Does Catholicism believe Jesus to be born on Dec 25

[Meng2010]

The historical question has some biblical roots.

"The conception of St. John the Baptist is the historical anchor to know the date of Christmas, based on the detailed and careful calculations on dates made by first Fathers of the Church.
The early tractatus De solstitiia records the tradition of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Zachariah in the High Temple when he was serving as high priest on the Day of Atonement (Lk 1:8). This placed the conception of St. John the Baptist during the feast of Tabernacles in late September, as the Archangel Gabriel said (Lk 1:28) and his birth nine months later at the time of the summer solstice. (4)

Since the Gospel of Luke states that the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary in the sixth month after John’s conception (Lk 1:26), this placed the conception of Christ at about the time of the spring equinox, that is, at the time of the Jewish Passover, in late March. His birth would thus be in late December at the time of the winter solstice.

That these dates, based on Tradition and Scripture, are trustworthy is confirmed by recent evidence taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls, whose authors were very concerned about calendar dates, essential for establishing when the Torah feasts should be celebrated. The data found in the Scrolls make it possible to know the Temple’s rotating assignment of priests during Old Testament times and show definitely that Zachariah served as a Temple priest in September, thus confirming the tradition of the Early Church. (5)

The Catholic Church determined March 25 as the date of Our Lord’s Conception long before Aurelian decided to make his solar feast. For example, around 221 AD, Sexto Julio Africano wrote the Chronographiai in which he affirmed that the Annunciation was March 25. (6) Once the date of the Incarnation was established, it was a simple matter of adding nine months to arrive at the date of Our Lord’s birth - December 25. This date would not be made official until the late fourth century, but it was established long before Aurelian and Constantine. It had nothing to do with pagan festivals."

Ref:
traditioninaction.org/religious/e031rp_PaganOrigins.html

Merry Christmas to all and God bless.

 

[Bruce_Killian]

The historical question has some biblical roots.

"The conception of St. John the Baptist is the historical anchor to know the date of Christmas, based on the detailed and careful calculations on dates made by first Fathers of the Church.
The early tractatus De solstitiia records the tradition of the Archangel Gabriel appearing to Zachariah in the High Temple when he was serving as high priest on the Day of Atonement (Lk 1:8). This placed the conception of St. John the Baptist during the feast of Tabernacles in late September, as the Archangel Gabriel said (Lk 1:28) and his birth nine months later at the time of the summer solstice. (4)

Ref:
traditioninaction.org/religious/e031rp_PaganOrigins.html

Merry Christmas to all and God bless.

The while I don’t disagree with the final date, I do disagree with the logic. Zachariah was not serving as high priest, he was a priest not a high priest and if he were serving as high priest then he would be inside the holy of holies, the angel Gabriel would not have to step out of the holy of holies. Also he would not have been chosen by lot, he would have been the only one who could do that duty. Second, Zachariah was serving according to his course so it is not at the day of atonement. Third the day of atonement is before the equinox so it is more than 6 months to the spring equinox which is before passover, and the sixth month is 5 months to six months not more than six months and pregnancy from conception is 2 weeks less tha than 9 months. According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Zechariah ministered in November 1 BC. But Jesus was born on December 25.
Grace and peace,
Bruce

 

[Sime]

Actually, I also heard the Pagan roots predated Christianity and my studies from varied sources also seemed to reveal Pagan practices celebrated on the Winter solstice, prior to the coming of our Lord. The solstice varies from year to year but generally falls the week of Christmas. Below are some sources you can reference:

The other thing that was odd to me was why is why do we celebrate the birth of Jesus with a tree, giving of gits to others, Yule, etc. If you look into some of the practices you will find some similarities with other pagan practices. For example:

Trees were worshipped for their height and especially the evergreen since it didn’t die like the other trees in the harsh winter. Also, I don’t cut trees down on any other birthdays so I don’t think it isn’t a cultural practice so where did it come from? I don’t see any biblical accounts that deal with trees in the OT or NT either.

Does anyone have any insight’s to these practices other than Pagan roots?

I think if the Lord wanted us to know He would have made it clear when it happened. The death and resurrection are clearly given and they fulfilled the prophetic Festivals of the Lord in such a rich way.

Also, who is the “foremost expert on the Sol Invictus cult”? I would like to research his writings.

Decorating with greenery was already part of Jewish tradition : "Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days. " (Leviticus 23:40). So naturally, Christians incorporated such customs in their developing practices. Those who claim that the greenery of Christmas ow’s its roots to paganism are biblically ignorant, and demonstrate a lack of historical maturity.

Although Dies Natalis Solis Invicti has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly speculation, the only ancient source for it is a SINGLE mention in the Chronography of 354, and Hijmans argues that there is NO EVIDENCE that the celebration precedes that of Christmas. While the winter solstice on or around the 25th of December was well established in the Roman imperial calendar, there is NO EVIDENCE that a religious celebration of Sol on that day antedated the celebration of Christmas, (modern Sol scholar Steven Hijmans).

December 25 arrives around the time of the winter solstice, when the days get shorter and the sun seems to be “dying.” After the winter solstice, the sun appears to regain its strength, is “born again” as it were, as the days become longer. The early Christians, for their part, called Christ the “Sun of Righteousness” from the prophecy of the Resurrection in Malachi 4:2-3: “But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall. Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I do these things, says the Lord Almighty.”

Inspired by Ezekiel 43:1-2, which speaks of the glory of the Lord coming from the east, Christians believed the Second Coming would be from the east whence comes the sun rising to dispel the darkness. After all, the world was in darkness till Christ, the light of the world (John 8:12), expelled the night. Consequently, Christians prayed toward the east on Sunday mornings, with crosses being painted on the eastern wall of house-churches. When churches were built to accommodate Christian worship, these were also oriented toward the east. Christians were even buried facing the east in expectation of the final Trump.

Some early Christian writers connected the rebirth of the sun to the birth of Jesus.“O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was
born…Christ should be born”, Cyprian wrote. John Chrysostom also commented on the connection: "They call it the ‘Birthday of the Unconquered’.
Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord . . .? Again, this references the prophecy of the resurrection of “the sun” in Malachi 4:2-3.

The popular myth concerning the pagan origin of Christmas trees exemplifies the puritanical phobia of the 17th century, which still persists to this day among many sects of the profane. In reality the Christmas tree tradition is derived from the Paradise tree, which was adorned with apples on December 24 in honor of Adam and Eve, whose transgression is reversed by the coming of Jesus, the Second Adam (Rom. 5:12-19), on the next day. The tree was originally a stage prop used in medieval German plays of mankind’s fall from grace, and in time people began the practice of having trees in their own homes on that day. Our contemporary custom of adorning Christmas trees with balls arose from those prop apples which were adorned on the tree.

As von Balthasar observed, conflicts with evil begin and end at the manger: “And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born” (Rev. 12:4). Yet Christmas epitomizes hope, for it assures us the battle already has been won by Christ’s invasion of our world. The message of the manger is really a declaration of war by God the Father “against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age” (Eph. 6:12). The history of the Church shows us one ruler of darkness after another, from Sol Invictus to the present, being crushed by the radical mystery of Bethlehem.

“Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God” John 4:2" This is precisely what we do at Christmas (The Feast of the Nativity).

 

[Arizona_Mike]

The earliest known reference to the date of the nativity as December 25 is found in the Chronography of 354, an illuminated manuscript compiled in Rome.

Sime, I’d have to disagree with this.

Hippolytus of Rome (170 - 235 A.D.) said December 25 was the date of our Lord’s birth in his Commentary on Daniel (written probably between 202-211 A.D.) Here’s the relevant passage:

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls. ~Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3

The classical historian Tom Schmidt has published some interesting research on this which shows that the date in that passage was not a later addition, but appears to be solid evidence that there was a tradition in the early Church, well before 354 A.D. that December 25 was the birth date of Jesus - see a summary here: chronicon.net/blog/chronology/hippolytus-and-the-original-date-of-christmas/ and the full research paper here: chronicon.net/chroniconfiles/Hippolytus%20and%20December%2025th.pdf

The Byzantine historian George Syncellus, who compiled a chronology of the world around 800 A.D., also lists Hippolytus as one of the sources of the calculation of the birth of Christ on December 25:

“At the completion of that day, our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the only-begotten son of God,was born according to the flesh from the blessed Mary, eternal Virgin, and in nature and in reality truly the holy Mother of God; his birth was on the next day, 25 December, in Bethlehem a city of Judaea, in the forty-third year of the reign of Augustus Caesar over the Romans, in the consulate of Gulpicius, and Marinus and Gaius Pompeius as it is reported in accurate and ancient manuscripts. We have not compiled this on our own. It is based rather on the traditions that have come down from Hippolytos, the blessed apostle, archbishop of Rome, and holy martyr; Annianos the most holy monk, who arranged a Paschal table of eleven cycles of 532 years, along with accurate scholia, and Maximos the most saintly monk and philosopher martyr, confessor, and great teacher of the Church.” -George Syncellus 382 (p455 The Chronography of George Synkellos: A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation Translated with Introduction and Notes by William Adler and Paul Tuffin

Julius Africanus, writing circa 221 to 222 A.D., also apparently reckoned on a December 25 birthday: chronicon.net/blog/christmas/julius-africanus-and-christmas-as-december-25/#comment-2030.

Professor Schmidt also shows that Clement of Alexandria, writing circa 193-215 AD, also believed in a birth date circa December 25. chronicon.net/blog/hippolytus/clement-of-alexandria-and-the-original-date-of-christmas-as-december-25th/

So we have multiple attestations to a belief in the date of December 25 in the very early years of the 3rd century, and possibly as early as the late second century.

Professor Schmidt had an interesting series of blog posts on these issues here: chronicon.net/blog/category/christmas/. He sums up the primary historical evidence quite neatly here, with link to primary sources in the original post: chronicon.net/blog/christmas/sol-invictus-evidently-not-a-precursor-to-christmas/

So to conclude our recent blog posts on Christmas and Roman festivals:

A feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) did occur on December 25, but the earliest evidence for it dates from the mid to late 4th century. There is no evidence that Emperor Aurelian established a Festival of Sol Invictus (or anyone or anything else) on December 25.

Saturnalia did not occur on December 25 and had nothing to do with the birth of any god or anyone else.

Egyptians apparently presented an infant as a representation of the newborn Sun on the winter solstice, but this evidence also dates from the fourth and fifth centuries.

Hippolytus in 202-211 AD set the date for the birth of Jesus on December 25, because he thought Jesus was conceived 9 months earlier on the Passover, the day in which he also thought the world was created (5500 years earlier), the Vernal Equinox March 25.

Clement of Alexandria (193-215 AD) quoted various anonymous sources about the birth of Jesus and roughly agrees with Hippolytus, claiming that Jesus was born in late fall to early winter. Clement’s sources clearly seem to believe that Jesus was conceived on the Passover and was born roughly 9 months later; in fact the only difference between them and Hippolytus is that they differed on when the Passover actually occurred. However there is a significant possibility that one of Clement’s sources was Hippolytus himself because of the preponderance of possible dates he gives that fall on the 25th of a month (He gives 4 of them and then another date on the 24th) which corresponds with Hippolytus’ belief that Jesus was both conceived, born, and executed on the 25th of a month.

Hope this is useful to you all.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

 

[patrick457]

Hippolytus of Rome (170 - 235 A.D.) said December 25 was the date of our Lord’s birth in his Commentary on Daniel (written probably between 202-211 A.D.) Here’s the relevant passage:

Two texts attributed to the Roman priest Hippolytus, a younger contemporary of Clement [of Alexandria] and staunch defender of the mainline Church at a time both of numerous heterodox movements and of the imposition on Rome of the Syrian sun-god by the emperor Elagabalus (see Chapter Three), give some evidence, similarly controverted, concerning the date of Christ’s birth. [103: A few scholars cite evidence from the same approximate time period which runs parallel to Hippolytus, include Paul de LAGARDE, “Altes und Neues über dar Weihnachtsfest,” *Mittheilungen Gottingen (1891): 316-317, cited by Konrad ONASCH, Das Weihnachtsfest im orthodoxen Kirchenjahr, Quellen und Untersuchnungen zur Konfessionskunde der Orthodoxie 2, (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1958): 56. Lagarde suggests that a birth date of 25 December was already calculated in the West in 221 C.E. from evidence from the Chronograph of Sextus Julius Africanus that Christ was thought to have been conceived 25 March in the year 5500, reckoned from the time of Creation: “Jesus … empfangen war 25.3.5500, geboren neun Monate später, also 25.12.5500, und daß er acht Tage nach seiner Geburt … also 1.1.5501 … die Beshneidung …:” Onasch, Das Weihnachtsfest im orthodoxen Kirchenjahr, 56.] The more reliable of the two are the Paschal tables mentioned above, engraved by the same hand as a list of his works on the base of a statue dating from 222-235 C.E., and discovered in 1552 between the Via Nomentana and Via Tiburtina in Rome. [104: Margherita GUARDUCCI, “La statua ‘Sant’ Ippolito,’” in *Richerche su Ippolito, Studia Ephemeridis “Augustinianum” 13 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum “Augustinianum,” 1977): 17-30, and Miroslav MARCOVICH, “Hippolyt von Rom,” Theologische ReaI], lenzyklopädie[/vol. 15 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1986): 381. Of passing interest is the fact that this statue is a Roman copy of a Greek woman philosopher from the third century B.C.E.] The table on the left side lists the corresponding dates for 14 Nisan in the Julian calendar for each year starting from 222; and in about 30 C.E., supposedly when Christ was crucified, 14 Nisan fell on the 8th of the Calends of April, that is, 25 March. There is no direct reference to a date for the birth of Christ, and it could not have been calculated with reference to a paschal table alone.
The coincidence of 14 Nisan with 25 March in the putative year of Christ’s passion is repeated however in Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel, in which a birthdate of Wednesday, 25 December in the forty-second year of Augustus, 5500 years after the creation of Adam, is clearly stated in chapter 4:23. [105: Gustave BARDY and Maurice LEFEVRE, eds. *Hippolyte Commentaire sur Daniel, SC 14 (Paris: Cerf, 1947): 187.] The work was extant in fragments and only received its first critical edition in 1897, but most scholars have consistently held this particular statement to be a later interpolation. [106: K.A. Heinrich KELLNER, *Heortologie, oder das Kirchenjahr und die Heiligenfeste in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung (Freiburg im B.: Herder, 1901): 95, points to the allegorical significance of Hippolytus’ “5500 years after the creation of Adam” and holds that the specificity of the month and day of the week does not fit in the context, suggesting that the date was interpolated by a much more recent editor.] Another theory has pointed to the fact that because the oldest manuscript (Codex A, tenth or eleventh century) lists both 25 December and 2 April, [107: STROBEL, “Jahrespunkt-Spekulation,” 190. TALLEY, Origins, 86, notes that that “curious phrase,” *pro tessaron aprilion may, if 25 December is a later insert, represent “fragmentary evidence of the original reading.”] that Hippolytus intended rather to make the birthdate identical with 14 Nisan, on the Julian date on which it fell 30 years before the crucifixion – Wednesday 2 April. A parallel Jewish tradition visible in Midrashic texts place the birth of Isaac, and in the book of Jubilees the birth of Levi, on 14 Nisan. [108: STROBEL, “Jahrespunkt-Spekulation,” 190-191; and *Ursprung, 124-133.] Others claim that 2 April represented instead Christ’s conception or the annunciation, not birth, depending on how one reads ‘genesis Christou,’ which would put his birth around the end of December; or that Hippolytus used Clement as the source for a winter date, although Hippolytus’ virulent opposition to groups such as the Basilidians argues against a direct appropriation from Clement’s sources. [109: BECKWITH, “St. Luke, the Date of Christmas and the Priestly Courses at Qumran” 93 note 21; also the turn-of-the-century scholars LAGARDE, BRATKE and SCHWARTZ, cited without specific resources in STROBEL, Ursprung, 127.] If authentic, the reference in the Commentary on Daniel would have been the earliest indication of 25 December as Christ’s birthdate, but the weight of opinion is against it, and efforts to support it show signs of strain. [110: HARTKE, *Über Jahrespunkte, 70-74, advanced the novel and little-followed position that Hippolytus himself had introduced the feast of Christmas into Rome as a protest-feast against both the 25 December birth feast of the Syrian sun god of emperor Elagabalus (218-222; see Chapter Three) and to some degree against imported Egyptian rites of Isis/Kikkelia.]

• Towards the Origins of Christmas, by Susan K. Roll, pp. 79-81

 

[Sime]

Sime, I’d have to disagree with this.

Hippolytus of Rome (170 - 235 A.D.) said December 25 was the date of our Lord’s birth in his Commentary on Daniel (written probably between 202-211 A.D.) Here’s the relevant passage:

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls. ~Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3

The classical historian Tom Schmidt has published some interesting research on this which shows that the date in that passage was not a later addition, but appears to be solid evidence that there was a tradition in the early Church, well before 354 A.D. that December 25 was the birth date of Jesus - see a summary here: chronicon.net/blog/chronology/hippolytus-and-the-original-date-of-christmas/ and the full research paper here: chronicon.net/chroniconfiles/Hippolytus%20and%20December%2025th.pdf

The Byzantine historian George Syncellus, who compiled a chronology of the world around 800 A.D., also lists Hippolytus as one of the sources of the calculation of the birth of Christ on December 25:

Julius Africanus, writing circa 221 to 222 A.D., also apparently reckoned on a December 25 birthday: chronicon.net/blog/christmas/julius-africanus-and-christmas-as-december-25/#comment-2030.

Professor Schmidt also shows that Clement of Alexandria, writing circa 193-215 AD, also believed in a birth date circa December 25. chronicon.net/blog/hippolytus/clement-of-alexandria-and-the-original-date-of-christmas-as-december-25th/

So we have multiple attestations to a belief in the date of December 25 in the very early years of the 3rd century, and possibly as early as the late second century.

Professor Schmidt had an interesting series of blog posts on these issues here: chronicon.net/blog/category/christmas/. He sums up the primary historical evidence quite neatly here, with link to primary sources in the original post: chronicon.net/blog/christmas/sol-invictus-evidently-not-a-precursor-to-christmas/

Hope this is useful to you all.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thanks for the resource info.However I was speaking about the earliest record which recorded the actual observation of the feast day of the nativity. :