![]() ![]() If the assigning of the Winter Solstice as Christ’s birthday seems an unlikely coincidence, then that may be only down to the quartering of the year into which the sun’s cycles divide it and the period of human gestation naturally coinciding with three of those quarters. The festival of Sol Invictus may have been formalised before Pope Julian formalised Christmas, but the tradition of Christ’s birthday probably preceded that of the pagan feast occurring on the same day. For this reason it was regarded as the birthday of pagan regenerative gods like Osiris, Adonis and Dionysus, besides Sol Invictus.īut on the specific question of the dating of Christ’s birth pagan traditions cannot be definitively demonstrated to have had any bearing rather it was Jewish custom that more plausibly determined the date. Using the Roman calendar this gives the date of Christ’s conception as 25 March, and from there gives us his birthday nine months later: 25 December, the Roman and ancient winter solstice. It was regarded as symbolically appropriate that he should have been conceived on the very same day that he died, in accordance with several Old Testament precedents for famous men and messianic traditions. Whilst few dates in Christ’s life (especially his early life) can be established with any certainty, one that is clearly determinable is the date of the crucifixion, which according to the gospels occurs on the feast of Passover, a Jewish religious holiday held on the first full moon after the spring equinox.Ī tradition dating to at least the early third century AD (and quite possibly going back much further) identifies Passover, or the Spring equinox just before it, as being also the date of the annunciation when Christ was conceived. The significance of Christians using this date does not, however, derive from the pagan festivals held on or around the solstice, but rather has its origins with the dating of Christ’s conception. The dating is, of course, not a coincidence, they both occur on the Roman winter solstice. ![]() Somewhat more plausibly, it also put forwards that Christmas was invented to supplant the festival of Sol Invictus, which was held on the 25th of December. Saturnalia itself, rather inconveniently for this claim, occurred on 17 December (not the 25th) and ended on the 23rd, while Christmas occurs on 25 December and ends on 6 January. I will try to set the record briefly straight in this article, but I think we need to think more deeply about why these claims don’t go away, why apparently well-educated people make them, and just why so few people understand the real story of the relationship between Christianity and pagan Rome.įirst off, the myth: Christmas is a midwinter festival invented by a fourth century Pope to supplant the rowdy pagan festivities of (variously) Saturnalia, or that of Sol Invictus. One of the less joyous of these new additions is the near-liturgical round of articles, blogs and social media posts, many of them in serious newspapers and by respectable journalists and academics, repeating the same series of dubious claims about how Christmas is nothing but a sort of less than jolly deception, a feast stolen from some ancient, and more enjoyable pagan winter rite, by cunning Christians.įighting this disinformation can feel like a never-ending struggle for religious journalists, and it can feel pointless to debunk the same claims every Christmas. ![]() Christmas, he blithely suggested, “was a pagan holiday called Saturnalia appropriated by Christians”.Īs we know, Christmas has accumulated many modern secular customs over the years, from the turning on of town lights to the Doctor Who Christmas special. It was the debate's framing by the programme’s host Michael Buerk. But for once it wasn’t the sometimes tepid debate that annoyed me. A recent episode of BBC Radio Four’s The Moral Maze was irritating as ever.
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