by Bob Sullivan
In my last column, I gave you some ideas on how to question someone who claimed Christmas is a holiday with pagan roots. That may have left you wondering how you can show someone that Christmas is a purely Christian celebration.
In the early Church, the date of Christ’s birth was not a settled issue. Apparently, no one interviewed the shepherds about the precise date.
Early Christians who did try to figure out the most likely date of Christ’s birth commonly calculated it as what we now know as December 25th. Most such Christians did so by noting the date of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection, which they believed to be March 25 through 27 of the year 29 A.D., then counting the nine months from Good Friday.
Is the claim that Good Friday occurred on March 25 of 29 A.D. irrefutable? No, but it does have a lot of support from the Jewish traditions and practices of that time. For this reason, the early Christians worked from these dates, specifically March 25th, to eventually select the modern December 25th, as the day of Christ’s birth, accounting for nine months from His conception to birth.
Other early Christians accepted April 2 of the year 2 B.C. as the date of Christ’s conception, as this is found in the writings often attributed to St. Hippolytus of Rome who was martyred in about 236 A.D. When the Christians of that time calculated nine months from April 2nd on their calendar, they often came up with December 25th or something close to it as the date of Christ’s birth.
The connection between birthdays and “death days” comes from ancient Jewish teachers and documents such as the Babylonian Talmud, which suggest that the great figures of the Bible were believed to have died on the same date as their birth. Many early Christians were converts from Judaism, so Jewish traditions likely influenced some early Christian traditions.
Because of this, we can see why the early Christians might also look at significant dates in the life of Christ as a worthy tradition to follow in their new faith. An added practice in Christianity was not only the importance of the date of a person’s birth, but for some, their miraculous (in one case immaculate) conception. Because of this, the Church has celebrated the conception of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and St. John the Baptist.
While there is no historical evidence the Church adopted a pagan feast date for the date of Christ’s birth, there is significant evidence that once Christians started to celebrate Christmas, they did so primarily due to the calculations from the death or conception of Christ. Modern astronomy has led some to conclude that the date of Christ’s birth may actually be June 25th, but the early Christians did not have the benefits of the discoveries of Johannes Kepler, Copernicus, and others to help them.
I am not trying to claim I know the actual date of Christ’s birth. I’m simply showing how the early Church arrived at a date. Nor is this to say that the early Christians did not have secondary reasons for establishing December 25th as Christmas. Even 20 centuries ago, people would have recognized that daylight decreased from late June to late December and then began increasing again each year from late December to late June. Unlike pagans, Christians saw the increase in daylight (or the separation of darkness and light) to be a symbol of Christ as a light to the nations. The birth of Christ, the sun of righteousness symbolizes a new beginning and a new way.
In his Nativity Sermon, St. Jerome (342 A.D. to 420 A.D.) wrote:
“Even nature is in agreement with our claim, for the world itself bears witness to our statement. Up to this day, darkness increases; from this day on, it decreases; light increases, darkness decreases; the day waxes, error wanes; truth advances. For us today, the Sun of Justice [righteousness] is born.
St. Jerome’s statement “even nature” shows that the symbolism of darkness and light was recognized, but secondary.
As with all Christian practices over the centuries, Christmas has had its share of obstacles, including the suppression of Christmas by Christians influenced by Puritanism and today’s less calculated but equally disturbing suppression of Christmas by secular consumerism and a return to paganism. In fact, the “authentic” Christmas we envision when we harken the days of old is actually influenced and somewhat created by popular authors such as Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and poems such as Twas The Night Before Christmas, which would have been frowned upon by any true Puritan. More recently we see St. Nicholas of Myrna slowly being rebranded as an increasingly secular Kris Kringles and Santa Clauses, and the meaning of Christmas rebranded as a gift-exchange.
Christmas should revolve around Christmas Mass, not the family meal or the opening of gifts. You have certainly seen the “Keep Christ in Christmas” magnet on the back of a cars around Christmas. That is a very important reminder. Another reminder could be, “Keep Mass in Christ’s Mass.” Gifts and family gatherings are good, but without Christ, that’s all they are, and they can (and often do) happen on any day of the year. By keeping Christmas Mass (Christ’s Mass) at the center of Christmas, we keep Christ in Christmas.
We can all benefit from learning more about Christmas by reading books such as "The True Meaning of Christmas" by Michael Barber, which supplied a fair amount of the information included in this column. The more we know, the harder it is to misunderstand it.
