By: Shachi Rairikar
December 26, 2004
(The author is a Chartered Accountant working in a software company in Indore, M.P., India and manage www.indpride.com)

“Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ was born on the Christmas Day” goes the famous Boney M number. So do many other songs, stories, books, preachers, etc. and we have always believed them without questioning, while the fact is that “25^th December is the birth date of Christ” is nothing but a universally accepted myth perpetuated by the church.

Christmas is not the celebration of the birthday of Christ. Different researchers place different dates for the birth of Christ but there is virtual agreement among scholars that December 25th is not the birth date of Jesus Christ. Different scholars have identified various dates starting from April, up to September as Christ’s birthday. Armenian Orthodox Christians observe the holiday on 6^th January while other Orthodox churches, and at least one eastern Catholic church, mark Christmas on 7^th January.

During the first three centuries there is no trace of any feast for the birth of Christ. Until AD 245, when a group of scholars tried to determine the date of Christmas, the question had never been addressed. For centuries the church could not decide on the proper date of the birth of Jesus Christ. There was a lot of dispute about the proper date of the birth of Christ and not everyone agrees even to this day. Christmas was not celebrated until AD 350 when Pope Julius 1st decreed that 25th December was the birth date of Christ.  

Why 25^th December? The date was already celebrated as the Natalis Solis Invicti in honour of the sun god, Mithras by Roman citizens. They decorated their homes with greenery, exchanged gifts and gathered for festive meals on that date, observed just after the winter solstice. It was a practice for early Christian church to blend pagan customs with Christian rituals to win converts. Easter is a prime example with the Easter Bunny being a remnant from pagan times. When the fathers of the church decided to settle upon a date to celebrate the event of the birth of Christ, they wisely chose 25^th December, since it coincided with the annual pagan festival celebrated in the honour of the sun which was too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence. The pagan festival with it's riot and merrymaking was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner. December 25^th was a festival long before the conversion of the Germanic peoples to Christianity, it seemed fitting that the time of their winter festival would also be the time to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Not only is Christ’s birth date disputed, scholars differ in their opinion of Jesus’s birth year also. This makes the Christian calendar with the concepts BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) questionable. “Before Christ” means “before the birth of Jesus Christ”. For example, 300 BC literally means 300 years before the birth of the Christ. Similarly, “Anno Domini” is Latin for “in the year of Our Lord”, referring to Jesus Christ. So AD 2004 literally means 2004^th year since the birth of the Christ. So, now when different scholars are placing the year of birth of Christ differently – ranging from 4 BC to 500 BC, the Christian calendar, which is based on the birth year of the Christ, is rendered redundant. This is the reason for changing BC to BCE (Before the Common Era) and AD to CE (Common Era). What was earlier referred to as Christian Era is now called the Common Era because this calendar is being followed throughout the world by Christians as well as non-Christians. The new terminology takes care of the technical flaw that arose due to conflicting views related to Christ’s birth year and also makes the calendar more acceptable to non-Christians. 

In 17th century England and early America, English Puritans said the Bible offered no clear basis for celebrating Jesus' birth. In 1643, the English Parliament outlawed not only Christmas, but Easter and other Christian celebrations. But by 1660, Christmas had become such a popular holiday, that the law was repealed. In 1659, people in Massachusetts who celebrated Christmas were fined. The law was struck down in 1681 because the popularity of observing Christmas had grown immensely. However, Christian groups remained divided over whether Christmas should be celebrated because of its ties to pagan observances. The Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, Catholic and Anglican churches forged ahead with the celebrations while the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers and Puritans continued to rail against it.

Though Christmas is the only legal national religious holiday in the United States today, it has been less than 100 years since all 50 states recognized Christmas as an official holiday. Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas an official holiday in1836, 71 years before the last state -- Oklahoma -- followed suit in 1907.

So next time you hear the Boney M number don’t believe it. Next time you hear any of the Christian preachers, take every word with a pinch of salt because they can go to any extent to “reap” more “harvest”. Next time you eat a Christmas cake don’t remember Jesus Christ but remember Sun God in whose honour 25^th December is celebrated. 

Shachi Rairikar