Reflections on Christmas

How did December 25 become Jesus’s Birthday? 

The biblical narratives of Jesus’ birth are found in Matthew 1:18, 2:23, and Luke 1:26, 2:40. Though neither of these passages provides a date (or even a direct clue) to the time of year when Jesus was born, most Christians around the world have accepted December 25 as the birthdate of the Messiah. This unprecedented birth ultimately led to the celebration of the Christmas holiday with all its accompanying festivities. Perhaps no other time of year is as widely recognized and observed around the world as Christmas. 

Christmas has long been viewed as one of the most important dates in the annual church calendar. When the non-Christian culture around us tries to secularize this special holiday, many who see themselves as Christ followers are quick to demand that we “keep Christ in Christmas!” In the thought of many, the observance of Christmas has been roughly the same since Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, and it’s our duty to uphold these longstanding Christmas traditions. It may surprise some readers, however, to learn a few things about this occasion that Andy Williams described in song as “the most wonderful time of the year.” 

The Early Church and Jesus’s Birth 

From the earliest New Testament records, there seems to have been little concern about the birth of the Savior. The pivotal interest of the earliest Christians was the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. As a result, Mark’s gospel—which is widely recognized as the earliest gospel account—begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism but excludes anything about Jesus’ birth. Moreover, the writings of Paul—which are also recognized as being among the earlier writings of the New Testament—recount only a few brief statements about Jesus’ birth (Romans 1:3, Galatians 4:4, Philippians 2:5-11) and include almost no details. 

By the second half of the first century, however, when Matthew and Luke are believed to have written their gospel accounts, there appears to be some additional interest in Jesus’ earthly origins and human nature. Both provide the most informative details about Jesus’ birth, while John, who wrote toward the end of the first century, clearly explained that “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). John’s epistles also support the idea of Jesus being born in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3, 2 John 1:7), but none of the New Testament versions of Christ’s arrival into humanity provide a date for His birth. 

Interest in Jesus’ incarnation gave rise to a series of apocryphal writings in the second century (and later centuries) known as Infancy Gospels. These non-canonical writings of dubious origin and reliability tend to focus on the background of Christ’s birth, the miraculous nature of the birth, and His childhood years. The earliest known Infancy Gospels are the Gospel of James, also known as the Protoevangelium of James (c.145) and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (c.150). While several other Infancy Gospels emerged in the centuries that followed, none of them provides a date for Christ’s birth. 

If neither the gospel accounts of Christ’s birth, the additional biblical references to Christ’s coming in the flesh, nor the earliest Infancy Gospels (pseudo gospels) provide modern Christians with Christ’s birthdate, then how do we arrive at a December 25 birthdate? There are primarily two suggestions: The Appropriation Theory and the Integral Age Theory. 

The Appropriation Theory 

The most widely offered suggestion for the use of December 25 as the birthdate for Jesus is that it was a date Christians borrowed from paganism and redefined for Christian purposes. This theory suggests that mid-winter pagan religious celebrations, often recognizing the winter solstice, were adopted by believers who Christianized the festivities so that they could participate in the merriment alongside their non-believing neighbors. In addition, it was hoped that the establishment of a date of celebration that paralleled pagan revelries might advance the cause of Christianity throughout the Roman world by providing unbelievers with a greater reason for merriment. 

One of the holidays that some have claimed had an influence on the December 25 date of Christmas is the week-long Roman festival of Saturnalia. Celebrated between December 17-23, Saturnalia has been described as the festival of lights due to its proximity to the December solstice that brought on the gradual lengthening of daylight hours. Saturnalia, which paralleled other pagan solstice festivals in northern Europe, was celebrated with parties, indulgences, and the giving and receiving of gifts. While the events surrounding the Saturnalia festival may have influenced some of the traditions of Christmas, it’s worth noting that the dates for the Saturnalia celebration did not fall on December 25. 

The more prominent claim for the Appropriation Theory is that Christians borrowed the Roman festival celebrating the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) as their date for celebrating Christ’s birth. The Cult of Sol Invictus was formed by the merging of numerous solar-related beliefs and deities from throughout the Roman Empire into a single, supreme deity that symbolized the power and authority of the emperor. In 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the festival date for celebrating the birth of Sol Invictus. Those who advance the Appropriation Theory contend that Christians merely adopted December 25 as the date for their celebration of the birth of the “true sun.” 

While it’s true that some early Christian writers, such as Ambrose of Milan (c.339-397), described Christ as the “true sun” (quoting Malachi 4:2), there are no references among the early Christian writers indicating that the church borrowed pagan festivity dates to establish December 25 as Christmas. The first known suggestion that December 25 was appropriated from pagan celebrations appears in a twelfth-century marginal note of Dionysius bar Salibi (d.1171), a Syriac Orthodox bishop from Mesopotamia, who suggested that Christmas shifted from January 6 to December 25 to align with the Sol Invictus holiday. Not until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, did the Appropriation Theory become popular within academic circles. While studies seem to indicate that many of the modern Christmas celebration customs (e.g., yule logs, wreaths, mistletoe, etc.) may have been adopted from medieval pagan practices, it’s often overlooked that the earliest mentions of December 25 as Christmas (in the third century) were during periods of persecution, when Christians were more prone to distance themselves from the pagan traditions than to adopt them. While some aspects of the modern Christmas celebration may have been borrowed from paganism, it’s highly unlikely that the December 25 date is derived from paganism. 

The Integral Age Theory 

The second suggestion for discovering the background to the December 25 date of Christmas is known as the Integral Age Theory or the Theological Calculation Theory. It is far more ancient than the Appropriation Theory, yet it’s based on some uniquely interesting presuppositions. 

A key aspect of the Integral Age Theory is the belief that the lives of Jewish prophets began and ended on the same calendar date. There are no known explicit statements regarding this full-cycle-of-life belief, but Jewish rabbinic leaders saw a parallel between divine perfection and a completion, or full cycle, of years. This notion is illustrated in the Talmud’s statement that “Moses died on the seventh of Adar and was born on the seventh of Adar.” Moreover, it seems to have been a guiding principle in the thought of several early Christian leaders who both accepted this idea and applied it to the life of Jesus. 

Around AD 200, Tertullian of Carthage (c.155-c.220) contended that Jesus died on 14 Nisan (which is March 25 in the Roman solar calendar). If Jesus’ conception was on the same day as His death, He would have been born on December 25, which is exactly nine months after His conception. While Tertullian never directly mentioned December 25 as Jesus’ birth date, or March 25 as the date of His conception (this date was later adopted as the Feast of the Annunciation), his calculation of Jesus’ death on March 25, when coupled with the belief that prophets were conceived and died on the same day, led many to accept December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth. 

Both the pseudo-Cyprianic writing, De Pascha Computus (c.240), and the anonymous Christian writing, De Solstitia et Aequinoctia (c.354), seem to have relied on the Integral Age Theory to place Jesus’s birth on December 25. Moreover, The Chronography of 354 (c.354), a fourth-century chronicle of Roman events and celebrations, explicitly identifies the Feast of the Nativity as December 25. By the early fifth century, in his book On the Trinity, Augustine of Hippo (354-430) clearly espoused the Integral Age Theory when he wrote, “For [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so that the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new tomb in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid.” 

While most Orthodox churches have now accepted December 25 as the birth date for Jesus, they traditionally held to January 6 as the date for the nativity. This date was also based on the Integral Age Theory. Using Greek calendars, the Eastern churches calculated Jesus’ death, as well as his conception, on April 6. When a nine-month gestation period was added to that date, they contended that Jesus’ birth was on January 6. Today, most Orthodox traditions celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, which commemorates the arrival of the magi to Bethlehem, on January 6 (and the modern “Twelve Days of Christmas” are derived from the intervening days between these two dates). Both the eastern and western churches in the early centuries of Christendom used what would later be defined as the Integral Age Theory to calculate the birthdate of Jesus. 

The Christmas Tradition 

One thought that is often overlooked in studies attempting to discover the date of Jesus’ birth is that early traditions about the nativity—while not expressly stated in Scripture—may have been orally transmitted within the church. Although such an idea is little more than a speculation and cannot be confirmed, it may be a speculative notion worthy of consideration. 

The earliest known unambiguous statement that Jesus was born on December 25 comes from Hippolytus of Rome (c.170-c.236) in his Commentary on Daniel, written in the early 200s. While Hippolytus may have used the Integral Age Theory to calculate his date for Jesus’ birth, he gives no clue to having done so. Thus, with no reference to Jesus’s passion or conception, Hippolytus wrote, “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, took place eight days before the kalends of January [December 25], a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year [2 or 3 BC].” The fact that Hippolytus expressed this date without feeling the need for support may suggest that a liturgical tradition regarding Jesus’ birth already existed within early Christianity. 

In the end, there’s no possibility of unquestionably determining the precise date of Jesus’ birth. Nevertheless, December 25 has served as the traditional date of Christmas since early in the history of Christianity. And today it continues to serve as an opportunity for believers to tell the world around them about the Creator who entered His creation in order to give His life as a ransom for many.