2 - Jesus was not born on December 25th

The majority of scholars that studied the Bible admit that Jesus was not born on 25^th December.

During the first two centuries Christians did not celebrate Christmas. They only became interested in Jesus’ birthday when they decided to organize the year by basing themselves on Jesus’ life. Ancient manuscripts inform us that at the end of the second century there was a controversy regarding the different dates for Jesus’ birthday (6^th or 10^th January, 19^th or 20^th April, 20^th May, 18^th November), and that some years later the theologian Origen of Alexandria said that only sinners celebrated the birthdays of their kings, whereas Christians celebrated the dates on which their martyrs had died, since that was when they entered heaven. This shows that the first Christians neither celebrated Jesus’ birthday nor knew exactly when he had been born.

Scholars assume that the date of 25^th December was imposed by the Roman emperor Constantine, who was interested in having one religion for all Roman citizens. At that time there existed another monotheistic religion, Mithraism, also called Sol Invictus (the Unconquerable Sun), which celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, when the sun is reborn. In those days, when the Julian calendar was in use, this day was 25^th December. For practical reasons, the Christian authorities agreed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday on that day.

Christianity also adopted other characteristics from that other monotheistic religion. Sol Invictus also caused Christians to change their traditional weekly day of rest from Saturday to Sunday, the day of week which in several languages is dedicated to the sun. The English word ‘Sunday’, for instance, means ‘day of the sun’.

Christian authorities later explained these decisions in a different way. In relation to Jesus’ birthday, they pointed out that in the year 221 Sextus Julios Africanus referred to 25^th March as being the day of both the Annunciation and the Passion of Jesus, which, with a nine-month pregnancy, points to 25^th December as his birthday. And with regard to the celebration of the weekly mass, they pointed out that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday.

When was Jesus really born? To find out, some have studied the Gospels. After analyzing all the information (the fact that the shepherds who worshipped Jesus had slept in the open suggests it was not winter / winter is not the best time to organize a census), they offered a certain date. However, all that information is not necessarily correct. Since several details relating to Jesus’ birth come from religions that predate Christianity, the authors of those gospels may simply have added certain information on purpose in order to convince the Pagans that Jesus was the ‘saviour of the world’ they were awaiting.

So do we not know when Jesus was born? There is a good reason for assuming that he was born on 1^st January. Why? Because when we reflect upon the Christian calendar we see that it is logical to start it with both the year and the day of Jesus’ birth.

One would expect a society that attaches so much importance to the winter solstice to start the year on that day, as this would give them a calendar in which the first three months correspond to winter, the next three to spring, the following three to summer and the last three to autumn. The fact that we celebrate the winter solstice (Christmas) but do not start the year on that day seems to indicate that, even though the Christian authorities agreed to celebrate Jesus’ birthday on that day, they did not want to lose sight of when he was really born: the day on which they started the new year.

When we now look at the Calendar of Saints, we see that on 1^st January, the first day of the year, Christians celebrate the name of Jesus, which is also Immanuel or Manuel, which shows that the Christian authorities did indeed associate that day with Jesus’ birthday.