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THE DAY and YEAR of JESUS' BIRTH

(Overcomer Wu)

When we ask people this question: What month and day was Jesus born? Most people would immediately and confidently answer: December 25, right?

However, that answer is an emphatic, Wrong! Actually no one knows the date of our Lord's birth. The Bible nowhere gives or tells us His birthday but only an approximate season. I believe this is so that we can remember the Lord's birth – His incarnation and what He had accomplished for us both as a Man and for His death on the cross and His resurrection and ascension, not just once a year, but every week or even every day of the year if possible. For this reason, the Lord Himself, instituted the Lord's Supper for what purpose? For the remembrance of Him as we're told in various passages in the Bible: Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25.

The second theory states that the Church of Rome deliberately chose December 25 as the date of Christ's birth to turn people away from a pagan feast that was observed at the same time. Since the time of the Roman Emperor Aurelian (270-275) the empire had celebrated the feast of the sun god (Sol Invictus – the Unconquered Sun) at what they thought was the winter solstice. December 25 was observed as "the birthday of the sun." Because the sun god was identified with Mithra, a very popular god at the time, pagan celebrations occurred throughout the empire (see Clement A. Miles, Christmas, New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1912, 23). The Church at Rome seems to have chosen this date to counteract this pagan feast of the sun god and turn people instead to the "Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings" (Mal 4:2; Luke 1:78). Or put another way, Julius chose December 25 so that the Son of God rather than the sun-god would be worshipped.

Therefore, the second theory seems to be the probable one. December 25 was chosen not because it had somehow been proven from extra-biblical sources that Christ was definitely born on December 25. Rather the date was chosen to counteract a very popular pagan holiday that had already been occurring on this date; however, as we know from both history and the modernized Christmas season, it has been turned into a commercialized gift-giving, celebration of Santa Claus, and many other pagan things rather than the true remembrance of Christ's birth, for which we ought to remember anyway any time and day of the year.

The above is what we have been teaching all along. And this confirms it.

Now of course there should be no reason why we cannot just get together to praise and worship the Lord throughout the year. That's a given. But to place a particular importance on this season/date as significant is unfounded in the true Christian heritage.

The Year of Jesus' Birth

Also, Most people assume that they know Jesus must have been born on December 25, A.D. 1, but careful examination of the facts surrounding the Lord Jesus' birth will show that both the year and the date are certainly wrong. We will delve into the error of the date at another discourse, but let's examine the year of our Lord Jesus' birth here. Herod the Great (who killed all the babies in Bethlehem younger than 2 years of age) died in the spring of 4 B.C., and the king was very much alive during the visit of the Wise Men (Magi) in the Christmas story. Therefore Jesus would have been born before this time, anywhere from 7-4 B.C. (Before Christ, or before himself).

Why then is our calendar about 5 years off? It was a sixth-century Roman monk-mathematician-astronomer named Dionysis Exeguus (Dionysis the Little) who unknowingly committed what has become history's greatest numerical error in terms of cumulative effect. In reforming the calendar to pivot around the birth of Christ, he dated the Nativity in the year 753 from the founding of Rome (753 a.u.c.), when in fact Herod died only 749 years after Rome's founding. The result of Dionysis' chronology, which remains current, was to give the correct traditional date for the founding of Rome, but one that is at least 4 to 7 years off for the birth of Christ.