Where December 25 first shows up, the two theories for why, what nobody can prove, and how the tree, the gifts and Saint Nicholas joined the story later.
The origin of Christmas is a real event with a date the church chose later. The Gospels never say what day Jesus was born, and the first written record of a December 25 celebration comes from a Roman almanac of AD 354.
Why that day is debated. One theory says Christians borrowed a Roman sun festival. The other says they calculated it from a March 25 date for the conception. Neither can be proven, and both sides overstate their case.
Christmas is neither a pagan holiday with a Christian coat of paint nor a birthday copied off a birth certificate. Here is what we actually have.
A calendar book called the Chronograph of 354 lists Christian martyrs by their feast days. Its first entry reads “VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae”, eight days before the Kalends of January, Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea. That is December 25.
The list inside that book is often dated to around 336, which would put a Roman December 25 feast in the generation after Constantine. Some historians think the evidence only proves 354. Either way, this is the earliest clear record.
Clement of Alexandria mentions Christians who tried to work out the day of the birth. The dates he reports are in spring, including May 20. December 25 is not on his list, which tells us the date was not yet settled.
You will read that Pope Julius I fixed the date in the 300s. That story rests on a letter quoted centuries later, and historians do not treat it as reliable. It is tradition, not evidence.
There is also a line in Hippolytus of Rome's commentary on Daniel, written in the early 200s, that gives December 25. Many scholars think that line was added by a later copyist. It gets quoted as proof on Christian websites every December, and it is too disputed to carry that weight.
Notice what is missing. The earliest believers gathered weekly to remember the resurrection, and we have no sign of a fixed birth feast before the 300s. When one came, Rome and the East picked different days.
The oldest firm record is a Roman almanac from 354. Anything earlier is either a different date, a disputed line, or a story told centuries after the fact.
Here are the two main explanations, each at its strongest.
The same 354 almanac that lists Christ's birth also marks December 25 as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun, and it puts the Saturnalia games on December 17. Emperor Aurelian promoted the cult of Sol Invictus in 274. Christians already called Jesus the light of the world and read Malachi's “sun of righteousness” as pointing to Him. In the next century Pope Leo the Great scolded believers who bowed toward the rising sun on the steps of Saint Peter's. The argument: the church set its feast on top of a popular one.
Around AD 200 Tertullian dated the crucifixion to March 25. There was an ancient idea that a great prophet's life ran in whole years, ending on the date it began. If Jesus died on March 25, He was conceived on March 25, and nine months later is December 25. Augustine later states this plainly: conceived on March 25, the day He also suffered, and born by tradition on December 25. And here is the strongest point: churches in the East that dated the passion to April 6 celebrated the birth on January 6, exactly nine months later.
Andrew McGowan of Yale Divinity School lays out both in a clear article for the Biblical Archaeology Society. On the sun theory he writes, “It is not found in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing.” He leans toward the calculation theory, and he still closes with a plain admission: “We cannot be entirely sure.”
The sun theory has a matching date and no Christian writer who says it. The calculation theory has Christian writers and a neat pattern, and no early text that says this is why the feast was set.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Every December two sets of posts go around. One says Christmas is pagan. The other says the date is proven. Both go further than the evidence.
Christmas is Saturnalia renamed, or a Mithras birthday, and Jeremiah 10 condemns the tree. Saturnalia ran from December 17 and never fell on the 25th, no ancient text anyone can produce gives a December 25 feast for Mithras, and Jeremiah 10 is about carving an idol out of wood.
Jesus was certainly born on December 25, Hippolytus proves it, and Aurelian copied the Christians. The Gospels give no date, the Hippolytus line is disputed, and the earliest document placing the sun's birthday on December 25 is that same 354 almanac, so nobody can say for sure which came first.
Here is the Sound of Heaven position. The birth of Jesus is history. The date is a choice the church made in the 300s, and we do not know the exact reasons. We think the calculation theory has the better evidence, and we will not pretend the sun had nothing to do with how the feast was received in a city full of sun worship.
The “Christmas is pagan” claim is wrong as usually stated, and it gets used on people. It gets used on new believers to make them feel defiled for a family dinner, and it gets used by skeptics to suggest the whole story of Jesus is borrowed myth. The birth in Luke is not borrowed from anyone. A church choosing a calendar day to remember it does not turn the event into a myth.
And we will not swing the other way and wave off every question with a disputed line from Hippolytus. The gospel does not need our exaggerations.
What is the earliest clear record of Christians marking Christ's birth on December 25?
Luke tells us where and how, and never gives a date. The 354 almanac lists the birth in Bethlehem on the eighth day before the Kalends of January, and its martyr list may go back to about 336. Aurelian promoted the sun cult and issued no Christian date at all.
While Rome kept December 25, most of the Eastern church celebrated the coming of Christ on January 6, a feast called Epiphany, meaning appearing or showing. It held together His birth, the visit of the Magi, and in many places His baptism. The December date spread east slowly, and not everywhere.
Clement of Alexandria reports a group in Egypt who kept a feast of Christ's baptism in early January, on dates matching January 6 or 10.
The Roman almanac records the December feast. Rome is the first place we can see it.
Gregory of Nazianzus preaches the new December feast in the capital. It does not settle there for good until later.
John Chrysostom preaches a Christmas sermon describing the December feast as a recent arrival in Antioch, known there for roughly a decade.
The Armenian Apostolic Church still keeps the birth on January 6. Orthodox churches that follow the older Julian calendar keep December 25, which currently falls on January 7 on our calendar.
That gives us the twelve days of Christmas, from December 25 to Epiphany. The West kept both feasts and let the East's January day become the celebration of the wise men. Two old traditions, joined together instead of fought over.
Most of what people picture at Christmas arrived long after the date was fixed. Some of it is history and some is legend, which is fine to enjoy as long as we call it one.
Nicholas was a real bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey, in the 300s. He was remembered for generosity, which is why gift giving gathered around his name. More on him in who Saint Nicholas was.
The secret dowry bags for three poor sisters and the slap at the Council of Nicaea come from lives written long after his death. They may preserve memory. We cannot check them.
Decorated evergreens in homes are documented in German lands by the early 1600s, and a published image of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's tree in 1848 made the custom popular in Britain and America.
The story that Martin Luther saw stars through the trees and put candles on the first Christmas tree is a later tale. Charming, and without a source from his lifetime.
The modern Santa is younger still. Dutch Sinterklaas customs in New York, the poem published in 1823 as “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, and Thomas Nast's drawings for Harper's Weekly from the 1860s built the figure most Americans know.
Customs also varied by place. Many nations bake a special loaf for the season, which fits a Savior born in Bethlehem, a name meaning house of bread. We collected some of those in bread for Christmas. And some Christians opposed the whole holiday: the Puritan colony of Massachusetts fined public celebration from 1659 to 1681. The United States made Christmas a federal holiday in 1870.
The tree and Santa are neither ancient pagan rites nor ancient Christian ones. They are mostly early modern customs, and the parts told as history deserve a label when they are really legend.
“But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.”
Galatians 4:4Paul cared about the fullness of time, not the day of the month. The Gospels are the same. Luke gives us a census, a young mother, a feeding trough and shepherds, and never a date. Matthew gives us Joseph and the Magi, and no date either. What they care about is who was born.
That is the heart of this. God did not send a message about Himself. He came as a baby to a young woman in an occupied country, and questions like how old Mary was when she had Jesus remind us how fragile that beginning was. Jesus is the clearest picture of the Father we will ever get.
Whether you should celebrate is a separate question. We treat it the way we treat Halloween: a matter of conscience between you and the Lord, and Romans 14 tells us not to judge each other over days. We lay that out in should Christians celebrate Christmas.
For related reading, see when Jesus was born, the incarnation of Jesus, what Noel means and what the word pagan means. And if you are in Long Island this December, come worship with us.
The birth of Jesus is history, the December 25 date first appears in a Roman almanac of 354, it was chosen either by calculation from March 25 or in the shadow of a sun feast or both, the East kept January 6, and the tree and Santa came much later.
Maybe someone told you the holiday is pagan and it has bothered you since. Send it in and somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and talk it through.
Christmas began as the church's annual remembrance of the birth of Jesus, which the Gospels of Matthew and Luke record without giving a date. The earliest clear record of a December 25 celebration is a Roman almanac from AD 354, whose list may go back to about 336. Before that, Christians gathered weekly to remember the resurrection and had no fixed birth feast. Eastern churches kept the birth on January 6, and customs like the tree and Santa came much later.
Not in the way it is usually claimed. Saturnalia began on December 17 and did not fall on the 25th, and no ancient source gives a December 25 feast for Mithras. The Roman sun god's birthday does appear on December 25 in the same 354 almanac, so some influence is possible. But no early Christian writer says the date was chosen to replace a pagan festival, and the event being remembered, the birth of Jesus, is not borrowed from any myth.
Nobody knows for certain. One theory says the church chose a date already honoring the Unconquered Sun so the feast would replace it. The other says Christians dated the crucifixion to March 25, believed Jesus was conceived on the same date, and counted nine months forward. Augustine states that reasoning, and Eastern churches that dated the passion to April 6 kept the birth on January 6, which supports it. Scholars still disagree.
We do not know, and neither does anyone else. Matthew and Luke describe the birth in Bethlehem during the reign of Herod and never name a day or month. Clement of Alexandria, writing around AD 200, reports Christians who guessed dates in spring. December 25 is the day the church chose to remember the birth, not a record of it. The date being uncertain does not make the birth uncertain.
For two different reasons. The Armenian Apostolic Church keeps the ancient Eastern date of January 6, when many early churches celebrated the birth and baptism of Jesus together as Epiphany. Orthodox churches that follow the older Julian calendar still keep December 25, but that day currently falls on January 7 on the calendar most of the world uses. In the West, January 6 became the feast of the Magi.