“We’d like to report a robbery. Christians stole December 25 from the pagans!”

Here’s the case file:

December 25 could not have been Jesus’ birth date. Early Christians did not even celebrate Jesus’ birth. And certainly did not celebrate Christmas on December 25 until long after the pagans had created a December 25 festival. Christmas is the cultural appropriation of the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun.” And the Persian cult of Mithras, also celebrated December 25.

The Gospels makes no mention of any commemorations of Jesus’ birth. Nothing in the Book of Acts or the rest of the New Testament. And the first generations of Christianity did not celebrate Christ’s birth. In fact, such a thing was frowned upon. The Hebrew tradition from which Christianity came celebrated the passing of Jewish heroes. Not birthdays. Encyclopedia Judaica puts it bluntly. “The celebration of birthdays is unknown in traditional Jewish ritual. … The only reference to a birthday in the bible is that celebrated by Pharaoh.” (Gen 40:20)

In fact, early church leader Origen of Alexandria openly mocked birthday celebrations as a pagan idea: “of all the holy people in the Scriptures, no one is recorded to have kept a feast or held a great banquet on his birthday.” Only sinners like Pharaoh and Herod rejoice over the day on which they were born into this world.

The pagans, on the other hand, partied on December 25.

Birth of the Unconquered Sun, or 274 A.D. Comes Before 336 A.D.

In 274 A.D., the Roman Emperor Aurelian instituted the festival known as “Birth of the Unconquered Sun.” or Sol Invictus, honoring the pagan sun god. Unfortunately, as historian William J. Tighe records, the “first (irrefutable) evidence of Christians celebrating December 25 as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336.” This comes from a codex called Deposito Martirum.

Encyclopaedia Britannica gives us the short version: “In an old list of Roman bishops, compiled in A.D. 354 these words appear for A.D. 336: ’25 Dec.: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae.’ December 25th, Christ born in Bethlehem, Judea. This day, December 25, 336, is the first recorded celebration of Christmas.”

Doesn’t take an historian to tell you the year 336 A.D. came after the year 274 A.D.

So, the Case of the Christmas Heist goes, the Christian church simply took Jesus, the risen Son of God who conquered death, and plopped his birthday onto that of the “Unconquered Sun.”

If Sol Invictus wasn’t enough, there’s also the cult of Mithras, originating in Persia, but spread by Roman soldiers throughout the Roman Empire. Mithras birth, according to some scholars was also celebrated December 25.

Interestingly, the “Christians Stole Christmas” meme is relatively recent, emerging out of the age of Enlightenment. 19th century German scholar Hermann Usener was instrumental in popularizing the pagan origin of Christmas Day. Oxford’s C.P.E. Nothaft summarizes Usener’s approach.

Threatened by the persistent popularity of (Sol Invictus) rituals among newly baptized Christians, the early Church was moved to incorporate traces of the cult into its own liturgy and thus re-interpreted the annual “birth” of the sun at the winter solstice as the birth festival of Christ.

Scholars also have argued that the fourth century emperor Constantine, in his effort to solidify Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, ordered Sol Invictus be adapted into a commemoration of Jesus’ birth.

Summarizing the Case of the Great Christmas Heist

So things are looking good for Christmas Day having a pagan origin. The first indisputable evidence of Christians celebrating the nativity December 25 comes over fifty years after the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun.” We know despite his proclamation of Christian faith, Constantine continued to identify with the sun God, and wanted to unify his empire with Christianity. We know the early church, born out of Hebrew tradition, rejected celebrating birthdays of its biblical heroes.

The post-Enlightenment quest to question and when possible undercut the traditional beliefs of the church … partnered with today’s secularists … seem to have won this battle.

Or have they? Steven Hijmans studied hard the iconography of the sun in Roman religions. His conclusion, says Nothaft: “Studies emphasizing the ‘pagan’ roots of Christmas have been fraught with a certain tendency toward confirmation bias.”

Historian William Tighe puts it more bluntly, “The ‘pagan origins of Christmas’ is a myth without historical substance.”

The Case Against Christians Stealing Christmas Day Falls Apart

The first thing we can dispatch with is the notion Constantine pushed Christmas on December 25. There is absolutely no documentary evidence this happened. No decrees. No commentaries. No reports. Also, if Constantine had a hand in making Christmas December 25, wouldn’t the first place he would have held Christmas celebrations is in his own city of Constantinople?

The first Christmas commemoration in Constantinople took place in 380, over 40 years after Constantine’s death.

There is an even bigger hole in the “Christmas Was Copped from the Pagans” theory. In the third and fourth century, the Christian church was still very adamant about avoiding things pagan. Wrote Andrew McGowan in Bible Review:

“The persecuted Christian minority was greatly concerned with distancing itself from the larger, public pagan religious observances, such as sacrifices, games and holidays. This was still true as late as the violent persecutions of the Christians conducted by the Roman emperor Diocletian between 303 and 312 C.E.”

Sure, perhaps some Christians would go along to get along. However, certainly many Christians would fight tooth and nail any effort to adapt a pagan festival to honor Christ. At the very least there would be a very loud debate about it.

There was no such debate.

In fact, an equally strong argument can be made that Sol Invictus was instituted by Aurelian in response to a growing movement to commemorate the birth of the Risen Son, Jesus. And to commemorate it on Christmas Day.

A Hoax

Add it up and we can fully and confidently reject the claim Christmas is, in Nothaft’s words, “a one-sided reaction to a pre-existing pagan tradition.” The report of a heist turns out to be a hoax.

So how did the early Christian church fix on December 25 for the Nativity? That is the next stop on our journey.

Part III - Calculating Christmas Day

One of the arguments that is used to say 4th century Christians adopted the pagan Sol Invictus festival for Christmas is that earlier Christians did not celebrate birthdays of biblical heroes. They commemorated deaths.

Now comes the great twist in our journey: It is precisely because they commemorated deaths that early Christians began identifying December 25 as the date of the Nativity.

Welcome to what’s called the “Calculations Theory.” William J. Tighe published a mind-blowing and easy-to-follow article about it for Touchstone magazine in 2003.

Here’s the theory in a nutshell: The early Christians, like their Hebrew forefathers, commemorated the deaths of their heroes and martyrs. Naturally, the early Christians were very concerned about pinpointing the precise date of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Although there was some disagreement, generally speaking, a consensus formed that Jesus died on March 25.

Now, as Tighe writes, there was another ancient Hebrew belief: Great men died on the anniversary of their conception. The early Christians held to this idea, particularly since they held that Jesus lived a perfect and complete life.

So if Jesus died on March 25, the Incarnation would have been on March 25. Since the gospels give every indication Mary had a normal length pregnancy, what’s nine months from March 25? December 25.

Sure, there are issues with this approach. For example, we today would reject the idea of dying on the exact day you were conceived. It’s more a theological idea than a biological one. Also, there’s no way to prove Mary carried the Christ child exactly nine months.

However, right now, declaring Jesus was actually born December 25 is not our task at hand. Our task to show that a December 25 date marking Jesus’ birth not only came about independent from the pagan Sol Invictus festival, but predates it.

Calculating December 25

Remember, the Sol Invictus festival was inaugurated in 274 A.D. So what we’re looking for is evidence of Christians identifying December 25 before that. Sure enough, we get it.

Encyclopaedia Britannica declares: “December 25 was first identified as the date of Jesus’ birth by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221 and later became the universally accepted date.” Sextus Julius Africanus was a Roman Christian historian. He placed the Incarnation on March 25 and thus Jesus’ nativity on December 25.

Perhaps even earlier, 2nd and 3rd century Christian theologian Hippolytus of Rome in his “Commentary on Daniel” stated the Nativity occurred December 25. From an entry in Encyclopedia Roma titled “Sol Invictus and Christmas”:

And, although the statement may be a later interpolation, he (Hippolytus) reiterated several decades later (in AD 235) that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of the creation of the world, which Hippolytus believed to have been on March 25 (Chronicon, 686ff). The Nativity thus would be on December 25.

Meanwhile, Tighe also beats the magic year of 274 A.D. With a vengeance. He details how assorted groups in the eastern and western churches wrestled to determine a date for Jesus’ crucifixion. He shows that Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa, by the time of early church leader Tertullian had fixed on Friday, March 25, 29 A.D. That March 25, 29 A.D. wasn’t actually a Friday, is beside the point. The point is Tertullian lived from 155-220 A.D.

In other words, at least 50 years before Aurelian established December 25 as a pagan festival, Christians widely scattered east to west had established December 25 for Christ’s nativity.

In fact, Tighe argues Aurelian pinched December 25 from the Christians!

The pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certain an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians.

The Light Rises Upon You

Yes, says Andrew McGowan, some early church writers did make a connection between the winter solstice and Jesus’ birth, as the pagans did with Sol Invictus. For example, the early church father Ambrose described Jesus as the true sun that outshined the fallen gods of the old order.

But, says McGowan, “early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods.”

John Seldon was a 17th century member of Parliament, and one of the most learned men of his time. When the argument started to be made that Christmas was of pagan origins, he came to Christianity’s defense. He showed that due to problems with the Julian calendar, an ancient tie was lost. The winter solstice in the Julian calendar was December 25. And, he argued, the tie between the winter solstice and Christ’s birth, in fact, goes back to the apostles.

Ultimately, we don’t need 17th century British parliamentarians to make our case. We need only the Old Testament prophet Malachi.

In a work attributed to church father Cyprian published in 243 A.D, we find this:

O how admirable and divine is the providence of the Lord, that on that day on which the sun was made on the same day was Christ born … and so rightly did the prophet Malachi say to the people: ‘the sun of righteousness shall rise upon you, with healing in his wings.’” (Malachi 2:4)

Says scholar Thomas J. Talley,

“… it is clear that [Cyprian] sees it already as natalis solis iustitiae [Birth of the Sun of Righteousness], over three decades before the establishment at Rome of the natalis solis invicti [Birth of the Invincible Sun].” (Emphasis added.)

Our Journey Thus Far

Our journey these past three days has taken us through pagan territory, Hebrew tradition, early church fathers, mind-bending calculations and the winter solstice. Let’s assess the trip thus far:

It is certainly natural to see the winter solstice, the returning of light, as a symbol of Jesus’ birth. We can see how this partners beautifully with calculations of Jesus’ death and Inception occurring on March 25, nine months before December 25. We have enough evidence that this connection of Christ’s Nativity to December 25 far predates Sol Invictus — that Christians were already starting to commemorate the Nativity on December 25 before Aurelian created the pagan festival — to conclude the Christmas tradition was at worst emerging in parallel. And at best was becoming popular enough that Aurelian attempted to give the Jesus commemoration a pagan overhaul.

And yet, does this mean Jesus was actually born on Christmas Day, December 25th? Is it possible to make that case at all?

That’s our next stop.

Part IV - So Was Jesus Christ Born on December 25 After All?