MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This seasonal greeting is heard often around this time of year. Christians, and others, celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on December 25th, and have been doing so for nearly 1,700 years. But did this event actually happen on the date above? There is a lot of speculation about when He was born. We’ll take a look at that, and then explain why it is celebrated in December.

If you are a reader of the Bible, there are suggestions that the birth of Christ may have taken place in the Spring or fall. Many of these clues can be found in the Gospel of Luke. The authors of the Gospels were more interested in theology at the time they penned their works, rather than chronology, as we are today. Before we get to months and dates, let’s look at the year of His birth. Year One on the Gregorian calendar was based on the year of Jesus’ birth, but that could be wrong. 

The Bible mentions in several passages that Herod the Great was king of Judea when Jesus was born. According to historians who lived in the first century, Herod actually died about 4

BC, which means Jesus was born four years earlier than stated, possibly even more. In a 2012 book Pope Benedict XVI agreed that a sixth century monk who first calculated the birth miscounted, putting the birth between 7 BC and 2 BC.

And what month was the birth? Luke’s writings don’t begin with Mary and Joseph but with another couple named Elizabeth and Zechariah, who were childless and getting up in years. Teaching in the Temple, which lasted about one week, Zechariah was visited by an angel and was told that his wife would become pregnant and bear a son who would be called John. When his time in the Temple was over, he returned home and Elizabeth did become pregnant. Their son would be John the Baptist.

How does this relate to Mary and Joseph? An angel also visited Mary and told her that she would bear a child. Luke says that this happened “in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy”. Luke states that the Temple services were divided into twenty-four groups and Zechariah was in the eighth group, placing him in the Temple around June. If Elizabeth became pregnant shortly after Zechariah finished in the Temple, and if Mary conceived six months later, that would put Jesus’ birth around September.

Now, priestly divisions served in the Temple more than once a year. If Zechariah were visited by an angel during his second Temple session, that would be six months later, moving any other evidence back six months, giving Jesus a birth in March or April.

The writings of Luke also state that there were shepherds in the fields at the time of Jesus’ birth. That would most likely be in the spring or fall, since winter months would be too cold there for sheep being in the field. It is intellectually stimulating to play with hints and clues and theories, especially when no specific date of birth is ever quoted in the Bible. But why do we celebrate in December?

The birth of Jesus wasn’t celebrated at all for the first three centuries of Christianity. The more significant holidays were the Epiphany on January 6th which is the time when the Magi arrived after Jesus’ birth. The second holiday was Easter, which celebrated Jesus’ resurrection. The first official listing of December 25th came in the year 336 AD, in an early Roman calendar. Church officials settled on this date at that time in history because they wanted the date to coincide with several pagan festivals going on at the time. Hopes were that the pagan population of Rome might accept Christianity as the empire’s official religion.

Christmas as a celebration of Jesus’ birth spread throughout the western world for the coming centuries. Many Christians still perceived the Epiphany and Easter as more important.

As New England became colonized many banned Christmas, relating the giving of gifts and decorating trees as paganistic. It wasn’t until 1870 that Christmas became a federal holiday in the United States.

For 150 years we have been celebrating an event here in the U.S. that took place 2,000 years ago. Is it important to know, for sure, when Jesus was born? Probably not, but it is a logistic puzzle for folks to figure out if they want to. 

Spring, fall, December 25th…it doesn’t really matter, as long as you understand and maintain the true meaning of Christmas. It is a celebration of life, a life that is special to oh so many people. This being said, I’ll wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS, and I’ll do the same again in the spring and fall…. just in case! God bless you all!