What Christmas Story

For many centuries, Christian writers accepted that Christmas was the actual date on which Jesus was born. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the date of creation was considered to be on March 25th. The early Christian writer Sextus Julius Africanus (220 A.D.) thought this dating plausible and suggested that Christ became incarnate on that date. According to Julius, since the Word of God became incarnate from the moment of his conception, this meant that, after nine months in the Virgin Mary's womb, Jesus was born on December 25th. However, in the early eighteenth century, some scholars began proposing alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, which in ancient times was marked on December 25. In 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that debased the true church.


In 1889, Louis Duchesne suggested that the date of Christmas was calculated as nine months after the Annunciation on March 25, the traditional date of the conception of Jesus. However, today, whether or not the birth date of Jesus is on the 25th of December is not considered to be an important issue in mainstream Christian denominations; rather, they would say that God coming into the world, in the form of man, to atone for the sins of humanity is the primary purpose in celebrating Christmas. The first Christmas in the U.S. was celebrated in Tallahassee, Florida