Possible Source #1: The Early Church Understood the Jewish Priestly
Calendar
This argument runs as follows:
1.
The course of priests on duty when the temple
was destroyed can be estimated with a reasonable degree of accuracy (see Josef
Heinrich Friedlieb’s Leben J. Christi des Erlösers. Münster, 1887,
p. 312). This starting point may have been more commonly understood in Jewish
families in the first and second centuries.
2.
There were 24 courses of priests (Neh.
12:12–21), of which Abijah is 8th. Working back from the course of Joarib
serving on the 9th of Av (August 4th) in AD 70, you can determine when each
course of priests served.
3.
Zacharias was from the course of Abijah (Luke
1:5), the eighth course of priests (Neh. 12:17), meaning that he would have
served both during the 3rd week of Nisan (including the feasts of Passover and
Unleavened Bread) and the 2nd week of Tishri (including the Day of Atonement)
in 5 BC.
4.
If the latter week is correct, then we can add
280 days (give or take a little) and arrive at the end of June for the birth of
John the Baptist. Catholic tradition places the date of John’s birth on June
24.
5.
Now we just have to add 6 months to June 24 to
find out when Jesus was born, because John was 6 months older than Jesus (Luke
1:24). This puts us at December 24–25.
There are
some challenges with this schema:
1.
The entire argument, from our perspective,
depends on the accuracy of Friedlieb’s claim regarding the priestly course of
Joarib serving on the 9th of Av in AD 70.
2.
Because there were 24 courses of priests and 50
weeks in the year, the year we select for the birth of Christ could make a big
difference in how this schema works.
3.
There is a 50/50 chance that Zacharias would
have served either in Nisan or Tishri on the given year. Tishri backs up the
chronology for the traditional dates, but it isn’t the only possibility.
Proponents of this view may point to the “Infancy Gospel of James”, which has Zacharias
entering the most holy place (see section 8), an act associated with the Day of
Atonement. I don’t find the argument from the infancy gospel convincing.
Those
challenges stated, if our understanding of the priestly rotation is correct and
if the early church understood Zacharias as serving in the temple at or around
the Day of Atonement, then it would be relatively easy to date Christmas on
December 25th without any other influence.
Possible Source #2: The Early Church Counted Back from Easter
Somewhere
along the line, the idea came about that Jesus was conceived on the day that he
died. The origins of this thinking bear more investigation than I can trace
out, but it’s a line of reasoning adopted by Augustine:
For He 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 nor since. But He was born,
according to tradition, upon December the 25th.
In other
words, they worked back from what they were most certain (Jesus’s death on
March 25th), assumed his conception was on the same day, and calculated his
birth on December 25th. And there’s a long line of interpreters who argued for
the March 25th crucifixion of Christ (a substantially earlier tradition than
December 25th for Christmas). See, for example, Tertullian (mid second to early third
century).
While the
argument for Jesus dying on the day of his conception seems incredibly forced
to modern interpreters, it seems to have been a commonplace expectation of
ancient interpreters. And it was reasonable enough for them to accordingly set
the date of Christmas on December 25th. And the same argument seems to be in play
in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where April 6th was argued as Christ’s death
and conception and January 6th for his birth.
In summary,
there is good reason to believe that the early church was not determining
Easter based on Sol Invictus, but rather determining Christmas based on Easter.
Possible Source #3: The Early Church Understood the Historical Events
Surrounding Christmas
Based on
what we know of the eclipse around the time of Herod’s final illness, placing
it in April of 4 BC, we can work backwards a few weeks for the disease to run
its course, three to four weeks for the flight to Egypt, one week for Herod’s
wait for the magi, and 6 weeks of purification before Jesus was presented. This
gives a November or December date for Christmas (see Maier pages 124 and 127).
The results
here are a little more speculative, but the arguments are plausible because
they rely on a known historical event as recorded by Josephus. They also don’t
arrive exactly at the specific date of December 25th, but a little flexibility
in the weeks could make it work.
Conclusion
Without
making an appeal to history (i.e., that the early church had better access to
historical records and sources), we can chart three possible routes for the
early church to arrive at the December 25th date of Christmas via known and
extant sources. We can also make a compelling case that pagan alternatives
would have been rejected by Christians at this time and that the Christian
mentions of the December 25th date predate the mentions of a pagan celebration.
So I feel confident in arguing that December 25th was not a pagan holiday
converted into a Christian one, but a date arrived at by one of many possible
lines of evidence.
Additional Reading
The
following sites provide some excellent jumping-off points and additional
arguments related to the issue of the “pagan Christmas” festival:
·
https://www.crosswalk.com/special-coverage/christmas-and-advent/was-jesus-really-born-on-dec-25.html
·
https://taylormarshall.com/2012/12/yes-christ-was-really-born-on-december.html
·
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_Romana/calendar/invictus.html
·
http://inchristus.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/maier-date-of-the-nativity.pdf
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