In this episode we explore the date of Jesus' birth and what keeping Christmas means.
In this episode we explore the date of Jesus' birth and what keeping Christmas means.
The Dates of Christmas
December 2023
“Christmas is not a date, it is a state of mine.”
Mary Ellen Chase
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Jesus was born on December 25, 00 BCE, or CE. I have had this ingrained in my memory since childhood. There is one problem with this belief. We are curious to know if it is true.
Andrew McGowan, In a tremendous piece for the Biblical Archeological Society, states:
The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.
The early church leaders, 200 years before the codification of Jesus’s birth on December 25, were more concerned with affixing the date of his death rather than his birth. This much we do know. Long before electric lights and central heating, winter was the most feared of the seasons. It is impossible to sow and bring in harvests with limited daylight. People across the globe celebrated the lengthening of the days that begin after the high point of winter, rendered in our current calendar as December 22.
So one belief is that the birth of Jesus, like many religions, borrowed from what came before to enable greater proselytization centered on pagan beliefs. The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times for the same reason: to celebrate the lengthening of the days and the passing of the worst of winter. In 274 CE, the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast for the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) on December 25.
This brings us to the cult of Mithras, often viewed as a soldier’s particular religion. Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those “united by the handshake.” They met in underground temples, which survived in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far east as Roman Dacia, as far north as Roman Britain, and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east.
I sometimes think of the cult of Mithras as a more formal version of the Greek college system with its special rites, handshakes, and predominance of males. It appears that the annual celebration was held on December 25; the winter solstice was the most important celebration of the cult; it was believed that Mithra was born on this day, hence “the birthday of the unconquered sun.” Unsurprisingly, a lifetime soldier such as Aurelian would celebrate this religion.
Christmas, one argument goes, is a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world: If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated.
Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has problems. It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they don’t think the church chose the date. Instead, they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.
Another theory put forth by Emma Danzy, writing for Bible Study Tools, states, “Sextus Julius Africanus was a Roman believer who believed that Jesus’ conception was March 25 and nine months later would be December 25.” So this brings us back to the springtime but in terms of conception rather than birth.
Regardless of which theory is to be accepted, by 336 CE, the emperor Constantine established December 25 as the date when Christians celebrate Christ’s birth. He didn’t choose a random date. Christians had discussed various dates for this celebration, and December 25 must have become an established precedent for quite some time beforehand. Constantine, an Emperor who won the throne by vanquishing many rivals, often chose the most widely attested viewpoint since it would receive the least controversy.
And even before that, The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have known it before that time. Interestingly, his birth date has such notoriety in later centuries because early Church leaders were not as concerned with it. The earliest writings—Paul and Mark—make no mention of Jesus’ birth. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. Adds McGowen
Easter, a much earlier development than Christmas, was simply the gradual Christian reinterpretation of Passover in terms of Jesus’ Passion. Its observance could even be implied in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 5:7–8: “Our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the festival…”); it was undoubtedly a distinctively Christian feast by the mid-second century CE when the apocryphal text known as the Epistle to the Apostles has Jesus instruct his disciples to “make commemoration of [his] death, that is, the Passover.”
Like the Islamic Koran or the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, the Bible is three things simultaneously. It encapsulates two religions (three if one endorses the 6th-century borrowings of its figures). Depending on the version, it is literature, though I disappointed that I have no gift for languages in order to read an earlier version such as in Greek. And it is history.
In that latter vein, I take much of the Old Testament and specific chapters of the New with a grain of salt. I know we like to think of our religious texts as representative of God, or as in the case of the Koran, the exact wording for God, but the Old Testament as history was an oral tradition handed down by generations and only captured in writing 800 years after the first of the possible historical figures, Abraham, would have lived. It is more than just the issue of alterations to the oral histories depending on the speakers. Like every community on Earth, the Hebrews had their own biases, beliefs, and opinions, which would have permeated the text.
But what we know, historically, about Jesus makes him unique. Every religion is special, but the context of Jesus and what his birth means is something out of time. As Thomas Cahill brilliantly noted in his Desires of the Everlasting Hills, the archetype of greatness in ancient times (not so different from today) was the warrior. And none were seen as greater in Jesus’s life than Alexander of Macedon, a man who conquered and never lost a big battle. All of the “greats” of history, from Cyrus to Alexander to Pompey to Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia, were conquerors. Yet in ancient times along comes a man who extolls the values of passivity, love, compassion, and contentment.
This encapsulation of this ethos comes to life in the Beatitudes from Mathew 5 verses 3-10
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Thinking about the concept of mercy, Alexander would have thought that a weakness.
I will not comment on the often obscene commercialization of Christmas. As a good capitalist, this kind of thing happens. Though do we need Christmas messaging after Halloween instead of traditionally coming after Thanksgiving? I will not here address the replacement of Jesus with St. Nicholas, better known as Santa Claus. Ultimately, the myths around him are harmless, as most cease believing in him before age 12. I remember when a 2nd-grade classmate named Sandy explained the problematic issues with a single guy going through the world visiting every home on a sleigh on a single night. Her arguments were hard to refute, and it was the beginning of the end of my Santa period. I should note that Sandy ended up as our high school class valedictorian.
At some point, I will comment on the bastardization or secularization of the season as we have transformed Merry Christmas into Happy Holidays. I agree with “winter break,” as that connotation also fits non-Christians. But if you are a Muslim, and I wish you a “happy holiday.” which holiday are we referring to? It could be New Year or Hanukkah, but those are not the core of which this season was built. I have no issue with wishing a Muslim a happy Ramadan or wishing a Jew a good Yom Kippur. But it is always Christianity that needs to be downplayed, not these others. But I digress from my point.
I do not know which date Jesus was born, but as noted in the words from Matthew, I know why I celebrate Christmas or keep Christmas as I prefer. The concept of the latter is to capture the spirit, and as Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge stated far better than I ever could,
“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”
And
“I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.”