Was Jesus born Dec 25

[MoreCoffee]

Yup 350 the date was declared, we are not talking about a local celebration but rather the widespread celebration.

Why are "we" not talking about a local celebration? If we want to know when/where a practise started then local celebrations matter. Your post is dismissing the facts to make a "point" that is irrelevant to the question of when/where 25-Dec first was celebrated by Christians as Christ's birthday.

 

[psalms 91]

irrevelant only to you, fact is many celebrations were declared because of where they fell in order to draw in pagans

 

[MoreCoffee]

irrevelant only to you, fact is many celebrations were declared because of where they fell in order to draw in pagans

I do not doubt that some Christian feasts fall on the same days as some pagan feasts did in ancient times but I do not see any good reason to assume that the coincidence of days and dates exist BECAUSE Christians were keen to recruit pagans and used the days as the means of facilitating such conversions.

 

[Lamb]

I didn't know about this explanation:

This argument hinges on an ancient Jewish tradition that had the great prophets dying on the same dates as their birth or, alternatively, their conception. Thus, to follow this peculiar assumption, the first step in dating Jesus’ birth would be to date his death, which the Gospels say happened at Passover. The early Christian writer Tertullian calculated that the date given for Jesus’ death in John’s Gospel corresponds to March 25 in the Roman calendar. Many Christian churches came to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, marking the angel Gabriel’s visit to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would become the mother of Jesus, on this date. Adding nine months to this date produces a Dec. 25 Christmas. www.slate.com/articles/life/holidays/2012/12/why_is_christmas_in_december.html

 

[Josiah]

irrevelant only to you, fact is many celebrations were declared because of where they fell in order to draw in pagans

I don't think anyone knows why December 25 came to be embraced as the day on which to celebrate the nativity of our Lord... only that it was, eventually officially. LOTS of theories and opinions but that's all they are.

We all realize the Holy Scriptures don't tell us the date (dates are pretty rare in the Bible) and that Holy Scriptures neither command or forbid the celebration of this event. In the tradition of the west, birthdays are an opportunity to celebrate the person (rather than a date) - and that's important to Christmas. Theologically, it's a celebration of the Incarnation and the arrival of the promised Messiah - the arrival of the One who will save the people from their sins. THAT'S what we celebrate. That's WHO we celebrate.


A blessed Christmas to all!


- Josiah

 

[JSales]

Didn't the Romans celebrate birthdays?

 

[Josiah]

Didn't the Romans celebrate birthdays?

That's what I've repeatedly read... And just as in our own culture, birthdays were an opportunity to celebrate the PERSON (the date not being very important..... I've OFTEN had birthday parties NOT on the actual anniversary date). Because of this strong, strong cultural desire to celebrate people - and this done around their birthday - as Christianity moved into the Roman world there was naturally a desire to celebrate His birthday (who more to celebrate than Jesus Christ?) and thus the issue of when He was born.

But of course, the Bible does not give the exact date (the Bible contains very few dates - none in the NT). And there evidently was no "tradition" about this. Thus, we cannot and do not know the date of His birth. ANY date could be chosen - but it would be just an arbitrary date chosen for this purpose.

While lots of theories exist as to WHY December 25 was eventually settled upon, NO ONE knows the actual reason since NO ONE ever recorded the reason for it. We have quite a bit of Christian writings from this period.... even some mentioning Christmas... but not one mention of WHY this date eventually became the agreed upon date on which to celebrate Christ's birth (and Christ in general). We simply have NOTHING from the period as to the reason. Thus all the theories are just that - with NO WAY WHATSOEVER to know which (if any) is correct.

We cannot compute it from the date of His crucifixion, either. One - we don't know what YEAR this happened (there's a 3 or 4 year variance as to when Jesus was born and an even larger variance as to when he died), two - nothing states how old (to the day) Jesus was when he was crucified. We can't use the birth of John the Baptist (from the temple service of his father) since again, we don't know what YEAR this was, it could have been 7 BC, it would have been 4 BC or anything inbetween. We can't use the shepherds watching their flocks at night since these were very expensive, very special Temple sheep raised for sacrifice and they were watched 24/7 all 365 days of the year.



- Josiah