There are those who are militantly opposed to the celebration of Christmas on historical grounds. They often will chide, “Why do you celebrate Christmas on December 25th? They will then point out that the Bible does not say that Jesus was born on December 25th. And that it is most unlikely that Jesus could have been born in the heart of the dry season.
Well, this is an interesting area for Christian dialogue. Unfortunately, my experience has been that those who make such objections will not listen to the response that one has to offer. They give the impression that they are divinely ordained to lecture and everyone else is under obligation to listen. May I hope that I shall not now be speaking a wall.
It is not an article of faith that Jesus was born on December 25th. In the Creed we confess that Jesus “was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary”. We do not add the phrase “on December 25th”. Christmas is a commemoration of the Incarnation and not a memorial of a specific date.
Of course, December 25th was not arbitrarily chosen as the birth day of Jesus. There are sound historical reasons justifying the decision. But it must be admitted that the dogmatic tendency to simply rule that the established date of the birth of Jesus is December 25th in the year 1 AD is misguided.
The fact is that the New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth. The earliest gospel (Mark, written about 65 AD) begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus. But of course a thorough analysis of the events surrounding Jesus’ life in the gospels can lead historians back to the probable date of his birth.
That is how Dionysius Exiguous, a Scythian monk, was able to dig deep and establish through thorough research and analysis, the birth day of Jesus. While it is indisputable that the bible does not state the exact date when Jesus was born, it is equally indisputable that the same bible situates the birth of Jesus within a definite historical period which could be analyzed historically to arrive more or less at the exact date of the birth of Jesus.
Consider, for example, the rich historical data furnished us by Luke 3:1-2 in this connection: “It was in the fifteenth year of the rule of Emperor Tiberius; Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea; Herod was ruler of Galilee, … Annas and Caiaphas were High Priests.”
It is from a critical analysis of sound historical data of this calibre that the date of the Christmas celebration was established in the early days of Christianity. There is documented evidence that December 25th was already of some significance to Christians prior to A.D. 354 in the writings of Hyppolytus of Rome and of the nineteenth-century liturgical scholar Louis Duchesne, among many others.
Now let us be concrete. Do we celebrate the birthday of those who are important in our lives? Yes. Is Jesus important in our lives? Of course! Is it a good thing to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Yes. Therefore, until someone proves to me that it is evil to celebrate the earthly birth of the Son of God, I shall continue to celebrate Christmas.
When should we celebrate it? Tradition, based on sound historical grounds, has put it on December 25. Give me your own date or else go along with mine. I mean to say that until someone presents the birth certificate of Jesus bearing a different date of birth, I shall continue to celebrate the birthday of my Lord Jesus on December 25th. After all, what I am celebrating is an event and not a date.