The real reason we celebrate Christmas in December

Every year around this time, an article appears somewhere claiming that Christians began to celebrate Christmas on December 25, because that day used to be a pagan feast in the Roman empire.

 The claim is nonsense. The pagan feast in December started on the 17th and ended on the 23rd. Even so, it is a good question. Why December and why the 25th?

Truth be told, we cannot be sure of the exact day of our Lord’s birth. We are used to the kind of historical accuracy that allows us to say, for instance, that Jomo Kenyatta became the first president of Kenya on the 12th of December 1964. It is unlikely that we will ever find historical evidence of this nature for the dating of our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem.

Two thousand years ago, people didn’t have calendars hanging on their walls. Years were measured haphazardly and locally, based on how long a king had been sitting on his throne.

When a new king came to power, everyone started counting the years from scratch. (This, by the way, was the reason in Europe, for beginning the counting of years with the birth of Jesus Christ, the King of kings.)

Given the general neglect of keeping accurate dates in those days, we still have some remarkable evidence. Around the year 204, a bishop named Hippolytus wrote a commentary on the Book of Daniel, in which he stated, “The first coming of Our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was on the 25th of December.”