There is a common assumption that says Dec25 was chosen by Christians to supplant a pre-existing pagan festival, usually Saturnalia or Sol Invictus.
The problem is there is no extant evidence at all for any of the supposedly supplanted festivals having an association with Dec25. Saturnalia, even when extended to seven days, it finished Dec23.
That Emperor Aurelian’s quadrennial festival instituted in 274 was held on Dec25 is without foundation, and the assertion that it was to Sol Invictus is dubious – again, there’s no evidence.
The ‘Calendar/Chronography of 354’ (sometimes referred to as ‘the Philocalian Calendar‘), refers to a festival of ‘Natalis Invicti’ (the Birth of Invictus). This is the earliest testimony to a festival celebrating the birth of ‘Invictus’. The calendar was accompanied by a register of martyrs, headed by Jesus and with reference made to his birth on Dec25. This document seems to go back to a list made in 336 – thus 336 is the latest possible date for the celebration of Christmas by Christians. Since this is only the terminus ad quem, it is likely that the celebration on this day predates this source.
Scholars had tended to assume that ‘Natalis Invicti’ is naturally Sol Invictus, but this has come into doubt. Nowhere is Invictus used as an honorific and a shorthand name for Sol. Furthermore, Invictus was an epithet used for many figures, including emperors and various gods, not only the sun. It is not even applied most often to Sol, and there are a multitude of references to Sol without the epithet.
Evidence for festivals dedicated to Sol put the date in August, October and the latest, Dec11 – none are astronomically significant.
Our earliest evidence then, establishes the Christian celebration on Dec25 before any pagan celebration on that date.
Moreover, we do not have any evidence that a pre-existing festival presented the impetus for celebrating Jesus’s birth on this day.
The earliest record we have of anyone referring to the date of Jesus’s birth is in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromata 1.21 (c198-201). By his reckoning Jesus was born Jan6, 2BCE, died on April20.
In Rome we have Hippolytus (there is dispute over authorship, but dated) placing Jesus’s death on March25 (the vernal equinox), 29 CE and his ‘genesis’ on April2, 2BCE, which more likely means his conception rather than his birth. It is possible that he could have conceived of a December 25 date at this time, but he does not say anything definite in this regard.
Julius Africanus, writing at the latest in 222, places the first day of creation on March25, linking this date to Jesus’s ‘advent/incarnation’ some ‘5,500 years later’. Unfortunately, in none of the surviving fragments does he say precisely what date he assigns to Jesus’s birth, but there is at least a decent probability that he could have dated Jesus’s birth to nine months later, on or around Dec25.
Tertullian of Carthage, Gregory Thaumaturgus in Asia Minor … there are numerous references.
Ephrem the Syrian (306-373) in his Commentary on Exodus, says that Jesus entered Mary’s womb on the 10th of Nisan. He plays on a well-established typology of Jesus and the Passover lamb, linking the reference to the procurement of the lamb on the 10th of Nisan is a type for Jesus’s Incarnation (Exodus 12:3). Also, he confirms this with the notion that John’s conception was on the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish calendar, when his father Zechariah was in the sanctuary (Luke 1:8–10). This is because of a view in the early church that Zechariah was high priest and that he was entering the sanctuary on this date because it was the Day of Atonement. In his Commentary on the Diatessaron, relying on these same arguments, he also specifies the date of Jesus’s birth in accordance with the Greek rendering, Jan6.
Two things we can establish, is that there was an interest in dates for Jesus’ conception/birth and death from at the very latest 201AD, and that these proposed dates were dependent on interpreting Jewish chronological sources – such as the dates of Passover – commentaries on Scripture, such as Exodus and Daniel.
Thomas 4/06/2023
Visit thread: https://www.interfaith.org/community/threads/20672/
