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Was
Jesus Born on the 25th of
December?:
by Arfaque
Malik
The Light (December 24, 1982; pp. 7, 8, 48, 49)
The twenty-fifth day of December,
being the Christmas day is celebrated by millions all
over the world as the birthday of Jesus Christ.
Was he born on
the twenty-fifth December? No
one knows exactly when Jesus was born.1
Exact Date
of Christ's Birth:
"It is impossible to determine
the exact date for the birth of Christ, either from the
evidence of the Gospels or from any sound
tradition."2
Did the disciples, who knew Jesus personally, celebrate his
birthday (i.e., Christmas)3
on the 25th December? "Christmas was not
among the earliest festivals of the Church. The first
evidence of the feast is from Egypt."4
The early Church had no fixed date for Christmas; "by some
it was observed in May, by some in January, and by others
combined with Epiphany."5
We learn from the Oxford Dictionary of Christian Church that
"through speculation as to time of year of Christ's birth
dates from the early 3rd Century . . . the
celebration of the anniversary does not appear to have been
general till the 4th
century."6
The Encyclopaedia Americana says: "Christmas was,
according to many authorities, not celebrated in the first
centuries of the Christian Church as the Christian usage in
general was to celebrate the death of remarkable persons
rather than their birth. A feast was established in the
memory of this event in fourth century. In the fifth century
the Western Church ordered it to be celebrated for ever on
the day of the Old Roman feast of the birth of Sol, as no
certain knowledge of the day of Christ's birth
existed."7
Thus there is "no authoritative tradition as to the date or
month of Christ's birth."8
The above historical authorities led us, as they have led
Christian scholars to conclude that the "Christmas was not
observed by Christians for the first two or three hundred
years. It got into the Western or Roman Church by the fourth
century A.D. It was not until the fifth century that Roman
Church ordered it to be celebrated as an official Christian
festival."9
Christmas
Customs:
"Most of the Christmas customs
now prevailing are not genuine Christian customs, but
heathen customs which have been absorbed or tolerated by the
Church. The Saturnalia in Rome provided the model for the
most of the merry customs of the Christmas
time."10
The pagan customs were so deeply entrenched in the daily
life that the Christian influence could not get rid of
them.
In fact "the pagan festival with its
riots and merry-making was so popular that Christians were
glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little
change in spirit and manner. Christian preachers of the West
and the Near East protested against the unseemly frivolity
with which Christ's birthday was celebrated, while
Christians of Mesopotamia accused their Western brethren of
idolatry and sun-worship for adopting this pagan
festival."11
As to the origin of the date the World Book Encyclopaedia
says: "In A.D. 354 Bishop Liberins of Rome ordered the
people to celebrate it on December 25th.
He probably chose the date because the people of Rome
already observed it as the Feast of Saturn, celebrating the
birthday of the sun."12
However, the choice of the 25th December
in the West was chiefly due to the following considerations:
"The Winter solstic was regarded as the birthday of the sun
and at Rome a pagan festival of Sol invictus was introduced
by the emperor Aurelian on 25th December
274. The Church unable to stamp out this popular festival,
spiritualized it as the feast of the Nativity of the Sun of
Righteousness."13
According to the Collier's Encyclopaedia, "The choice
of December 25 was probably influenced by the fact
that on this day the Romans celebrated the Mithraic feast of
the Sun god (Natalis Solis invicti), and that the
Saturnalia also came at this time."14
We have seen from the above
evidence that Chraistmas has its roots in paganism and
certainly did not originate in Christianity. The
next
question is, was Jesus born
on 25th December? There is no historical
evidence as to the day or month of Christ's birth and some
uncertainty exists as to the actual year. "St. Clements of
Alexandria refers to calculations which placed it in April
or May. Some such dates would better accord with the Gospel
statement that 'shepherds were watching their flocks by
night' than 25th December which falls in
the cold and rainy seasons in the hilly country of
Judaea".15
The 25th December could not have
been the birthday of Jesus. The Bible shows that at the time
"Shepherds" were still in the fields at night. As the
Encyclopaedia Britannia (1907, Vol. V, p. 611)
acknowledges, they would not have been there in the cold,
rainy season of winter (Luke 2: 8-12)."16
Accordingly, Jesus was not born in the winter season. We
have seen that when he was born "there were, in the same
country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over
their flocks by night."17
Could this have occurred in Judaea in
the month of December? "The shepherds always brought their
flocks from the mountain sides and fields and corralled them
not later than October 15, to protect them from the cold,
rainy season that followed that date. Notice that the Bible
itself proves, in songs of Solomon 2 : 11 and Ezra 10 : 9,
13 that winter was a rainy season not permitting shepherds
to abide in open fields at night."18
We read in Adam Clarke's Commentary19
that it was ancient custom among Jews to send out their
sheep to fields and deserts about the Passover in early
spring and bring them home at the commencement of the first
rain. The same authority states, "During the time they were
out, the shepherds watched them night and day. As the first
rain began early in the month of Marchesvan, which answers
to 'part of our October and November' (begins sometimes in
October), we find that the sheep were kept in the open
fields during the whole summer. And as these shepherds had
not yet brought home their flocks, it is a presumptive
argument that October had not yet commenced, and that,
consequently, our Lord was not born on the
25th of December, when no flocks were out
in the fields, nor could He have born later than September,
as the flocks were still in the fields by night. On this
very ground, the nativity in December should be given
up."20
The facts produced in these pages
may shock those who had faithfully believed that Jesus was
born on the 25th December, but they are plain
facts of history.
To conclude we shall summarise below
the
conclusions we have
reached:
1. Jesus was not born on the
25th December.
2. The early Christians were
neither aware of the "25th December"
nor celebrated the Christmas.
3. The festival was borrowed from
Pagans and spiritualised as Christmas in the fourth and
fifth century.
4. As Jesus was born at a time when
shepherds were abiding in the fields keeping watch over
their flocks by night, Jesus could not have been born,
later than September.
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1
The World
Book Encyclopaedia, U.S.A. (1977) vol. 3, p.
409.
2
Colliers
Encyclopaedia, Macmillan Educational
Corporation, New York (1980), vol. 6, p.
403.
3
Christmas in
Old English was called "Cristes Maesse" which means
"the mass of Christ" later shortened to Christ-Mass
and eventually became Christmas.
4
The Catholic
Encyclopaedia, (1908), vol. III, p.
724.
5
Everyman's
Encyclopaedia, (1978), vol. 3, p.
299.
6
The Oxford
Dictionary of Christian Church, Oxford
University Press, London (1977), p. 280.
7
Encyclopaedia
Americana (1944 edition), quoted by Herbert W.
Armstrong in "The Plain Truth About Christmas".
Worldwide Church of God, California, p.
9.
8
Chambers
Encyclopaedia, (1967), vol. 3 p.
538.
9
Herbert W.
Armstrong, The Plain Truth About Christmas,
Worldwide Church of God, California, p.
9.
10
James Hastings,
Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol.
3, pp. 608-609.
11
New Schaff
Herzog, Encyclopaedia of Religious
Knowledge, quoted by Herbert W. Armstrong in
"The Plain Truth About Christmas", a Worldwide
Church of God publication.
12
The World
Book Encyclopaedia, (1966), vol. 3, p.
416.
13
Chambers
Encyclopaedia, (1967), vol. 3, p.
528.
14
Colliers
Encyclopaedia, Macmillan Educational
Corporation (1980), vol. 6, p. 403.
15
Chambers
Encyclopaedia, London, (1955), vol. 3 p.
540.
16
The Truth
that leads to Eternal Life, Watch Tower Bible
Tract Society, New York, (1968), p. 148.
17
Luke, 2 :
8.
18
Herbert W.
Armstrong, Supra, p. 9.
19
Adam Clarke,
Commentary, New York, vol. 5, p.
370.
20
Adam Clarke,
Commentary, New York, vol. 5 page 370 quoted by
Herbert W. Armstrong in "The Plain Truth About
Christmas", Worldwise Church of God,
California, p.11.
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