Why do we celebrate Christmas on the 25th December each year? Do we know the exact date of Jesus birth?
To my knowledge, the exact date when Jesus was born is unknown. While we are on increasingly firm ground for the date of his death—early April 33—there’s no sure way of discovering the date of his birth.
The fact that Luke tells us that shepherds were watching their flocks at night possibly agues against a date in December. At that time of the year, it would have been freezing in the high country around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It’s unlikely shepherds would have been out in that sort of weather.
From the second century on, there were debates between the Eastern and Western Churches over the best time to celebrate Easter. But to my knowledge, the date for Christmas wasn’t really settled until about the fourth century. I think the first occasion was AD 336.
We need to remember that the date of Christmas was settled by a Christian emperor at a time when the church was gaining ascendancy in the Roman Empire. Paganism was a dying force. The challenge for Christians was to find a religious calendar that would be comprehensive for the whole year and include the time of Christmas and Epiphany (the appearance of Christ). It was decided to celebrate Christmas in conjunction with the festivities that marked the winter solstice—the shortest day of the year. From that point on winter began to lift and people looked forward to the coming of spring and new life. Since the period was already recognized as a well-established religious festival, Christians adopted this time of the year for Christmas. They did it to get a calendar that would be inclusive of everyone in the Empire.
As far as I am aware, the date of Christmas has no sure historical basis. We simply don’t know whether Jesus was born on 25th December. Nevertheless, in the northern hemisphere at least, it seemed a sensible time to celebrate the Saviour’s birth.
If Christmas Day doesn’t have biblical basis, how seriously should we treat it? Should we celebrate it?
Yes, I think we should. People sometimes refer to the ‘fallacy of origins’. By this, they mean that if you can establish that there is some doubt about the origins of a particular activity, then you shouldn’t engage in it. Of course, while the date of Christmas and the origin of the celebration may be unknown, I think that celebrating Christmas is a thoroughly worthwhile thing to do. Surely it’s entirely appropriate for Christians to rejoice in God becoming man for our salvation.
How should Christians celebrate Christmas? How do we claim back the day from the secular world?
In Australia, we tend to make more of Christmas than in many other parts of the world, especially the northern hemisphere where Christmas occurs in the middle of winter. Here in Australia, Christmas coincides with school holidays, end-of-year parties and other sorts of activities which makes it a festive time. So there are a lot of competing emotions. It’s also been thoroughly commercialized.
But I still think that the community believes that Christmas is a special time. People treat it as an important occasion because it represents something very significant that’s happened in our world.
Personally, I think the Church should maximize every opportunity that it receives as a result of the Christmas season. We ought to put our best foot forward in terms of media contact. We should make sure that church services are well-publicised. They must also be enriching experiences which make people glad that they came to a Christmas service. I think we should be leaving people with the best impression possible at Christmas time.
If Christians become too purist and ideological about the celebrations of Christmas, people simply don’t come back. That’s why I would urge churches to celebrate Christmas in a way that is fitting for such a significant event. We should make something of it and spread some goodwill and cheer around the place.
How should families celebrate Christmas?
That’s a hard question. From one point of view, Christmas can be a very unhappy time of year. It’s a reminder to us sometimes of the loss of precious family members. It can be a very hard time for widows or husbands who have lost their wives. It can also be a painful reminder to many of a broken family life. But I think that nonetheless, families, as well as churches, should make the most of it.
Most importantly, I think families should find time on Christmas Day to thank God for the gift of His Son and every other blessing which we have received from Him. It’s good to start the day with worship.
We also need to be sensible about the level of our festivities. We shouldn’t allow costs to get out of hand. Sometimes we get ourselves into difficult financial situations because we feel that we have to buy presents for everyone. Gifts are a good idea, but they should never become a burden. Making sure that everyone receives a nice gift is the important thing, not that we get a present from every other person at the Christmas party. If each member of the family agreed to buy a present for another member on behalf of the whole family, that would be a sensible idea. It would take a lot of the stress out of shopping for so many people. If the giving of gifts was stream-lined like this, it wouldn’t be nearly the burden that it is in terms of time and money. The emphasis should be on a happy family day. Nor should it be a burden for one person, such as the wife. Responsibilities should be spread around so everyone has an opportunity to give and share. Christmas should be a wonderful time for family building and creating memories.
Why do Matthew and Luke present different details when they tell us about the birth of Jesus? Can we explain the differences, especially in the genealogies of Jesus?
It’s very interesting to compare Matthew and Luke. There are certainly differences in the accounts, especially in the genealogies. However, I think that the differences make it very clear that neither author was depending on the other. Both accounts are written-up versions of two different streams of Christian tradition. The differences, not only in the genealogy but in the other areas as well, point to this fact.
On the other hand, once we’ve recognized this, it’s also important to realize the things they share in common. For instance, they both recognize the Davidic or messianic line of Jesus. Further, they are both agreed on the fact of the virgin birth. Likewise, they each mention that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. These, and many other details, show us that there is a genuine core of history under consideration. The differences simply show us that the reports are independent and have not been contrived. We are certainly not dealing with myths and legends.
Of course, the genealogies are a problem on their own. Christians have been exercised about the differences in them from the second century onwards. Scholars have gained doctorates trying to explain them. For a start, we should be very clear that the genealogies of Jesus are different. They differ in a number of respects. They contain different names at points and run in different sequences. Matthew begins with Abraham and ends with Jesus. Luke begins with Jesus and Joseph and goes backwards to Adam.
In Jewish society, genealogies were important. Because Jews saw themselves as descendants of Abraham, family trees became an integral part of their identity. It’s quite possible that over the years Jews developed certain conventions in the way in which they presented their genealogies. For example, they may not have regarded it as necessary to have given the full details of each and every generation. Perhaps Matthew followed Joseph’s family tree and Luke did the same with Mary. We can’t be sure. It’s a possible explanation.
However, even though the genealogies of Jesus are different, they have certain things in common. They both agree that Jesus is a Jew, a descendant of Abraham. Both the genealogies regard David as a very significant figure. They are clearly Davidic genealogies. There is also the fact that both genealogies make it clear that Jesus is not the biological son of Joseph. They establish that quite differently, but they do it emphatically nonetheless.
So I think that the birth stories of Jesus in the Gospels are absolutely fascinating. Despite the differences that we find, there are still fundamental historical facts at the heart of the stories. I am sure that if we knew all the details of the first Christmas, we would be able to accommodate the different facts and perspectives quite readily.
Unfortunately, we just don’t have all that additional information available.
What is the doctrine of the Virgin Birth?
The doctrine of the virgin birth asserts that Jesus of Nazareth was not born by the usual biological processes. There was no human male who figured in his conception. Instead, Jesus was born through his natural mother, Mary, as a result of direct, divine intervention. I think that what the doctrine of the virgin birth establishes is that if you didn’t have it, you would still have Jesus as Messiah—but He would be a ‘this-worldly’ Messiah. He wouldn’t be the Son of God in the filial sense. Without the virgin birth, Jesus can be special and anointed. But He can’t be unique.
What the virgin birth does is that it dramatically expands our understanding of the Messiah as the unique Son of God. He has a special relationship with God because He shares His nature. This means that when Jesus dies as the Suffering Servant of the Lord, He actually dies in the place of sinners as a perfect sacrifice. He couldn’t do that if He simply came from the line of David. David’s natural descendants were all flawed.
However, the virgin birth lifts Jesus above other Davidides. It also points us to a special kind of Messiah that we all need.
If we don’t have a virgin birth, what are we left with?
You’re left with a Jewish Messiah and Christianity becomes little more than a Jewish nationalistic cause. If Jesus does not have a divine nature, He is qualitatively no different from many of the other self-proclaimed nationalist Messiahs who died while trying to deliver Israel from her oppressors. I think that the very things that are distinctive to Christianity like the Trinity, the divine-human nature of Christ, Christ’s sacrifice for sinners, justification by faith and the resurrection—all these doctrines are part of a whole. They are dependent in some way on Jesus having a divine nature.
Can we be sure that Jesus wasn’t the illegitimate son of Joseph and Mary?
We need to be very careful not to read back into the New Testament the free-wheeling sexual practices of our world. I understand that something like one in three of every first dates today ends in sexual intercourse. That would have been unheard of fifty years ago in Australia.
And in Bible times, people were even more conservative about sexual purity. Families were very protective of their women. I am reminded of how Paul betrothed the Corinthians as ‘a pure bride to Christ’. This shows us, I think, how highly people in the first century prized sexual purity and virginity.
All the evidence suggests that Joseph and Mary came from poor families. They were traditional, conservative Jewish folk. They were not affected by the immorality of the aristocracy, like Herod, nor were they influenced by Greek values. They would have reacted against it. All the evidence suggests that Joseph and Mary were honourable people and that Jesus was not the result of an immoral union.
Do the Gospel writers regard the Christmas story as historical fact or edifying myth?
The problem today is that the Christmas card industry and the big retailers like David Jones who put nativity scenes in their display windows give a romantic impression of Jesus’ birth. There’s always the subtle suggestion that the story is more myth than fact.
However, if we can get all this cultural baggage out of our minds and read the narratives as they are, the story is far from romantic. It’s almost a horror story. We have a woman falling pregnant out of wedlock, the heartbreak of the betrothed man, the trying journey for Mary to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus in a cave or an out-house, and the killing of all the little children in the township by a paranoid king. This is hardly romantic. It’s not really the material for myths. This is cold, brutal, earthy stuff. It may be that the birth narratives have been cast in a certain style, but they are nevertheless consistent with what we know of the period.
Of course, if the birth stories of Jesus have been influenced in some way by the stories about the births of Samson and Samuel, this doesn’t mean that they are myth. We need to remember that there was a cultural wall between Jewish and Greco-Roman ideas. Jesus’ birth narratives have no real connection with the pagan myths about the births of ancient gods and heroes. Jews had fought for centuries to keep their religion pure of all pagan intrusion. To think that the writers of the Gospels would have introduced such ideas defies all we know about their religious sensibilities.
Is Luke at odds with secular historians? Critics such as Ian Wilson claim that the birth narratives are really no different to the legend of Robin Hood, which is a mixture of truth and error.
I am not exactly sure what point Wilson is wanting to make here. I mean, Luke mentions Caesar once. He mentions Quirinius once too. Both were real people. But he tells us no story about them. Herod is the only figure that Wilson could claim has become the stuff of legend.
Of course, it’s true that Matthew paints Herod in fairly dramatic colours. There’s no question about that. Matthew puts him in a terrible light. Herod was a phoney king who murdered and intrigued his way into the kingship. Now Matthew is not setting out to give an objective and unbiased account of Herod’s reign. Nonetheless, despite the broad brush-strokes with which he paints him, his picture is entirely consistent with all we know about Herod.
We know that Herod was a brutal murderer. He killed off hundreds of people who stood between him and the throne. he eliminated the entire rival dynasty of the Macabees. He also killed his wife, Mariamne, and several of his sons. One of them he murdered only a week before he died. So Herod was a very violent man. Therefore, his command to slaughter the little boys of Bethlehem is entirely consistent with his track-record up until then. It may be easy for people like Wilson to claim that the birth stories of Jesus are legend. But I think that the facts are against them. The evidence suggests that they are plain history.
