Do you know that Jesus was not born on December 25th? Or in December at all? Americans tend to think of the birth of Christ as being in winter, envisioning Joseph trudging through snow with Mary on a donkey. But all accounts of the announcement of Jesus’ birth state that there were shepherds abiding in the fields with their flocks. Winter in Israel tends to be cold and rainy. Sometimes it snows. Shepherds would live in the fields with their flocks during the fair-weather months of late spring, summer and early fall, but in winter Jewish shepherds sought shelter for themselves and their flocks. They would not have been abiding in the fields during the time we call December.
Why December 25th?
The choice of December 25, made around 273 AD, reflects a convergence of pagan gods and the church’s identification of God’s son with the celestial sun. December 25 already hosted two other similar festivals: natalis solis invicti (the Roman “birth of the unconquered sun”), and the birthday of Mithras, the Iranian “Sun of Righteousness” worshiped by many Roman soldiers. Seeing that pagans were already exalting deities with some parallels to Jesus, church leaders decided to commandeer the date and introduce a new festival.[1]
Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the Roman empire’s favored religion.
Original records of the birth of Jesus have apparently been lost – if there were any official records. Scholars of the first two centuries squabbled over an assortment of dates in (what we know as) March, April, and May. For the first three centuries, there was no celebration of the birth of Jesus – and indeed there is no instruction to do so in the Bible. The only thing Jesus told us to celebrate is communion – the remembrance of His sacrifice for us. All other Christian holy-days are man-made.
Given all this I guess we can’t lament too much that the pagans among us now want to hijack Christmas and turn it into a celebration of greed and consumerism.
However, if we want to commemorate the birth of our savior, I don’t see any harm in that; as long as we ARE celebrating the birth of our savior and not falling into the worldly hype. It’s about a baby, born as both God and man, who became the savior of all who accept Him. That’s all.
