Information Related to "Questions and Answers - Jan/Feb 2006"
| Audio/Video |
Question: I just received the Nov.-Dec. Good News. The article "Why Some Christians Don't Celebrate Christmas" is educating. I have a question though. As a person who follows Jesus Christ's teachings and believes in the Son of God, shouldn't I celebrate His birthday? I need to know the exact—or better still, the true Bible birth date—of Jesus Christ. Is this possible?
—A.D., Orpington , England
Answer. History convincingly shows that Dec. 25 was popularized as the date for Christmas not because Christ was born on that day, but because it was already popular in pagan religious celebrations as the birthday of the sun.
But is it possible that Dec. 25 could be the day of Christ's birth?
"Lacking any scriptural pointers to Jesus's birthday, early Christian teachers suggested dates all over the calendar. Clement . . . picked November 18. Hippolytus . . . figured Christ must have been born on a Wednesday . . . An anonymous document[,] believed to have been written in North Africa around A.D. 243, placed Jesus's birth on March 28" (Jeffery Sheler, U.S. News & World Report, "In Search of Christmas," Dec. 23, 1996, p. 58).
A careful analysis of Scripture, however, clearly indicates that Dec. 25 could not have been the date for Christ's birth. Here are two primary reasons:
First, we know that shepherds were "living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night," at the time of Jesus' birth (Luke 2:8). In that area, shepherds simply were not out in the fields at night with their flocks during December.
The Interpreter's One-Volume Commentary, for example, explains that this passage argues "against the birth [of Christ] occurring on Dec. 25 since the weather would not have permitted" shepherds watching over their flocks in the fields at night. It was simply too wet and cold for these events mentioned in connection with Christ's birth to have taken place in December.
Related Information on UCG Sites:
Table of Contents that includes "Questions and Answers - Jan/Feb 2006"
Questions/answers: