Christmas: How It All Started

The easy answer is that Christmas Day is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. The complicated answer is that Jesus wasn't actually born on the 25th of December, or in the year 1AD, and that most of the traditions of Christmas had very little to do with Jesus!

So let's start with the complicated origins of Christmas!

The Bible doesn't specifically say WHEN Jesus was born, but there is evidence to suggest it is likely to have been in September or October sometime between 7 and 4BC.

What Year?

It was over 500 years after the birth of Jesus that a monk called Dionysius Exiguus introduced a new way of numbering years, according to whether they were "before Christ" or "Anno Domini", meaning "in the year of the Lord", and another 200 years after that before another monk, called Bede, made it a popular way of recording a date. There were also discrepancies between when one year was considered to have ended and another begun; the 46BC Julian calendar and the 1582AD Gregorian calendar were attempts to resolve these differences and set a standard number of days per year, but with these complications you can imagine how a few years might get "lost" in the calculations, which explains why Jesus' birth is now reckoned to have been between the years 7 and 4 "Before Christ"!! It would be helpful if we could find a date in historical records for the census that led to Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, but although this is estimated to have begun in 7BC, back then a census could take years to complete, so more vagueness! However, the date range 7-4BC does fits in with the reign of King Herod (remember his role in the Christmas story? - he's the bad guy), who died in 4BC.

What Month?

Cold rains and occasional snow are common in Judea in the winter months of December to February, and it is very cold at night. The fact that Mary and Joseph were journeying to sign the census and that shepherds were tending their flocks out on the open hillside suggests September or October, as it was not practical to ask people to travel for a census in winter when the roads were wet and muddy -there is evidence of an earlier census being held at the same time as The Feast of Tabernacles- and sheep were not kept out in the open in winter either. It has also been suggested (see www.wildolive.co.uk) that September/October fits in with the timing of John the Baptist's conception and birth according to the date of his father's duty at the temple (as a member of the eighth division he would have served around June) and Mary's visit to John's mother, Elizabeth (see chapter one of Luke's gospel). Another possibility is that Jesus was born in March or April, but this idea is based largely on the astronomical evidence and the assumption that the Magi or "wise men" visited Jesus as soon as he was born, which is debatable, and some guess work that as the Jewish festival of Passover was held in April and many families would have come together to celebrate, this would have been an excellent time for a census (but see comment on census above).

When Did the Magi (Wise Men) Visit?

The Magi were priests and astrologers and high ranking Persian officials, and their understanding of the importance of the birth of Jesus may have been because they were descendants of the ten tribes of Israel that were taken into exile in 722BC and never re-grouped. The Bible doesn't say anywhere that there were "three wise men"! This is an assumption based on the bringing of the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, but the delegation of Magi could have consisted of at least ten or twelve men, representing the various tribes of Israel, and an armed guard. Their journey from Persia to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, and eventually to Jesus could have taken months. The story of the Magi's visit to Jesus is told in chapter two of Matthew's gospel. It says the Magi visited the "young child" Jesus at a "house", and that based on the information the Magi gave, King Herod ordered the murder of all boys in the Bethlehem area who were "two years old and under". Therefore, it is possible that actually the Magi visited Jesus up to two years after he was born, and did not see him when he was the baby in the manger (see www.ensignmessage.com/archives/moreaboutmagi.html )

So why the 25th of December?

Few, if any, early Christian celebrated the birthday of Jesus. There was no precedent for celebrating birthdays in Judaism or Christianity. None of the birth dates of any of the important figures in the Bible are known -not Adam, or Soloman, or Moses. Only two birthdays are mentioned in the Bible, those of Pharoah (Genesis 40:16-22) and King Herod (Matthew 14:6-10 and Mark 6:21-27) and celebrating birthdays was considered to have pagan overtones. Those who did commemorate his birth (not knowing when it actually was) chose to do so in spring as it is the time associated with new life. Though the evidence is very sketchy, for some reason tradition holds that Christ's birthday has been celebrated since 98AD and in 137AD the Pope (possibly Pope Hyginus) ordered that Christ's birthday should be celebrated as a solemn feast. Solemn, as in, reverent and respectful, not just an excuse for a party.

The 25th of December was announced as the official date for Christmas by Julius 1st who was pope from 337 to 352AD. It was a blatant attempt to replace various forms of winter pagan worship with something Christian-centred and was observed by the "Western" churches in Italy, France, Spain and Britain. However, the "Eastern" churches in Greece, Turkey, Israel and Egypt were being run from Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), not Rome, and chose their own date -the 6th of January- to be Christmas Day. By the beginning of the 5th century East and West had coordinated their practise, holding the 25th of December as the date of the birth of Christ and the 6th of January as the anniversary of the visit of the wise men, or Magi (also known as "Epiphany", the revealing of Jesus to the non-Jews). A difference arose again in the 18th century when the West adopted the Gregorian calendar, which led to an adjustment of 12 days, while the East retained the old calendar.

Ancient religions all held major celebrations around the Winter Solstice (the exact date changes slowly over time in late December/early January) to celebrate the victory of the strength of the Sun over the forces of darkness and to ask for the winter to end and fertility to be renewed. Most of the known Sun-deities were deemed to have been born on the 25th December: Crishna (Vishnu), Mithra (Mithras), the Egyptian Osiris, Horus, Hercules, the Greek Dionysus (Bacchus), Tammuz, Indra, Buddha, the Scandinavian goddess Frigga (see www.iahushua.com/ST-RP/xmas.htm).

The date for Christmas was chosen to override the 25th of December "Natalis Invicti Solis", Birth[day] of the Unconquered Sun, also known as "Brumalia", part of the Persian/Roman religion of Mithraism (worship of the sun god Mithras) and the Roman winter festival called "Saturnalia" (Saturn was the ancient god of agriculture), which was celebrated from December 17th to 21st. The new "Christmas" also overlapped with the Germanic "Yule" celebrations ("yule" means "wheel", ie. the sun), the "Kalends" which took place on the 1st of January, and Babylonian and Egyptian new year celebrations. These festivals included the use of incense, candles and garlands (buildings were to be brightly lit and decorated with evergreens), gift giving, and feasting and drinking (usually stemming from sacrificial rites). Choosing the 25th of December as Jesus' birthday also meant that the church could claim the 25th of March, the Spring Equinox, as the day of his conception, known as "Lady Day": another attempt to super-impose a Christian influence on a significant pagan day.

The first recording of "Christmas" -taken from the Latin for "Mass of Christ"- being a church festival celebrated on 25th of December refers to 336AD and it was throughout the 4th century that Christmas as a day to commemorate the birth of Jesus seems to have become widely observed. In Britain, the scribes of the Anglo Saxon Chronicles had referred to Christmas by name for the first time in 1043AD; prior to this it had usually been called "mid-winter mass" or the "Feast of the Nativity of Jesus Christ". As Christmas began to rival Easter as the most important Christian festival, an extended period of preparation was added to the church calendar, called "Advent", to mirror Easter's Lent.

The name "Advent" is taken from the Latin "adventus", meaning "the coming to" or "arrival". In the 5th century Advent began on the 11th of November (St Martin's Day) and consisted of a six week fast leading up to Christmas. During the 6th century it was reduced to its current length, starting on the Sunday on or nearest St Andrew's Day, which is the 30th of November, and later the fasting was dropped. A candle is lit every Sunday, representing the four centuries of waiting between the prophet Malachi (the last book in the Old Testament) and the birth of Jesus and telling the story of the lead up to Christmas. The traditional themes for the four Sundays during Advent are: God's People and the candle of hope; the Old Testament prophets and the candle of peace; John the Baptist and the candle of love; Mary the mother of Jesus and the candle of joy; then on Christmas Day the fifth candle is lit, representing the arrival of Christ.

Read about the History of Christmas Since the Fourth Century

[A full list of sources used to compile this article can be found under Links - Acknowledgements for Christmas information]