Why do we celebrate Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25?
By: Rev. Mr. Matthew Newsome
Tags: Christmas, Religion, Apologetics, Faith, Catholic

Dec. 25 is a date that even non-Christians recognize — and many even celebrate — as the day Jesus Christ was born in the little town of Bethlehem. But was Christ really born on Dec. 25? Some claim the Church only chose this date as a way of co-opting an older pagan winter-solstice holiday in an attempt to gain converts, and it really has nothing to do with Christ’s birth.

I’ve always had a difficult time buying into the argument that by “baptizing” an older pagan festival, the Church would have an easier time convincing people to become Christians. The fact that a different religion celebrates a holiday on the same day as mine wouldn’t entice me to switch faiths.

Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be any solid historical evidence that this is what happened. The pagan holiday most often claimed to be the precursor to Christmas is the Roman festival Sol Invictus (“the invincible sun”), but there is very little evidence that this festival was celebrated before the mid-fourth century. And at that time, the Nativity of Christ was being celebrated in different months of the year in various parts of the Church, the December date not yet being firmly established.

And this brings up an important point. By setting Dec. 25 as the annual celebration of the Nativity, the Church isn’t making any claims as to the historical date of Jesus’ birth. The fact is, we don’t know the day of the year on which Jesus was born, just as we don’t know the birthdays of many historical figures. Those records simply do not exist.

This may come as a surprise to us, because we commonly observe our birthdays with annual celebrations. We’d find it shocking, therefore, to meet someone who didn’t know the day they were born. But that wasn’t the case for most ancient cultures. In particular, it doesn’t appear that first-century Jews observed their birthdays. The notable exceptions were powerful political figures such as King Herod (see Mt 14:6), who were not considered good examples to imitate. Celebrating your birthday was seen as a presumptuous act of pride. It’s likely that the date of Jesus’ birth simply wasn’t a thing the early disciples were that concerned with.

The New Testament does not mention the date of Jesus’ birth at all. The earliest Church fathers to mention the day of Christ’s birth are of mixed opinion. St. Clement of Alexandria thought it was in November, but notes that others observed it in April or May. But St. Hippolytus, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine all mention in their writings the Nativity of Christ as being celebrated on Dec. 25.

So even though the historical date of Jesus’ birth was uncertain, the Church chose to commemorate it on Dec. 25. The question is why.

The correspondence with the winter solstice (the longest night of the year after which the days begin to lengthen) has led many to speculate that this was at least a borrowing from an older pagan tradition. Many pagan religions did have celebrations around the winter and summer solstices. These annual turning points on the sun’s journey across the heavens were easily observable and of great importance to agrarian peoples. But celebrating Christ’s birth on the winter solstice does not necessarily mean the Church was attempting to co-opt a pagan holiday. We must remember that Christians and pagans both live under the same sun. Both depended upon seasonal cycles to plant and harvest crops. The solstices would have important sign value for Christians as well as pagans.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) connects Christmas with the winter solstice in “The Spirit of the Liturgy” by observing that the birth of Christ is “the dawning of the new light, the true sun, of history.” He also makes an interesting connection with the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, which the Church celebrates on June 24, Jesus being conceived in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy (see Lk 1:26). This puts our observance of John the Forerunner’s birth at the summer solstice, after which the days begin to grow shorter. The link between these two dates, Ratzinger remarks, can “be seen as a liturgical and cosmological expression of the Baptist’s words, ‘He (Christ) must increase, but I must decrease’ (Jn 3:30).”

As fitting as it is for us to observe the birth of Christ, the Light of the World, as the days begin to grow longer, there is another reason the Church celebrates Christmas on Dec. 25 which has nothing to do with the solstice, and everything to do with Good Friday.

You see, though the early Christians may not have known when Jesus was born, they had a very good idea of when He died. Christ’s Passion took place during the annual Jewish feast of Passover, and we know when that occurs. There was an early tradition, attested to by Tertullian in the second century, that Christ died on March 25. Because of the tremendous cosmological significance of the death of the incarnate God and the redemption of mankind, further significance was attached to that date. The tradition arose that God created the world on March 25, and that March 25 must also have been when God Himself entered into creation. And of course that didn’t happen at the Nativity, but at the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and she conceived a son (the Son) in her womb (cf. Lk 1:31, 35). Her divine Son would be born nine months later, on Dec. 25.

Though we cannot rule out some connection between this date and older pagan festivals, Pope Benedict XVI states, “The decisive factor (for observing Christ’s Nativity on Dec. 25) was the connection of creation and the Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception. In the light of the ‘hour of Jesus,’ these dates brought the cosmos into the picture… The cosmos finds its true meaning in the Firstborn of creation, who has now entered history.”