When was Jesus born?
The young person before me began, “Some people say Jesus was born on December 25th, but I heard that’s not true. When was Jesus really born?” You can trust teens to ask the questions adults have forgotten (or are afraid) to raise.
We have one reference to the time of Jesus’ birth from the gospels. In the gospel of Luke, the “shepherds were living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” (Luke 2:8) This would point to Jesus’ birthday happening in the spring during lambing season. In winter, the sheep would have been in a sheepfold, and the shepherds indoors. However, the gospels were written primarily for theological, not historical reasons.
Well, then, how did we get to December 25th?
There are two theories today – one widely circulated in popular culture (for good or ill), and the other far more ancient, though not much discussed outside academic circles.
The popular theory is that December 25th was a Roman holiday celebrating the Natalis Invicti, “Birth of the Unconquerable One,” which coincided with the Roman celebration of the winter solstice. This fell within Saturnalia (a month-long December festival honoring the god Saturn that included feasting and gift-giving) and was also the birthday of the Persian sun god Mithra, which was a popular cult of Roman soldiers (and a major rival to Christianity in the 3rd and 4th centuries). The theory is that the Church decreed that Christmas would be held on December 25th in order to supplant a pre-existing Roman festival.
However, there is no record of this action. The intentional practice of locating Christian festivals on pagan holidays doesn’t show up until the seventh century under Pope Gregory the Great as Christianity expands into Europe.
So, what else do we have?
Scholars tell us that the earliest references to December 25th come in the early third century (204 CE), within St. Hippolytus’ commentary on the book of David, where he wrote “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th.”
Hippolytus was following Sextus Julius Africannus (a rough contemporary) who had produced a universal chronology of Christian history. Sextus calculated March 25th as Jesus’ crucifixion. He postulated Jesus was killed on the same day he had been incarnated in his mother’s womb. He also declared March 25th to be the first day of creation. His determination is undergirded by rabbinic understanding that important events come again and again at the same time of the year.
That places Jesus’ birth, on December 25th, exactly nine months later.
So, what is the answer to the teens’ question? When was Jesus born?
The first, and most honest, answer is, we really don’t know. We have some ideas about the year, but truthfully, the date is lost to history. * We do know that Jesus’ birthday was not observed much before the third century. Instead, early Christian worship focused on Jesus’ death and resurrection as the saving act in history. The great vigil of Easter celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection was the central festival of Christians (and because this marked new life, became the time for Holy Baptism.)
Over time, interest in Jesus’ birth grew as people focused on the amazing truth that God became human, and stepped into the human experience so that we might come to know God and live more as God created us to live. The church in Rome began formally celebrating Christmas on December 25th in 336 CE. However, the date was not widely accepted in the eastern part of the empire which preferred January 6th, but that is another story!
Blessings,
Nancy+
*Unless you were born in a hereditary monarchy, where births (particularly of boys) were celebrated with great fanfare, birth dates in the ancient world were often not recorded. We are far more likely to know when someone died than when they were born.