuff like this came from pagan festivals. Were they stolen by Christians trying to convert pagans? Probably not - the most likely answer is that as pagans converted they brought with them elements of their existing celebrations. History tends to be a little less insidiously planned out than many people believe it was.
OK, so Jesus is conceived on the 25th,and if you go to a Catholic church today you’ll see this in action - it’s the Feast of the Annunciation. But the idea that Jesus also died today is hidden in Catholic feast days as well, but like I said, it’s kind of hidden. See, March 25th is also the Feast Day of the Good Thief, St. Dismas. I wrote about Dismas this past Christmas (click here https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-happened-to-76365721, it’s a good story also based in tradition as opposed to scripture), but the short of it is that according to the Gospel of Luke Jesus was crucified between two thieves. One of them mocked Jesus, the other came to his defense. Jesus told that guy “Today you will be with me in paradise,” making this thief the first person to canonically enter Heaven as a dead person (there are other people in Heaven, but it’s complicated. See the link I just shared for more).
In martyrology the feast day of a saint is usually their death/martyrdom date. So if the Feast of the Good Thief is on March 25th, that means he died on the 25th, and since he died alongside Jesus… well, it’s all there. The tradition and the orthodoxy meet.
Jesus dying on the the 25th has a lot of meaning. The fact that this is the anniversary of the Fall is probably the biggest symbolism of all - Jesus dies on the same day that we were all infected by Original Sin, saving us from damnation in the process. The connection between Jesus and Adam is very heavy in tradition - if you go to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus was supposedly crucified (it almost certainly is not, but it’s still a very cool place to visit), you can take stairs down from the spot where Jesus died on Golgotha and visit what is claimed to be the tomb of Adam himself. In tradition Jesus was crucified on top of the very spot where Adam was buried! In the Gospel of Mark we are told that when Jesus died there was an earthquake; tradition says that the earthquake ripped a hole in the ground beneath the cross, a hole that went down to Adam’s bones. Jesus’ blood dripped into the hole and fell onto the skull of Adam, and in the process we were all redeemed.
This is almost certainly not true, but it is incredibly metal and cool. The Jews, by the way - you know, the people who made up Adam in the first place - believe he’s buried in Hebron. The early Christians came up with this one and the Muslims followed suit (they have a whole story where Noah dug up Adam’s bones and took them with him on the Ark).
The creation of the Earth. The Fall of Man. The ultimate proof of obedience to God. The conception of Christ, and his death. All of these things happened on March 25th - today! They all happened today! Yet somehow this is not a day we celebrate. Crazy.
By the way, one more historically important thing happened on March 25th - it was on this date in the year 3019 that Frodo Baggins had his finger bitten off by Gollum, who then plunged into the fires of Mount Doom, destroying the One Ring and with it toppling the Dark Lord Sauron and felling Barad-dûr. Today marks the end of the War of the Ring, and the beginning of the closing of the Third Age.
That this should happen on March 25th is no accident! JRR Tolkien was a devout Catholic. And Lord of the Rings was Catholic indeed, but don’t take my word on it - here’s Tolkien in a letter:
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” - Letter 142, between Tolkien and Robert Murray.
How to celebrate the 25th? Maybe a viewing of The Passion of the Christ, or perhaps popping on The Return of the King (extended edition, of course). Maybe you could tie up your pet as a sacrifice and see if God steps in at any point in the process. Or maybe recognize that it’s a helluva day to be alive and just enjoy it in as relaxed and happy a way as possible.
March 25th: A Feast of Feasts March 25, 2022
by Dominic Bulger Many of us have a favorite day of the year. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Our own birthday. The last day of school. Leap day (when it happens). Let me add a new horse to the race for the best day of the year: March 25th. Many Christians celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord on this day, and for years that was my only association with it. As it turns out, some combination of historical circumstances, fate, and tradition has placed a great deal of weight on this date, and the reason the Annunciation has been celebrated then is no mere coincidence but a participation in an older tradition preceding even the birth of Christ. So, I submit to you a list of ways in which March 25th is significant: • According to Hebrew (and later, Christian) tradition, March 25th is the date of Creation. Some traditions also place the fall of Lucifer, the fall of Adam and Eve, the passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and the Binding of Isaac on March 25th. • Furthermore, many Christian traditions celebrate the Annunciation on March 25th and historically maintained that the Crucifixion also took place on March 25th. • It’s the birthday of American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor. • It’s the feast of Dismas, the good thief (which makes perfect sense if you’re in the tradition of saying that the Crucifixion took place on March 25th). • March 25th is the day that the One Ring was cast into Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings (and, as of 2003, is celebrated internationally as Tolkien Reading Day).
by Dominic Bulger Many of us have a favorite day of the year. Christmas. Thanksgiving. Our own birthday. The last day of school. Leap day (when it happens). Let me add a new horse to the race for the best day of the year: March 25th. Many Christians celebrate the Annunciation of the Lord on this day, and for years that was my only association with it. As it turns out, some combination of historical circumstances, fate, and tradition has placed a great deal of weight on this date, and the reason the Annunciation has been celebrated then is no mere coincidence but a participation in an older tradition preceding even the birth of Christ. So, I submit to you a list of ways in which March 25th is significant: • According to Hebrew (and later, Christian) tradition, March 25th is the date of Creation. Some traditions also place the fall of Lucifer, the fall of Adam and Eve, the passing of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and the Binding of Isaac on March 25th. • Furthermore, many Christian traditions celebrate the Annunciation on March 25th and historically maintained that the Crucifixion also took place on March 25th. • It’s the birthday of American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor. • It’s the feast of Dismas, the good thief (which makes perfect sense if you’re in the tradition of saying that the Crucifixion took place on March 25th). • March 25th is the day that the One Ring was cast into Mt. Doom in The Lord of the Rings (and, as of 2003, is celebrated internationally as Tolkien Reading Day).