Why December 25th?
Why December 25th?
A sermon by Kenneth Padley
God rest ye Unitarians, let nothing you dismay;
Remember there’s no evidence there was a Christmas Day;
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say,
O, tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact;
Glad tidings of reason and fact.[1]
This is the opening verse of a longer spoof carol, penned by a Unitarian minister to gently rib those in his own tradition who overthink the Christmas story. This verse in particular reminds us that some followers of Jesus get hung up about exactly when the Lord was born. Here is an issue bigger than a technical argument about chronology because it has implications for our entire calendar, the festival which we are approaching and also the seasons which sandwich it, the preparations of Advent and then the unfolding glory of Epiphany.
Since the Reformation, Protestants of a more reductionist bent have argued that the Bible doesn’t record Jesus’ birthday, such that December 25th should be treated like any other day of the year. To this end, puritans banned celebrations of Christmas in the early north American colonies, as well as here in England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. A similar legacy lasted much longer in Scotland, running from the 1560s down to the twentieth century, with the result that seasonal gift exchange was reserved for the secular celebrations of Hogmanay and not December 25th.
The honest truth is that we don’t know when Jesus was born. St Matthew was interested in the place of his birth. This was because Bethlehem in the land of Judah (Matthew 2.6) fulfilled the prophecy of Micah. And St Luke was keen to anchor the Nativity in the census of Augustus, the first registration taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2.1-2). Luke emphasised this grounding in history to set up a contrast between the Saviour who is Christ the Lord and the flawed government of the Roman Empire. But neither Matthew nor Luke – nor any other extant first-generation Christian – was bothered about precisely when the birth took place. This is in marked contrast to their approach to Holy Week and Easter, which we know occurred during the spring, and has obvious theological alignment with the themes of sacrifice and rescue that are central to the Jewish Passover.
I suspect the first Christians were disinterested in Jesus’ birthday because they were more occupied with the imminence of his return. They thought he would be coming back next Tuesday and so busied themselves by preaching repentance and preparation for the second advent. They did not detain themselves with annual dates which might contribute to a liturgical cycle capable of functioning ad infinitum.
However, come the second century AD and Jesus had still not returned. The result was that speculation grew about when Christians should mark his nativity. Clement of Alexandria, writing around the year 200, observed that
there are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus and in the twenty-fifth day of Pachon [that’s the 20th of May]…
However, Clement continues, the followers of Basilides,
say that it was the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, the fifteenth day of the month of Tubi [that’s January the 10th]; and some that it was the eleventh of the same month [January 6th]… Further others say that he was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty fifth of Pharmuthi [that’s April 19th/20th].[2]
Now, within those dates listed by Clement, ears may have been pricked by the reference to January 6th. At some point between Clement’s day and the fourth century, Christians in Egypt and the wider Eastern Mediterranean coalesced around this date, January 6th, as their date of choice for celebrating Jesus’ appearance, or epiphany. This festival was about Christ’s manifestation, marking not only the birth with which Matthew and Luke begin their gospels, but also Christ’s Baptism which is the narrative springboard for the opening chapters of Mark and John. While momentum grew in the east around January 6th, a similar process in the west – perhaps a little later – developed a celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th.
Why did they pick these dates, 6th January and 25th December? There are two schools of thought.[3] The better-known argument claims that Christians were trying to gazump mid-winter pagan festivities. One fourth-century Christian writer, Epiphanius of Salamis, claimed that the Alexandrians celebrated the birth of a god called Aeo to the virgin Core on January 6th. The obvious similarities with Jesus and Mary might explain the Eastern dating of Christmas. Similarly, in the West, the Emperor Aurelian had instituted a festival to the invincible Sun, Sol Invictus, at the winter solstice, then celebrated on December 25th. There is obvious resonance here with the Christian belief that Jesus is the light of the world, a possible explanation for the western dating of Christmas.
Not all scholars are on board with these History of Religion arguments. They query whether Epiphanius is a reliable witness to Alexandrian paganism, and they claim that the evidence for a Roman festival of Sol Invictus on December 25th is tenuous. These scholars prefer to explain the date of Christmas through reference to the symbolic number systems which were popular in the ancient world. They find a neat computational completeness in the idea that Jesus might have been conceived on the same date that he would later die. This would drive the visit of Gabriel to Mary into late March or early April, which in turn would give rise to a nativity in late December or early January.
Whatever the truth of the matter, we are being reminded that the traditions which we identify with Advent, Christmas and Epiphany have never been static. They have evolved down the centuries – and will doubtless continue to do so. Much of what we associate today with a ‘traditional’ Christmas is merely pastiche from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, often owing more to Charles Dickens than Christian antiquity. Nonetheless, it is the enduring resonance of mid-winter rituals which leads more people to worship in December than at any other time of the year. So those puritans with whom we began are missing a trick or two.
We need to be immersed in the emotional and spiritual cycle of a holy Advent and a joyful Christmas if we are to appreciate the greatness of what God does for us. In one sense, the date of Jesus’ birthday is indeed immaterial. However, December 25th is as good a date as any, especially for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere and who are captivated by the symbolism of darkness to light.
The twentieth century English writer Ursula Fanthorpe articulated the simultaneous insignificance and immensity of the undatable transition of time in her poem ‘From BC to AD’:
This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.
This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.
This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.[4]
[1] Oxford Handbook of Christmas (Oxford: OUP, 2020), 179; fculittle.org/sermons/if-jesus-hadnt-been-bornwould-we-have-made-him-up/
[2] Oxford Handbook of Christmas, 3
[3] Oxford Handbook of Christmas, ch. 1.
[4] Quoted in Winter (ed.), The Poets’ Christ (Oxford: Lion, 1998), 41.