No, I don’t think knowing his actual birthday makes any difference. It was just a question that entered my mind. I was thinking about all the other things that were preserved. It’s interesting that we know certain things i.e. names of Mary’s parents, but not others. I was just curious if anyone had ever asked thier priests or pastors this question and what answers (if any) you were given.
Sigh…I need to stop my brain from wondering things that may never be known.
Peace, and a Merry Christmas to you all.
Actually the question is a very good one. And there is an answer.
As someone else mentioned on the thread, the celebration of Christmas is part of the Liturgy or public worship of the Church. Special events important to the Church’s history are remembered or celebrated to teach and keep our spiritual heritage alive.
The date was chosen to contrast with the celebration of the great feast of Easter more than anything else. Easter in the northern hemisphere begins in the Spring when the days begin to grow long and life returns after winter’s sleep. Winter is dark and cold, the opposite of Spring, so much in need of light from lamps or the flames of candles. The logic behind using this as a form of catechesis seems only natural.
While it has been popular in the late 20th century to connect Christmas with the celebration of Saturnalia and other pagan winter celebrations, by the beginning of the 21st century it became clear that these connections were circumstantial. While not completely ruling out the likelihood of Christianizing certain pagan celebrations associated with the season, the time was chosen because it was seen appropriate to use the contrast with Easter’s spring with the winter for remembering the meaning behind Christ’s incarnation—the Light coming into the world of darkness.
The celebration of Christmas is not an anniversary or the celebration of a birthday. It is a special feast commemoration the Incarnation and not so much the actual date that Jesus was born. Thus the miracle that is the Incarnation is celebrated as as octave. It begins after sundown on the day before the 25th and ends on the sundown before the 1st of January. (Because the feast of the Epiphany traditionally occurs 4 days later, celebrations of Christmas would keep going for all these days, thus supplying us with the “Twelve” days of Christmas.)
Because of the secularization of Christmas, people tend to see Christmas as a one-day holiday. It is therefore easily confused as a “birthday” by some who criticize our observance of this feast. It is neither of these things.
“Secular Christmas,” as I call it, seems to begin the day after Thanksgiving, with people stopping the festivity on the 26th of December by tossing out their dead trees on the corner of the street for garbage pickup.
The real Christmas begins with Christmas Eve (the day when people used to put up the tree and begin their celebrating) and lasts through the traditional 12 days (when the celebrating would climax) and even further into the Church’s liturgy.
In my humble opinion, I believe most people, even Christians, have allowed Madison Avenue to dictate when and what Christmas is and should be. This is the cause of so much confusion about the date. Its true meaning which has been lost in advertisements that replace the lyrics of carols and hymns with details on their current sale prices–so happy to use the music of Christ but not so much to take to heart the words that go with it.
