LEARNING DAILY

 

Luke 1:30-31, Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.”

 

“The doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ teaches that Jesus was divinely conceived in the virgin Mary’s womb by the Holy Spirit, thus bringing together His two natures: deity and humanity” (David Jeremiah Study Bible). It is a wonderful event that fulfills the prophecies found in the Old Testament. But does the Bible say anything about the date of the Lord’s birth? If not, why do we celebrate His birth on December 25? I needed to do some research on this.

 

Obviously, Jesus was born; The verse from Luke gives us that answer. From what I found He was most likely not born on December 25. Scholars are more inclined to think that Jesus was born in September. Why September? They base their calculations from the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth conception as found in Luke 1. Zacharias was involved in the temple service which was calculated to be held in the middle of June.  The birth of John the Baptist was announced to Zacharias while he was burning incense to the Lord. Elizabeth probably conceived sometime between this time and the end of June. If this happened in this time frame, John was born in March of the next year.  John the Baptist was to be born six months before Jesus; that put the birth of Jesus in late September.

 

Another thought is Jesus was born in the spring because the shepherds were attending their flocks at night when the angels announced the birth of Jesus. The suggestion is lambs were being born (including the Lamb of God) which was in the spring. I’m just writing what I found.

 

The theory that seems to have dominated the research I did was that December 25 was borrowed from pagan celebrations. Let me summarize by saying that the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast to celebrate the birth of the Unconquered Sun (called Sol Invictus) on December 25. According to this thought Christians at the time chose this date to celebrate Jesus’ birth in order to encourage Christianity to spread throughout the Roman Empire. The idea was if Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God involved in it. It is interesting that the church today still wants to imitate the world, thinking that it has to be like the world to get people to come to church.

 

One other interesting thought. In the fourth century, two dates were used to celebrate Christmas.  December 25 and January 6 were celebrated by two different Christian groups. From this comes the Twelve Days of Christmas (and a partridge in a pear tree!)

 

This is just a glimpse of what can be found about the thoughts about the date of our Lord’s birth. There is a lot of pagan rituals associated with the time we celebrate Christmas. For Christians today, we celebrate the birth of our Savior. It should be celebrated every day of the year with praise and thanksgiving for the gift He gave us – the gift of salvation and eternal life though His death on a cross. Coming to this earth in a humble way -whenever the day actually was - only reminds me of the promise that He will return as the conquering King of kings and Lord of lords.  Joy to the world! “Glory to God in the highest and on earth and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”