As we start to look at this whole Christmas phenomenon, it makes sense to begin with the basics. The first questions any sensible person asks about Christmas are pretty straightforward: What event is this holiday supposed to commemorate, and do we know that it actually happened?
The short answers are that Christmas is a holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus, a Jewish prophet and holy man whose followers came to believe that He was the Son of God about two thousand years ago. And we know about this, despite all the years that have come and gone since, for two reasons. First, the early followers of this mysterious prophet wrote down what they and their community knew about the circumstances of His birth. Those stories are incomplete and the details are fuzzy, but there is more documentary evidence for the birth of Jesus than for many other events that historians confidently treat as factual.
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