Why December 25th?

In accordance with my responsibility to not only feed but to also equip our church for ministering to others I am including this brief write up and article. It addresses the issue of why December 25th is celebrated as the birth date of Jesus (For those of you who don’t know it is probably not the day on which He was born). There are many who are aware of this fact and would love to pounce on an unsuspecting Christian to “educate” him/her with one more item of truth to diminish that person’s boldness in the faith. But it does not have to diminish your boldness in light of the reasons behind the selection of this date by the early church.

The text says nothing about the time of year in which Jesus was born. The traditional date for Jesus’ birth was set hundreds of years after the event to coincide with a pagan festival honoring the sun, thus demonstrating that the “Sol Invictus” (the pagan belief in the “Unconquerable Sun”) had indeed been conquered by Jesus, God’s Son. December 25 was widely celebrated as the date of Jesus’ birth by the end of the fourth century. January 6 was also an important date in the early church, held by many as the occasion of the arrival of the wise men, an event known as Epiphany.

So, you don’t have to shy away from celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th, for Christians have done it for centuries as a statement of Christ’s supremacy. Yet as the early church selected this date to confront the power of a secular and pagan holiday, so let us confront the unbelief of our society in this season by keeping Christ and His birth prominent in our celebration during this season.