The issue of the
time of the birth of Christ has been addressed by many people in the past, both
scholars and theologians, so what I intend to do here is present an overview
trying to bring some clarity to the topic for those who are really concerned
that the 25th of December may not be the correct time to celebrate
Christmas.
Let me start by
saying that there are two pieces of evidence, which people present in support
of the position that Christ was not born in December:
The first one is
the verse from the Gospel of Luke, “And in that region there were shepherds out
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.” (Luke 2:8) The argument
from this is that December is too cold for shepherds to be in the field
watching over their flocks! Hence, the proponents of this theory claim that
Jesus had to be born in the spring. I read recently on an online website a
second claim based on the same reason, which suggests that Jesus was probably
born in the fall, before it got cold. I am sure that someone out there must
have also claimed that Jesus was born in the summer, instead!
At first sight, any
one of these times claimed by the different theorists may seem reasonable, but
without more historical evidence they are just claims, because you cannot rule
out the possibility that some shepherds could have been there watching over
their flocks by night in the area of Bethlehem even in December. Shepherds had
summer pens and then moved their sheep into the caves of the area during the
winter. The sheep were not grazing in the field by night. The shepherds were
just guarding their flocks; perhaps taking turns overnight, as the sheep were
in their pens in the nearby caves. Although the weather in these parts of the
world can be cold in December, it can also be warm enough for the shepherds to
still take their flocks out during the day, but bring them back inside the
caves at night where it is much warmer than in their summer pens – a practice
prevalent in some places the Middle East even until today.
The second piece of
evidence, which the proponents of an alternate time for Christmas present, is
the fact that the ancient pagans celebrated on December 25 the birth of the God
Sun. As a follow-up syllogism, they conclude that Christians adopted December
25 to cover up the pagan feast, ignoring the historical date of his birth. It
is, in fact true that many pagan feasts were Christianized during the fourth
century and subsequently, which makes this a reasonable claim. Still, this is
no proof that the birth of Christ did not take place at some time in December,
even if it was not exactly on December 25, and even if the Christians
intentionally overlaid the birth of Christ over the pagan feast.
As we look for more
evidence, we discover that the feast of Christmas was first celebrated at the
beginning of the fourth century, first in Rome (in 336 AD) and subsequently in
the Eastern parts of the Empire by the end of the fourth century, where we find
a sermon by St. John Chrysostom explaining why celebrating Christmas in
December and especially on December 25 is appropriate and has historical proof
in the events of the New Testament.
St. Chrysostom,
preaching at the end of the fourth century in Antioch, about ten years after
the feast of Christmas was established in the East (as he himself informs us),
offers a contemporary account of the reasoning behind the choice of December 25
as the day for celebrating the birth of Christ. He is addressing people who
disputed the necessity of the feast (as an innovation) and also the time of its
celebration.
He does not mention
the effort to remove from the Roman calendar the pagan worship of the Sun, but
lays out a very distinct biblical explanation. He starts with the time of the
Census as mentioned in Luke 2:1-7 and points out that this was the first
Census, which happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria. He also points out
that whoever wants to know the exact time of the Census can freely search the
ancient codices, which are kept in the public libraries of Rome, hinting that
the time of the birth of Christ is easily verifiable from the public records.
Chrysostom was a trained lawyer of the time with personal knowledge of
government records.
He then continues
his argument from a biblical perspective, explaining the Jewish tradition of
the censing of the Temple in Jerusalem by the high priest, who would enter the
Holy of Holies only once a year (Hebrews 9:7; Lev 16:29-34) during the Feast of
Tabernacles in September. He points to the Gospel of Luke 1:8-15, when
Zacharias was selected to enter the Holy of Holies to offer incense (perhaps
there was no high priest that year and the group of Levites, who were on duty
at the time selected by lot, according to tradition, the priest who would make
the offering in the place of the high priest).
Zacharias entered
the Holy of Holies to offer incense and there he had a vision of an angel of
the Lord who announced to him the birth of his son, whom he was to call John.
Soon after that, Elizabeth, his wife, became pregnant.
Continuing with the
biblical narrative, Chrysostom points out that six months later, the angel
Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary and announces to her that she will bear the
Son of God and also reveals to her that her cousin Elizabeth is already in her
sixth month of pregnancy (Luke 1:30-37).
Chrysostom
concludes that, Elizabeth became pregnant in the latter part of September
(after the Feast of Tabernacles) and the Virgin Mary became pregnant six months
later in the latter part of March. If we count nine months from that time we
end up at the latter part of December, which is the time when Jesus was born.
Hence, the celebration of Christmas on December 25 is justified.
The fact is that we
do not know the exact day of Christ’s birth, but the Christians of the fourth
century had calculated the time of his birth and concluded with December as the
month. They were much closer to the original event and much closer to the
people who had experienced it than any person of today. Their decision was
biblically and historically based and it has to be closer to the real day than
any modern guess.
It is possible,
however, that the decision to establish the celebration of Christmas on
December 25 and not on the 20th or the 24th, or whatever
date would have been the real date of the birth of Christ, was intentional,
aimed at quashing the pagan feast of the God Sun – although Chrysostom is
silent about it in his Homily. It is indeed possible that the Christians sought
to substitute the celebration of the birth of the God Sun with the birth of the
Son of God. This seems to have become one more victory for them against the
dwindling pagan religion that worshiped the creation rather than the Creator.
They were comfortable that the season of his birth was the right one and
December 25 seemed perfect to them.
Hence, for those
who have been worried that they might be celebrating Christmas at the wrong
time, please enjoy the joyful feast and find comfort in the fact that the Early
Christians knew what they were doing when they decided that December 25 it is.
By Archpriest Panayiotis Papageorgiou, Ph.D.
Source:
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2015/12/was-christ-really-born-on-december-25/
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