Christmas is celebrated by the majority of Christians according to the Gregorian calendar on December 25. Jesus’ birthday was not observed by early Christians, and it is unknown when exactly he was born (some scholars believe it was in early spring, about a week before Easter, when he was resurrected).
The holiday’s beginnings and its December date can be traced back to the Greco-Roman era, as commemorations most likely had their start in the second century. At least three antecedents can be identified for the December date. The Roman Christian historian Sextus Julius Africanus dates Jesus’ conception to March 25 (the same date, in his view, when the universe was created) and his birth to December 25, nine months later.
Christmas in Rome was first observed legally on December 25 in 336, under the rule of Emperor Constantine. Some have hypothesised that the selection of this date was selected with the political goal of undermining the long-established pagan rituals because Constantine had made Christianity the official religion of the empire. For another 50 years, January 6 was preferred in the Eastern Empire, where the date was not commonly accepted.
Why? Although no one is certain,speculates that it might have been the product of “a computation based on an assumed date of crucifixion of April 6 mixed with the ancient idea that prophets died on the same day of their conception.” The birthday celebration had been relocated to December 25 by the middle of the fourth century. Who decided what to do? Some accounts claim the pope was involved, but others disagree.
Our holiday of Christmas, which the Church appears to have directly appropriated from its pagan opponent, is a poignant reminder of the protracted conflict. The winter solstice, according to the Julian calendar, falls on December 25th, which is also known as the Nativity of the Sun since it marks the start of the year’s annual cycle of day lengthening and sunpower growth.
The nativity ceremony, as it seems to have been observed in Syria and Egypt, was astounding. The celebrants retreated into some inner sanctuaries, from which they burst forth at midnight with a resounding cry: “The Virgin has given birth! The light is becoming dimmer! On the occasion of the winter solstice, the Egyptians even created an image of a baby to serve as a representation of the newborn sun for his worshippers. The great Oriental goddess known to the Semites as the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess—in Semitic regions, she was a form of Astarte—was without a doubt the Virgin who conceived in this manner and gave birth to a son on December 25.
Due to the fact that Mithra’s worshippers frequently associated him with the Sun—or the Unconquered Sun, as they called him—his birth also occurred on December 25. The early Church did not observe Christ’s birthday because the Gospels make no mention of it. However, over time, Egyptian Christians came to recognise January 6 as the date of the Nativity, and by the fourth century, the practise of remembering the Savior’s birth on that day had become widely accepted across the East.
He explains that this is why the fathers changed the date of the sixth of January celebration to the twenty-fifth of December. The heathen had a tradition of lighting candles as a sign of celebration on December 25th, the day on which they commemorated the Sun’s birthday. The Christians participated in these observances and celebrations as well. As a result, when the Church’s doctors noticed that Christians were inclined toward this holiday, they sought advice and decided that the genuine Nativity should be celebrated on that day and the Epiphany feast should be celebrated on the sixth of January. As a result, up until the sixth, kindling fires have also been a common activity.
When Augustine urges his Christian friends not to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him who formed the sun, he makes a clear allusion to, if not a tacit admission of, the holiday’s pagan origins. The pestilent notion that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the “new sun,” as it was known, rather than the advent of Christ, was also refuted by Leo the Great.
By celebrating the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December, the Christian Church shifted the pagan’s adoration away from the Sun and toward him as the Sun of Righteousness.
