The NFL has a long history of avoiding playing games on the holiday because it falls on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday. But for the first time in NFL history, Friday was an NFL game, making Christmas Day a game. One Christmas Day game was played in San Diego, California, in 2009, when the San Diego Chargers played in a Friday game against the Tennessee Titans, and one in New Orleans in 2010.
The league has avoided having a pair of Christmas games since 1971 because it hasn't played a Christmas game since 1989 and all have been playoff games since. The last Friday game was Christmas 2009, and it's best the NFL will not have a game on a Friday in 2010 because the holiday falls on either a Saturday, Sunday or Monday, not a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday. After a two-year hiatus, the NFL returned for Christmas for the first time since the 1970s, with the last Friday game being Christmas 2009.
Many Orthodox and Coptic churches still use the Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on January 7, the day on which December 25 would have been in the Julian calendar. January 6th is called "Old Christmas" because it is the day when Christmas would not have been celebrated if the calendar had not changed. Yule falls at the end of December or the beginning of January and the exact date depends on lunar cycles, but the celebration of Christmas at the end of December is certainly an existing celebration that takes place at the time of the winter solstice.
The two churches also celebrate Easter on the same day, April 1st, the day after the winter solstice, but at a different time of year.
Many argue that it is historically proven that Christmas was first celebrated on a Friday, December 25, the day after the winter solstice. On this day, some say, the Christians took it from the Roman festival of Yule.
Although the exact month and date of Jesus "birth are unknown, the Western Christian Church sets Christmas on December 25, a date later adopted in the East. Although other dates have been suggested, including several in spring and autumn, chronographers in the third century considered December 25 after the winter solstice to be the most likely date of the birth of Christ. Many historians believe that the church aroused interest in this festival in order to counteract the pagan festivals around the solstices. There could be a variety of reasons that helped the early Church choose December 24 as the date for Christmas, but no historical document clearly explains the reason for setting that date at Christmas, December 25. Christian tradition says that Jesus was Jewish, and therefore some Western Christian churches have placed Christmas on the same time of year as Yule, although the dates were later taken from the East.
When you celebrate Christmas, remember that you are celebrating a real event that happened over 2000 years ago, when God sent His Son into the world as a Christmas gift for all.
The time of the winter solstice is known as Yule, although the date appears only as a date in the year 300. It is celebrated in many pagan cultures in Europe, and the first Christmas Day was celebrated on 25 December, the day after the birth of Jesus. The date of December 25 is also the same date used by the ancient Julian calendar used by the Eastern Churches to celebrate.
It was not until the end of the 19th century, when the official Christmas Day, December 25, was established, that the exact date of the first Christmas Day in the United States was fixed.
In the United States, Christmas Day was declared a federal holiday on June 26, 1870, and has been celebrated every year since. Christmas Day 2021 has historical roots in religious and cultural traditions. According to the Gregorian calendar, most Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25, the first day of the second week of December in the calendar year. But non-Christians also celebrate it, as the festival of Kwanzaa, on which it is celebrated, takes place between December 26 and January 1. Jews celebrate Hanukkah, Africans (African-Americans) On the same day as Christmas (December 27), the festival of lights is celebrated, and Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and Muslims celebrate Hanukkah on Christmas Eve. In addition to the seasonal holiday, which traditionally involves giving and celebrating Christmas with family and friends on a gift or Christmas Eve, Christmas can also be celebrated on other holidays such as New Year's Eve, New Year's Eve, Easter Sunday or New Year's Day.
In addition to the Christmas solstice, other festivals at the end of December, such as Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Festival of Lights, are celebrated on the same day as Christmas Day.
