The idea that Christmas Day – 25th December – as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ is a ‘jewish invention’ is of a very modern vintage. It has come about in large part of the attempts to – for lack of a better term – ‘jewify’ Christianity in the sense that F. C. Burkitt meant it when he commented that:
‘It is easy to enumerate the Jewish elements of Christianity. They are two: Jesus and the Bible.’ (1)
The point that Burkitt was making – and personally I think Jesus is disputable (since the non-Biblical evidence broadly says no, while the Biblical evidence broadly says yes) while Saint Paul (Saul) was certainly jewish and the Bible itself is an amalgam of non-jewish and jewish sources (e.g., the origins of Genesis in things like the Epic of Gilgamesh) – is that while the historical roots of Christianity are arguably in Second Temple Judaism: Christianity as a distinct religion itself is a distinctly non-jewish structure largely based on an amalgam Greco-Roman philosophy with the ideas of Greco-Roman mystery religions (i.e., classic religious syncretism).
Now while this won’t find favour with either side of the ‘Is Christianity jewish?’ debate; it is my personal appraisal of what the literature and sources suggest. My point here isn’t to engage in the ‘Is Christianity jewish?’ debate, but rather to illustrate the background as to why Christmas Day is on the 25th December in that those Christians who want to ‘jewify’ (or ‘re-jewify’) Christianity have switched their historic position from the classic Puritan/Low Church Protestant ‘Christmas is a pagan holiday’ to ‘Christmas is a jewish holiday’.
The reason for this is that these modern day Judaisers – which to be fair Christianity has long had a problem with given it is arguably the oldest and most recurrent of all Christian heresies – (2) want to make Christianity ‘Purified Judaism’ rather than… well… historic Christianity (think the Christianity of someone like the Venerable Bede). This is a key distinct in that while you may not like historic Christianity overly much; it is infinitely preferable to the modern God-Fearer/Noahide variety that currently infests Protestantism, Catholicism and also parts of Orthodoxy.
To do this they – unlike their historic Puritan/Low Church Protestant confreres – by trying to ‘jewify’ Christmas Day rather than seeking to purge it as a ‘pagan holiday’. To do this they have begun to try to argue for a jewish origin for Christmas Day being on 25th December and thus make it a ‘jewish invention’ rather than a non-jewish invention.
Andrew McGowan’s article for the ‘Biblical Archaeology Society’ made this argument in some detail on Christmas Day this year. (3) Rather than quoted extended sections of McGowan’s lengthy article I’ll try summarise his thesis as best I can here and only quote passages twice to illustrate particular points of McGowan’s argument and reasoning.
McGowan argues that because early Christians didn’t celebrate Christmas Day and the first reference to a birth date for Jesus is made by Clement of Alexandria around the year 200 where he quotes Christian opinions as being the 21st March, 20th May, 15th April, 20th April or the 21st April; therefore the source of Christmas Day being 25th December is not something within Christianity itself but rather is external to it.
This is fine as far as it goes and he continues by pointing out that the 25th December date for Jesus’ birth comes about between 200 A.D. and 400 A.D. with a competing date being 6th January. Eventually the 25th December would be adopted by the Western Church, while the Eastern Church would adopt 6th January and 6th January would in turn become the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian calendar.
So thus, we are struck with a time frame between circa 200 A.D. to 400 A.D. for the date of the 25th December becoming Jesus’ birth date. We can be even more specific in that the first mention that Jesus was born on 25th December comes from a Roman almanac from circa 350 A.D. and we know that around 400 A.D. the Donatists were celebrating a festival on 25th December.
So far so good but here McGowan tries to engage in wordplay to nullify the obvious logic.
To quote McGowan:
‘There is another way to account for the origins of Christmas on December 25: Strange as it may seem, the key to dating Jesus’ birth may lie in the dating of Jesus’ death at Passover. This view was first suggested to the modern world by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and fully developed by American Thomas Talley in more recent years. But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth.
Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.
This idea appears in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which appears to come from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise states: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March [March 25], which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.” Based on this, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice.
Augustine, too, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he writes: “For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”’ (4)
What McGowan is doing here is intellectual sleight-of-hand: he’s claiming that because Christians rationalized the 25th December and 6th January as birth dates of Jesus between a century to half a century after the 25th December date came into use – remember Tertullian didn’t say anything about 25th December which McGowan is injecting as if he did – therefore the basis of the 25th December dating is Judaism.
McGowan then dishonestly characterises the jewish lunar calendar as follows to ‘make his case’ using the Babylonian Talmud writing that:
‘The notion that creation and redemption should occur at the same time of year is also reflected in ancient Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud preserves a dispute between two early-second-century C.E. rabbis who share this view, but disagree on the date: Rabbi Eliezer states: “In Nisan the world was created; in Nisan the Patriarchs were born; on Passover Isaac was born … and in Nisan they [our ancestors] will be redeemed in time to come.” (The other rabbi, Joshua, dates these same events to the following month, Tishri.) Thus, the dates of Christmas and Epiphany may well have resulted from Christian theological reflection on such chronologies: Jesus would have been conceived on the same date he died, and born nine months later.’ (5)
This sounds impressive to a lay reader but it is fundamentally dishonest because ‘Nisan’ is a month in the jewish lunar calendar not a ‘time of year’ – the jewish lunar calendar has twelve or thirteen months in a given year – with the month of Nisan running roughly between 15th March and 15th April, while what Rabbis Eliezar and Joshua are saying is that because the Patriarchs and Isaac were born – as well as the world created (Nisan is the first jewish month of the year) – in Nisan therefore the ancestors of the jews redeemed the world in Nisan.
What they are not saying is that Jesus ‘died and was born in Nisan’ – which is McGowan’s argument based on styling it a ‘time of year’ (spring is sometimes referred to an Nisan but Eliezer and Joshua are referring specifically to the month of Nisan) therefore nine months after the end of Nisan then you get the start of Nisan. This is simply wishful thinking on McGowan’s part and doesn’t explain in the slightest why on earth 25th December was actually chosen but it does show how Christians later rationalized its choice and apparent popularity.
The reason they chose it is fairly obvious in that the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated the first ‘Chief God of the Empire’ in the form of Sol Invictus in 274 A.D. whose principal feast day was – you guessed it – 25th December and whose cult was heavily enforced by the Roman state and thus well-known and rather popular. It is also telling that the Christian references to 25th December as the birth date of Jesus only occur in the years immediately after Sol Invictus and his principal festival on 25th December have been heavily pushed by the Roman state till circa 328 A.D. under the Emperor Constantine I just after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D.
So, then all of a sudden circa twenty years after the cult of Sol Invictus ostensibly lost Imperial patronage; the 25th December has suddenly become Jesus’ birth date. This cannot be a coincidence even if we just take into account the regularity of religious syncretism in the Roman Empire (Sol Invictus was himself a syncretic creation) and despite McGowan’s warbling about ‘Christian sources don’t mention it’: it is extremely unlikely that there is no link there in so far as the old Imperial Roman state religion’s principal feast day suddenly becomes the next Imperial Roman state religion’s principal feast day soon after they begin to switch over.
As they say: give me a break.
They are clearly and obvious related which McGowan tries to muddy the waters concerning in order to delude his readers into thinking that Christmas Day being 25th December has something to do with Judaism. (6) When it is clearly been taken from the Cult of Sol Invictus; whose own festival was deliberately placed by Aurelian two days after one of the principal (and most popular) Roman religious holidays (complete with feasting, presents and public merrymaking) called the Saturnalia (this lasted between 17th December and 23rd December).
Thus, both the 25th December and to a lesser extent the idea of the joyous advent season (i.e., Saturnalia leading up the festival of Sol Invictus [traditionally Christians are supposed to view only the second half of advent as joyous while the first is meant to contemplative and a fast) are not ‘jewish inventions’ at all but rather pagan Roman holidays folded into Christianity.
References
(1) F. C. Burkitt, 1928, ‘The Debt of Christianity to Judaism’, p. 71 in Edwyn Bevan, Charles Singer (Eds.), 1928, ‘The Legacy of Israel’, 1st Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford
(2) For example, see my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-judaiser-heresy-in-fifteenth
(3) https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/how-december-25-became-christmas/
(4) Idem.
(5) Idem.
(6) Idem.
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