The Date of Christmas

It is widely known that the tradition which ascribes the birth of Jesus to the 25th December is far from historically secure. If an origin is to be found for the tradition of celebrating Christmas on the 25th December, it is securely available in the late 4th century writing of John Chrysostom (or John of the golden tongue), the influential Greek speaking preacher of the Antiochene church in Asia Minor.

John is one of those fourth century preachers who has left a huge volume of written material to posterity (the same can be said of only very few figures of the pre-4th century church). He was a supremely impressive public speaker (hence his nickname), but he was also a devoted scholar of Biblical texts. Included among his surviving works is a number of commentaries on the (canonical) Gospels and other important writings. It is an accident of fortune that John's view of the right day for the celebration of the birth of Jesus has happened to be the one which has survived to the present - at least in the west. Certainly, at least one Christian writer before John seems to have been unequivocally opposed to the notion of celebrating the occasion of Christ's birth. Origen, writing in the 3rd century, regarded the celebration of divine 'birthdays' as essentially a pagan mode of religious observance. Though Origen is the only influential thinker on record explicitly denouncing the idea of celebrating the occasion of Christ's birth, the celebration is at no stage mentioned in the catalogues of festivals compiled by the 2nd century writers Irenaeus of Lyons and Tertullian of Carthage. It should be conceded, however, that people were nevertheless interested in knowing the date of Jesus' first earthly appearance, even if they didn't celebrate the occasion. The second century writer Clement of Alexandria and a number of Gnostic traditions, for example, contain some evidence of curiosity about the issue.

By the time of the late 4th century, Christianity in the Roman empire was no longer an endangered sect, but a publicly funded religious body in a period of rapid socio-economic expansion. The need to harmonise the religious activities and habits of observance of the disparate co-religionists of various cities became more pressing. When John Chrysostom addressed his congregation on the subject of the correct date of Christmas in c.388 (this date, he argued, was 25th December), he had to convince one faction within his audience that they were celebrating the festival on the wrong date. What were his arguments in favour of the 25th? It turns out that he only stressed one important piece of evidence: the existence of the 'census papers' of Jesus and his family in the Roman archives (in the city of Rome; cf. also Tertullian, Adv. Marcionem 4.7). These census papers, he suggested, should settle the issue. The mention of the census is a direct reference to Luke-Acts, whose author places a large emphasis on the inter-relatedness of the circumstances of Jesus' birth and the requirement of the Roman authorities that inhabitants of Judaea (or, according to Luke, 'the whole world') at that time had to register their details with a Roman censor. Arguing that these old documents still existed, John claimed that the Roman church possessed an authoritative position to declare the right day for the celebration of Christmas on account of its certain fidelity to the documents' testimony. And since the Roman church celebrated on the 25th December, this had to be regarded as authoritative. (But 'Did authorities within the Roman church *really* scrutinize these documents in order to confirm the 25th as the right date?', we might justifiably ask).

Throughout the West, in Rome and beyond, Christmas had been celebrated on the 25th December for a good few years by the time John wrote: helpfully, he succeeded in encouraging the recalcitrant among his eastern co-religionists to reconcile this part of their sacred calendar with that of their western counterparts. Elsewhere in the east, as is confirmed by John's contemporary, Gregory of Nyssa, the 25th December had indeed become a standard date, and Christ's birth had become a celebrated occasion, though variant traditions did still exist and some Christians celebrated Christmas on other dates, while others, like Origen, refused to celebrate the occasion whatsoever. Such disagreements recur even now.

Problems exist, of course, in John's argument. It suffices to note that if Luke is right and Jesus really was born in Bethlehem because his parents needed to go there to register with the Roman censor, it is a little implausible to suppose that the 25th December stands any chance of being the right date. Would a Roman censor really have called for census details to be provided in the middle of December, the most onerous time of year to travel? More importantly, the census is not mentioned in either Matthew or John (and not either in Mark, whose Gospel contains absolutely no details about the circumstances of Jesus' early years). The story that Jesus and family travelled to Bethlehem to register with the censor must rest on the authority of Luke alone. (The census itself, however, certainly happened: it is attested in Josephus).

The birthplace of Jesus is disputed. Like Luke, Matthew also insists Jesus was born in Bethlehem: arguably, however, both writers felt this needed to be his birthplace because the Jewish prophet Micah (Mic. 5:2) had specified that Bethlehem would be the birthplace of the Messiah. Aligning him with such a tradition was in the interests of both authors - and perfectly possible, given that Mark's Gospel, upon which both seem to have relied as a source, contained no specification of the location of Jesus' birth to the contrary. The reality is that Jesus could easily have been born in Nazareth, a town in the area around which much of his ministry took place, but also his 'home town' where, strikingly, 'his own people' did not recognise him as Lord (Mk. 6:1-13). For me, it makes little difference any which way. The fact that he was born is what matters. The date? The 25th December will do nicely.

To every reader of this blog, I wish you a very merry Christmas.