Was Jesus Born on December 25?

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I received an email bannering the said question. The contents made me think and made me realize some things in my life.

Personally, I do not think it matters whether December 25 is the actual date of Jesus’ birth or not. What matters most is the reason why he was born, and that is to become our saviour from all our sins.

You can read the email and more of my thoughts on my blogspot. I hope you can also share your thoughts regarding this matter 😛
 
No, he wasn’t, it was in spring (April?), December is the time when his birth is celebrated however. It doesn’t really make too much of a difference.
 
There is speculation that Jesus was born on September 29 which is the feast day of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Rafael, also once known as Michaelmass: I know this simply because it is the date of my birth and a few years ago, this link came up with a google search. It made for intriguing reading then, but these days, I see through eyes of faith and ask, “What’s the point?”

He came. He will come again. What is most important for our eternal souls is to take the purpose of the Advent season to heart: ***BE PREPARED. ***

To do this, my husband and I, neophyte Catholics, have retreated to the local mountains for the week – away from the busy-ness and business of Christmas. As His 11th hour converts, we decided to observe this last Advent week in the best way we knew how by secluding ourselves and asking ourselves some hard-hitting questions:
  1. If I died today or if this is the day of Jesus’ Second Coming, am I prepared to meet Him?
  2. Have I taken this time of grace to heed his advice: “Be still and know that I am God”? Have I reflected and seriously examined my life?
  3. Have I done the following WITH MY HEART: prayed? fasted? received the Eucharist? read Scripture? am I in the state of sanctifying grace, thanks to the Sacrament of Reconciliation?
  4. Am I striving for holiness, keeping my sights on becoming a saint, God Willing?
  • Specifically, am I growing in patience, charity, and certainty?
  • How can I love God and my neighbor more?
  • How can I know, love and serve Him better?
  • Am I yielding myself fully to His Will?
  • Is Mary’s FIAT – “Do unto me according to Thy Will” – my own?
What is the point of pointing this out? This point is better expressed by Robert Sungenis in the earlier post above:
Simply this: what Christians do (or should be doing!) during Advent and leading up to Christmas is a foreshadowing of what they will do during the days of their lives that lead up to the Second Coming; what non-Christians refuse to do during Advent, and put off until after Christmas, is precisely a foreshadowing of what they will experience at the Second Coming.
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We Christians are to prepare for the Coming of Christ before He actually comes - and that Coming is symbolized and recalled at Christmas. Non-Christians miss this season of preparation, and then scramble for six days after the 25th to make their resolutions. By then, however, it’s too late - Christmas has come and gone, Our Lord has already made His visitation to the earth, and He has found them unprepared. This is precisely what will take place at the Second Coming, when those who have put off for their entire lives the necessary preparations will suddenly be scrambling to put their affairs in order. Unfortunately, by then it will have been too late, and there will be no time for repentance.
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The Second Coming will be less forgiving than the Incarnation. There will be no four-week warning period before the Second Coming, like we get during Advent. There will be no six-day period of grace after the Second Coming during which to make resolutions and self-examination, like the secular world does from Dec. 26 until Jan. 1.
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Lest you worry that we will not be fully celebrating His First Coming, know that we will be returning to our family and parish community this weekend. At Midnight Mass and on Christmas Day, we will be receiving the best Christmas gift of all time: His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in His Glorified Body in the Eucharist where He is really, truly and substantially present.

Myself, I intend to celebrate Jesus’ birthday not only on December 25… but **EVERY ** day of the year.

God :blessyou: during this Advent season, which is rapidly coming to a close. I hope this will help you to remember that the point of this Advent season is not celebration, but Are you prepared?
 
Scholars believe He was born in Spring because the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks since it was lambing time.
 
The rainy season in Palestine extends from November to March. This is when the fields are lush and green. It can get very cold, but the average temperature is 55 deg F. Shepherds would live in the fields with their sheep during this entire time. So it could be anywhere in this time frame.

Dec 25 is not an absurd date by any means.
 
God has perserved Sacred Tradition throught the fallible leaders of his Church all these years. I personally don’t think He was asleep when our Church leaders fixed this date. There was a known tradition of Dec. 25th well before it was fixed around 300. There are many scholarly articles supporting Dec. 25th as the actual date that you can find on the net.

There are also plenty of scholars who will also emphatically say it is not this date; it is some other, and they are quite sure of it. Examples of these scholars would be the two they had on CBS this week who were saying as much. These also said Mary surely had Joseph’s baby out of wedlock, that Jesus could not have been born in Bethlehem, and that the Apostle Matthew was making things up when he wrote his Gospel, in order to persuade Jewish leaders of his day.
 
December 25 on which calendar? Was the date changed when the calendar was changed with the Gregorian reform? Going on faded memory here, but it seems to me that December 25 was actually the winter solstice in the Julian calendar.

On the issue of Tradition, I don’t recall anything stating that December 25 was considered to literally be Jesus’ birthday. The early Church had a policy of converting existing pagan holy days to Christian use by relating the traditional pagan symbolism to the Christian mysteries, a policy which extended to the conversion of pagan holy sites to churches. There is a long history of pagan traditions being reframed and infused with Christian meaning and signifigance.

What better time to choose to celebrate the birth of the Son and the coming of the Light of the World than the time already associated with light and regeneration and the rebirth of the sun in the minds of the pagan converts who made up the bulk of the early Church? There’s a reason Jesus is also known as the Sun of Righteousness.

I don’t think it matters what particular day Jesus was born on. What matters is our remembering and celebrating his coming into the world. The date of Easter changes every year, but the signifigance of the celebration remains.
 
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Aurelia:
Scholars believe He was born in Spring because the shepherds were out in the fields with their flocks since it was lambing time.
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This is lame because Earth’s climate was warmer then (even 1000 year later, Greenland was actually green when the Vikings got there).

Secondly, the shepherds could be out there traveling in winter for the same reason that Joseph and Mary were: the Roman census, obligating people to travel back to their home towns.

Forget the revisionist “history” of the Discovery and of the History channels.

:blessyou:
 
Per an old Jewish tradition, prophets died on the anniversary of their conceptions, therefore Jesus’ was around Easter (I’m not sure how to count years in the Hebrew calendar). Fast-forward 9 months, and you’re around 12/25. So much so that the feast of the Annunciation is on 3/25, usually not coinciding with Easter because of the lack of synchronization between the Gregorian solar calendar and the Hebrew lunar calendar.

:blessyou:
 
Notes on the Date of Christmas

Note on the date of Christmas, from 30 Days, an Italian Catholic publication: “December 25 is an historical date,” Professor Tommaso Federici, Professor at the Pontifical Urbanian University and a consultant to two Vatican Congregations, has stressed. In an article in the *Osservatore Romano *on December 24, he wrote: "December 25 is explained as the ‘Christianization’ of a pagan feast, ‘birth of the Sol Invictus’; or as the symmetrical balance, an aesthetic balance between the winter solstice (Dec. 21-22) and the spring equinox (March 23-24). But a discovery of recent years has shed definitive light on the date of the Lord’s birth. As long ago as 1958, the Israeli scholar Shemaryahu Talmon published an in-depth study on the calendar of the Qumran sect Ed. based , in part, on Parchment http://fisheaters.com/4q321parchment.gifNumber 321 – 4 Q 321 – of the Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls, see picture at left], and he reconstructed without the shadow of doubt the order of the sacerdotal rota system for the temple of Jerusalem (1 Paralipomenon/Chronicles 24, 7-18) in New Testament times. Here the family of Abijah, of which Zechariah (Zachary) was a descendant, father of John the herald and forerunner (Luke 1, 5), was required to officiate twice a year, on the days 8-14 of the third month, and on the days 24-30 of the eighth month. This latter period fell at about the end of September. It is not without reason that the Byzantine calendar celebrated ‘John’s conception’ on September 23 and his birth nine months later, on June 24. The ‘six months’ after the Annunciation established as a liturgical feast on March 25, comes three months before the foreru

more…
 
Don’t let anyone try to make you feel bad for believing His birth was Dec. 25th. People can speculate 'till the sheep come home, and pile on difficulties and probabilities, but the fact is no one can definitively rule it out, so it is perfectly reasonable, even salutary, to believe in the traditional date.
 
The dictionary defines Christmas as a church festival observed annually on December 25 in memory of the birth of Jesus Christ.

But was Jesus Christ really born on December 25? Some would say that Christmas is just an imitation of the Roman festival of Saturnalia celebrated during the winter solstice. But the winder solstice is on December 21 or 22, why is Christmas on December 25? There must be a better explanation.

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