There is a joke, albeit a rather lame one, whose punchline is a childlike amazement that Jesus was born precisely on Christmas Day – what are the chances of that?
For Christians, of course, Christmas Day celebrates the birth of Jesus but there is no historical record of when exactly Christ was born – either the date or even the year. Some keen-eyed observers have suggested that, as shepherds were out in the hills tending their flocks before being summoned by an angel to visit the stable, it couldn't have been the middle of winter as sheep would have been in shelter during colder months.
Why was the 25th December chosen?
So why was the 25 December singled out? It's most likely a combination of early historians making educated guesses and Roman rulers blending pagan and Christian festivals.
The Roman historian Sextus Julius Africanus (180-250) wrote a remarkable five-volume chronology of Earth from the Creation to his present day. Sadly, only fragments survive in other later writings but these show that Africanus, a Christian, included the first history of early Christianity and in it the belief that Jesus had been conceived on 25 March. Extrapolating from this, Jesus's birthday nine months later would be 25 December and so the idea of a midwinter birth gained traction among Christian communities.
The first recorded date of Christ's birth being celebrated as an annual holiday on 25 December was in 336, during the reign of the first Christian Roman emperor: Constantine. The mention appears in an illustrated manuscript known as Chronograph of 354, a sort of calendar produced for a wealthy Roman citizen. It records of the year 336: "Eighth day before the kalends of January [December 25] Birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea".
The Romans already had a number of festivals based around the winter solstice, notably Saturnalia where people feasted and exchanged gifts, but also Sol Invictus on 25 December, which celebrated the 'rebirth of the sun' and longer days.
Emperor Constantine may have actively encouraged the blending of Christian and pagan 'birth' customs to try to keep his subjects happy and, over time, this coalesced into the midwinter Christian festival we now know as Christmas Day. However, the word 'Christmas' – meaning 'Christ's mass' – didn't appear for another 700 years or so.
Not all Christians celebrate Christmas on 25 December. While most of the world uses the Gregorian Calendar, which came into use in the 16th century to fix errors in the earlier Julian Calendar, Orthodox and Coptic Christians (who are typically found in eastern Europe, Russia and North Africa and make up around 12 per cent of Christians globally) still use the Julian Calendar, which places Christ's birth on 7 January.
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