Was Jesus born on December 25th? Let’s take a look back in time to see who chose this date and why.
We will start by going all the way back to the first Roman Calendar. Before our current Roman calendar (Gregorian) there was the Roman Julian Calendar, and before that they used the Roman Republican Calendar. The Republican Calendar was the calendar they established shortly after the foundation of the city of Rome. In fact, before they invented the terms BC and AD, they used the term AUC, ‘ab urbe condita’ meaning ‘from the founding of the city’.
“According to legend, Romulus, the founder of Rome, instituted the calendar in about 738 BC” Encyclopaedia Britannica
The city of Rome was named after its founder, Romulus. His calendar was a Lunar Calendar framed with the Equinoxes and Solstices which mark the four seasons. The Latin word ‘Equinox’ comes from roots ‘aequus’ meaning ‘Equal’ and ‘nox’ meaning ‘Night.’ Each year has two Equinoxes where the day and night are of equal lengths.
The Spring Equinox, also called the Vernal Equinox from the Latin word ‘ver’, meaning ‘spring’, marks the beginning of Spring after which the days get longer. The Fall Equinox, also called the Autumnal Equinox from the latin word ‘autumnalis’ meaning ‘pertaining to autumn’ (etymology for ‘autumn’ is unknown), marks the beginning of Autumn after which the days get shorter. The Spring Equinox is around March 21st and the Fall Equinox is around September 21st.
Halfway between each Equinox is a Solstice. A Solstice is the point at which the sun reaches its maximum or minimum daylight hours. ‘Solstice’ is from the Latin words ‘Sol’ meaning ‘sun’ and ‘stit’ which is a participial stem of ‘sistere’ meaning ‘to stand still’. The Latin word created was ‘solstitium’ which was eventually shortened to the English ‘solstice’.
On the Summer Solstice, the sun will be at its highest point in the sky and have the longest daylight hours. On the Winter Solstice, the sun will be at its lowest point in the sky and have the shortest daylight hours. The Summer Solstice is around June 21st and the Winter Solstice is around December 21st.
(download this free infographic, also available on the downloads page)
The phenomenon itself lasts a few days before and after the Equinox and Solstice date. The dates vary slightly year to year. The dates below were issued by the U.S. Naval Observatory.
Why do these dates matter? The people of Rome, like so many cultures around the world, had chosen to forget the real God, and instead made up myths to explain their world. They had studied the path of the sun and observed the lengthening and shortening of days. They took this information and weaved it into their myth of a ‘sun god’. At the winter solstice, when the sun began its ascent again, the Romans celebrated the rebirth of their mythical sun god, Sol. This date was December 25th! In fact, on the Julian Calendar, the Winter Solstice was marked as December 25th. It was only the update of the Gregorian Calendar that the date was moved back towards December 21st.
“Under the Julian Calendar, the winter solstice occurred on 25 December. With the introduction of the more accurate Gregorian calendar in 1582, the solstice slipped to the 21st” Royal Museums Greenwich
Who was this ‘sun god’? What do we know about him?
Early illustrations in caves show a solar disc and a solar chariot. They imagined the sun god racing across the sky in a chariot every day. This idea seemed to carry forward through the centuries. A temple to Sol was displayed in the middle of the Circus Maximus, a complex in Rome for chariot races. Roman circuses around the empire featured statues of Sol in their central barriers. Depictions of Sol show him in his quadriga, a racing-chariot pulled by four horses.
Photo credit: Otto Nickl, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
At first the Romans called him Sol Indiges. He was known as the protector of health, fertility, and honesty. He was associated with agriculture and considered a special patron of farmers. A festival was held for him on Aug 9 to ensure a bountiful harvest.
The first known temple to Sol Indiges was built on the Quirinal Hill, which is the highest of the seven famous hills that Rome was built on.
Photo credit: Renata3, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons title and edging added
The temple was said to have been built by Titus Tatius, king of the Sabines. The Sabines were the area’s earlier inhabitants. After some conflict, Titus eventually made an agreement with Romulus and together they ruled jointly over Rome. The Sabines were known as Quirites (from ‘Cures’, their principal town), and so all Roman citizens became known as Quirites as well.
“The word (Quirites) referred to citizens exclusively as civilians; it is said that Julius Caesar quelled a military mutiny by addressing the soldiers as ‘Quirites.’” Encyclopaedia Britannica
These people from ‘Cures’ seem to be the originators of ‘sun god’ worship in the area. Their culture was adopted by the Romans and became prominent among their other mythical deities.
The Quirinal Palace, where the President of Italy resides, is the main landmark on the Quirinal Hill today. The palace has been the residence of 30 popes, 4 kings, and 12 presidents. Napoleon was converting it to his future imperial residence when his empire collapsed. The palace was built by Pope Gregory XIII who also established our current Gregorian Calendar. The hill has always been a prized site for notable temples throughout the history of Rome. In fact, in the Quirinal Palace gardens is a trap door which leads to the remains of the temple of Quirinus. Quirinus was another god of the Sabine people, Romulus became this mythical deity after his death. The Quirinal Palace grounds photo below.
Photo credit: Ipflo, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Sol’s myth seemed to get an upgrade after Roman interactions with Syria.
“The worship of Sol assumed an entirely different character with the later importation of various sun cults from Syria. The Roman emperor Elagabalus (reigned AD 218–222) built a temple to him as Sol Invictus on the Palatine and attempted to make his worship the principal religion at Rome. The emperor Aurelian (reigned 270–275) later re-established the worship and erected a magnificent temple to Sol in the Campus Agrippae. The worship of Sol as special protector of the emperors and of the empire remained the chief imperial cult until it was replaced by Christianity.” Encyclopaedia Britannica
The emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, known as Elagabalus after his death, brought his Syrian sun god worship from Emesa because he was the hereditary high priest of the religion. He became emperor at age 14. During his reign, the emperor made the god’s name ‘Sol Invictus Elagabal’. ‘Sol Invictus’ means ‘the invincible or unconquerable sun’.
The Aramaic form of ‘Elagabal’ is ‘Ilaha Gabal’, meaning ‘God of the mountain’. This was Emesa’s version of the god Ba’al which had figured prominently in Syria as shown in tablets found at Ugarit in Northern Syria, 1929. Mountain gods had been known in Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine since Hittite times, often portrayed with eagles. Elagabal has also been compared to the Chaldaean god Gibil, which can be translated as "god of the black stone". This is because part of the worship of Elagabal involved a mysterious large conical black stone which is thought to have been a meteorite, very reminiscent of muslim worship. Images of the stone on coins show it with an eagle spreading its wings over it.
Photo credit: Saperaud, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
“[Elagabalus] placed the sun god in a chariot adorned with gold and jewels and brought him out from the city to the suburbs. A six-horse chariot carried the divinity, the horses huge and flawlessly white, with expensive gold fittings and rich ornaments. No one held the reins, and no one rode with the chariot; the vehicle was escorted as if the god himself were the charioteer. Elagabalus ran backward in front of the chariot, facing the god and holding the horses’ reins. He made the whole journey in this reverse fashion, looking up into the face of his god.” Ancient writer Herodian
Emperor Elagabalus only reigned 4 years until his death. The worship of Sol lost some prominance until later Emperor Aurelian once again brought focus to Sol and firmly established the religion in Rome.
“The feast of Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun) on December 25 was celebrated with great joy, and eventually this date was taken over by the Christians as Christmas, the birthday of Christ.” Encyclopaedia Britannica
Why would the church pick December 25th as the date to celebrate the birth of Christ, knowing it was a popular and known pagan holy day? A little known but well-documented fact is the answer. The church had a successful habit of absorbing peoples that were of different cultures and religions. They found that by substituting biblical type feasts for the local holy days, they could get the peoples to submit to their rule with less resistance. They would determine a church day that would be a good substitute for a pagan event and then tell the people they could still celebrate pretty much the same way but to switch to the church ideology instead.
This strategy is documented in a letter from Pope Gregory I to Abbot Mellitus.
They chose to substitute Christ, the light of the world, for the ‘sun god’. The people could keep all their pagan ways but do it in the name of Christ instead. It was convenient and effective. And although the church later tried to come up with a viable reason that Christ was born on December 25th so as to justify it, they really couldn’t be believed. Their methods were already known and the bible just doesn’t support it, AND birthdays themselves are pagan traditions so none of the apostles celebrated such a thing.
“In particular, during the first two centuries of Christianity there was strong opposition to recognizing birthdays of martyrs or, for that matter, of Jesus. Numerous Church Fathers offered sarcastic comments about the pagan custom of celebrating birthdays” Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Catholic church, a self-proclaimed authority, never intended on following the bible. They just used the bible as a tool for political survival and to justify their paganized Roman version of Judaism which is far from the doctrine the apostles taught. Unfortunately the Catholic church created the blueprint which many offshoots of Catholicism used. Today, the paganized version of Judaism known as ‘Christianity’ has flourished in our current and very Roman society. It is entirely removed from the true ‘Christians’ of the bible.
Jesus definitely wasn’t born on December 25th because God would never be in sync with pagan holy days. God made it very clear how He feels about false gods and even mentions Ba’al. As Paul says, there is no fellowship between darkness and light. If you are looking for the day that Christ was born, you can be sure about one thing, it definitely wasn’t December 25th!
(Note: in the Southern Hemisphere the Equinoxes are opposite to the Northern Hemisphere. Our Spring Equinox is their Autumnal, our Autumnal Equinox is their Spring. The Solstices are also opposite. Our Summer Solstice is their Winter, and our Winter Solstice is their Summer.)
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