Why is Christmas celebrated on 25 December?

Last year, I wrote briefly at Christmas time to deny three false and easily disprovable claims that I have heard about Christmas. Unfortunately I doubt there will ever be a time when such a response is irrelevant. Like weeds, such theories can be plucked up and thrown away, only to grow back. You can read my thoughts here.

This year, having touched on why it is not in last year’s piece (it is not because of reported pagan connections, Winter Solstice etc.), I would like to address more positively the question of why Christmas is celebrated on 25 December.   

With great certainty the man on the street says, “Jesus couldn’t have been born in December” and the minister in his sermon claims in a presumptuously unsubstantiated aside “Now we know Jesus wasn’t born in December.” The reasons for such strong denials vary. Perhaps it is a compliant reaction to the sneering claims of secularists who would love to rid the season of its religious trappings.  Or it could be a balking rejection of a perceived “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” superficial sentimentalism that does not pay respect to the weightier theological truths and practical implications of the Incarnation of God the Son.  Perhaps I am not being as charitable as I ought. It could in fact be exegetical concerns, drawn from points of detail such as shepherds watching their flocks in the field at night. As though they are very familiar with the ins and outs of animal husbandry in a Middle Eastern agrarian society two millennia ago, 21st Century Northern hemisphere Western urbanites claim that shepherds and their sheep wouldn’t be out in the fields around Bethlehem at that time of year, because it is too cold outside.

Amusing opinions aside, we are still left with the fact that the birth of Jesus the Messiah has been celebrated on or around 25 December for centuries. Why?

Before answering the question of why, the objection might be made: “Does it matter?”

Theologically, it is true that the date of Jesus’ birth is immaterial to faithfulness and devotion as a Christian, and that whether one celebrates or not, when one celebrates or not, and how one celebrates or not has nothing at all to do with a person’s right relationship with God in Christ, nor does rejection of the holiday entail in the slightest rejection of the person that I and others maintain it celebrates.

Ecclesiastically, it is possible to have a healthy church wherein some (like me!) joyfully and enthusiastically partake in the celebration and its season’s festive offerings while other brothers and sisters sincerely believe it is largely a pagan construct to be rejected. Honesty, respect, patience, reasonableness, and Christ-like humility that does not seek its own way is vital and can be cultivated to everyone’s blessing and benefit at this time.

Evangelistically, whatever one’s personal beliefs about the festival itself, Christmas is a brilliant time for engaging otherwise mostly disinterested people with the gospel of Christ. There are people whose shadows never darken the door of a church building who will be present at various Christmas services, and people in the street are eager to discuss Christmas and what it means.

So it doesn’t matter, right? Why the fuss, then?

Historically, dates matter. I believe that Jesus was a historical person, who in the words of the Apostle’s Creed, “was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.” All of these events happened in history and have dates and years associated with them including the birth of Jesus. Furthermore, certain dates were set aside in history for the commemoration of these historic events.

So why has Christmas been celebrated on 25 December for centuries?

Has it ever occurred to you, that maybe, just maybe, Christians have celebrated the birth of Christ on 25 December because… shocking I know!…they actually believed he was born then or around then?

It was believed that Jesus was conceived on the same date as his later crucifixion. Tertullian wrote in An Answer to the Jews that Jesus was crucified

in the month of March, at the times of the Passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April.

This is calculated to be 25 March, and as the date of Jesus’ death would be regarded as sharing a date with his conception, we can allow exactly nine months for the pregnancy, and arrive at 25 December. Augustine would write in On the Trinity (circa 400 AD):

For Christ is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.

The date had already been popularised some time before that throughout the 300s, with various influential figures, such as Gregory of Nazianzus (329-390), John Chrysostom (349-407), affirming a December date. Even earlier examples have been proposed, though these are sometimes disputed for textual reasons as later interpolations. The words of Hippolytus of Rome (170-235), disciple of Irenaeus the disciple of Polycarp the disciple of John the disciple of Jesus, for example. In his Commentary of Daniel (the earliest surviving Christian commentary on Scripture, written in the first decade after the year 200 AD), he reportedly wrote (again this has been contested):

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January [December 25th], the 4th day of the week [Wednesday], while Augustus was in his forty-second year, [2 or 3BC] but from Adam five thousand and five hundred years.  He suffered in the thirty third year, 8 days before the kalends of April [March 25th], the Day of Preparation, the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar [29 or 30 AD], while Rufus and Roubellion and Gaius Caesar, for the 4th time, and Gaius Cestius Saturninus were Consuls.

Whether Hippolytus said this or not, it cannot be disputed that relatively early in the history of the church, Christ’s birth came to be celebrated on 25 December not for political, pagan syncretistic, or other nefarious purposes but because it was widely and sincerely believed to be the accurate date. Is there anything about this sincerely held belief that contradicts the biblical texts?

I have already alluded to the detail of the shepherds out in the fields tending their sheep in the fields on the night of Christ’s birth. Contrary the claims of some, this far from disproves the ancient tradition of Christ’s birth in December or early January. In fact, it potentially achieves the opposite. Dr H. Epstein, a former Professor Emeritus of Animal Breeding at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, wrote of the Awassi breed of sheep indigenous to Israel (http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/p8550e/P8550E01.htm):

In Iraq, the principal lambing season of Awassi ewes is in November, and in Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Israel in December-January.

It then makes sense that the shepherds would have been in the fields on a December night, as their ewes were giving birth, and their flocks were all the more vulnerable and in need of care and protection. Those who love symbolism may justifiably be excited to contemplate that Jesus, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, could very well have been born even at the same time as lambs destined for sacrifice in the Temple.

Which brings us to potentially the most compelling piece of evidence yet for why the traditional date of Jesus’ birth in late December or early January may not be far off the mark . It relates to the conception and birth of John the Baptist. In Luke 1, we are introduced to a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to “the division of Abijah” (Luke 1:5). This is the eighth of twenty-four priestly divisions (1 Chronicles 24:1-10, Nehemiah 12:17) that each served a one week shift in the temple, twice a year. The division of Abijah would have served the eighth and thirty-second weeks of the annual cycle. Calculating backwards from Josephus’s records of the division serving in the temple during the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, the division of Abijah can be found serving in the temple in September in the year before the estimated time of Jesus birth. This fits the widespread belief in the early centuries of the church that Zechariah was fulfilling not only priestly but High Priestly duties on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and had entered not only the Holy Place but the Most Holy Place of the Temple, when the angel of the Lord appeared to him. Luke 1:9 says that he was chosen by lot to perform his task which again fits the historical facts - from 3 BC to 6AD there was not a permanent High Priest, but a temporary High Priest chosen by lot or election. This would further explain the anxiety of those waiting outside for Zechariah to emerge in Luke 1:21 – if the High Priest were unclean or his prayers on behalf of the people not received, the fear was that he would be struck dead and the people remain unforgiven. For this reason, a tradition of short High Priestly prayers on the day developed so as not to disturb the people. All of this is interesting contextual detail, and whether demonstrably true or not, was considered true by the first celebrants of Christmas. How does it help provide a December date for Jesus’ birth?

Zechariah returned home (mid to late September in our calendars) and Elizabeth conceived. She was secluded for five months (Luke 1:24). Mary conceived Jesus in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (Luke 1:26) - that is, in March. Allowing for the usual nine months, that places Jesus’ birth in December.

Early Christians did not celebrate Christmas on 25 December because they wanted to be like pagans. They did not celebrate on 25 December because they wanted to symbolically link the Incarnation of God the Son with the Winter Solstice. They celebrated Christmas on 25 December because they believed Jesus was born then, and no one seems to have thought at the time - much closer to the real event - that they were foolish for thinking so. 

Whatever your own thought on the matter, I hope you enjoy celebrating the joy, peace, and goodwill of God in Christ this Christmas.