Tea at Trianon: Reasons We Know Jesus Was Born in December

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, December 22, 2017

Reasons We Know Jesus Was Born in December

From Aleteia:

The Awassi sheep is a desert sheep, a fat-tailed breed that has existed in the Middle East for an estimated 5,000 years. It is the only indigenous breed of sheep in Israel. They are raised for wool, meat, and milk. Awassi sheep breed in the summer and drop lambs in the winter, when there is sufficient pasture for the ewes in milk. In Israel, the principal lambing season is December through January. This is practical, I thought. This is fact. This is biology.

Sheep estrus, it turns out, varies according to breed. In northern breeds, estrus is triggered by the shortening of daylight after the autumn equinox. Breeding occurs naturally in October to November, and lambs are dropped in March and April. But, as you move geographically closer to the equator, the days don’t shorten as dramatically. Instead, sheep from subtropical and tropical areas tend to breed earlier, and drop lambs in the winter, or even breed and drop lambs year round.

This one little tidbit of information, for me, crystallized all the others. Of course Jesus, the Lamb of God, was born at the same time and in the same place as all of the Passover lambs. Of course this time was such that the day of His entry to and exit from the world are the same. Of course the nativity of John the Baptist is when it is because Jesus’s birth really is when it is.

Biology places great value on symmetry, and here was a symmetry to delight my intellect, a symmetry of history and theology and biology. Earlier, I had honestly mourned the loss of my childish wondering; now I find that this understanding has produced a greater and deeper wonder at the providence of God. (Read more.)