The Bible and...: Part 6f: Tradition: The Christian Year

The Bible and...: Part 6f: Tradition: The Christian Year
Thursday, June 6, 2024 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today

Christmas. Where did it come from? Why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25 (or January 6 in the Christian East?).

The Bible doesn’t tell us a specific date when Christ was born. For many, December 25 is linked with sun-oriented pagan worship in ancient Rome, if not even earlier (Hislop). At a casual glance, that would appear to have some validity. But does it?

First, although the Advent/Christmas cycle appeared later in its final form in the Church than the Lent/Pascha cycle, it nevertheless began not that long after serious Roman persecutions of the Church. It is highly unlikely that the Church would co-opt any sort of pagan celebration after a time of major persecution with its related martyrdoms.

Second, sun worship wasn’t the basis for choosing the date of celebrationg Christ’s birth. It is true that Aurelian instituted the pagan feast in celebration of the sun, solis invicti on December 25, 274 A.D. Records exist that the celebration of Christ’s birth date at least to 250 A.D., most prominently in Bethlehem. However, much of the early church, and definitely at Bethlehem, the date of that celebration was January 6, not December 25. Also, when Constantine moved his capital to Constantinople, he did not institute the celebration of Christmas.

One key book on the topic—I have it on my bookshelf—is Egeria’s Travels. It is generally believed to have been written sometime around 381–384 A.D., give or take. Egeria was a Spanish nun who made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and wrote a diary regarding her travels. From her, we have a full account of both the Christmas and Pascha celebrations that took place at Jerusalem at that time.

Third, what about Christ’s birth? As already stated, the Bible doesn’t tell us the date when Christ was born. But, there are traditional ways of thinking that escape us in the modern or post-modern West. There is an old Jewish tradition that Abraham was born and died on the same calendar day, a mark of his relationship with God. That tradition is adopted when considering Jesus’s birth.

In Jesus’s case, the tradition holds that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day. Jesus’s crucifixion has been held to have been March 25 (or April 6 in the Christian East). With Jesus being conceived on that date, that places his birth, nine months later, on December 25 (or January 6 in the Christian East).

In our hubris, why do we so quickly dismiss ancient ways of thinking? In many ways, as in medicine, we do have all kinds of knowledge the ancients didn’t. Yet, in terms of acoustics, with all our technology, we’ve never been able to equal what they accomplished. The point, however, is that the Christian celebration of Christmas doesn’t trace to pagan celebrations, but to other ancient ways of thought.

What about the December 25/January 6 discrepancy for Christmas, or the March 25/April 6 difference for the celebration of Pascha? In the West, in our time, we tend to think in terms of the standardized solar calendar. We forget that for some purposes, alternate calendars still exist (often lunar rather than solar): Chinese, Jewish, and Islamic dating, to name three. In previous times calendars were even less uniform, and even the “standard” solar calendar was different in the Christian East and West. To this day the Orthodox East still uses the Julian solar calendar and the Christian West, the Gregorian. As of 2100, the difference between the two will be up to 13 days.

When the Christian year was standardized, it was decided to bookend the Christmas season using both calendar dates at that time: December 25, the Western date, starts the season, and the Eastern date, January 5, closing it, with Epiphany taking place on January 6.

We will discuss the seasons of the Christian Year in the next post.

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