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Christmas: What it means and how it began-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Celebrated by over two billion people across the world, Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, a fact reflected even in translation: Naththal in Sinhala and Kristumas in Tamil. While most of its symbols were later cultural borrowings, its essence survives through the life story of Christ as related in the New Testament, in particular the four Gospels, two of which directly refer to Christ’s birth or Nativity: Matthew and Luke. The exact biographical details come to us from second-hand accounts, as with other religious leaders from that period, but what all these narratives tell us is the story of a poor carpenter’s son, preaching salvation and earning the ire and retribution of the government of Roman Judea. We do not know whether December 25 was the actual date of the Nativity or whether it was a date chosen by the first Church ...