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Was Jesus Born on December 25th? LIVE Q&A for December 12, 2024

Was Jesus Really Born on December 25th?

Let me give a quick answer to that question: we don’t know. The Bible doesn’t tell us what day Jesus was born on. It doesn’t even tell us the month. Some people think they can chart things out based on the priestly service of Zachariah, but I don’t think that holds up.

There are a lot of people who think that it is impossible that Jesus was born on December 25^th. Obviously, I don’t know that was the day Jesus was born, but I think that it was possible.

I find there to be two main points made by the “December 25^th was impossible” people:

The Christmas story describes how there were shepherds with their flocks of sheep grazing in the fields around the manger where baby Jesus was born. This can’t happen in December, both because of cold weather and because there isn’t grass to feed on.
December 25^th was really the day of a Roman pagan festival, and the Christians took that day and made it the birthday of Jesus.

I think there are significant problems with both of those points.

We can make general observations about the climate of that part of the world, but they are only general observations. I live in Southern California, on the west coast of the United States. The climate of the area where I live is remarkably like the climate of Israel. And, where I live, it would not be unusual at all to have generally warm nights (let’s say 55 degrees Fahrenheit, or 13 degrees Celsius). Right now – coming into the second half of December – it’s a little colder than that here. But warmer temperatures would not be unusual.

In addition, the idea “sheep wouldn’t be out in the fields at night in December” is more an idea from European sheep raising than near east sheep raising. One online source says this about the sheep that were likely raised in Bible-times Israel:

The Awassi sheep is a desert sheep, a fat-tailed breed that has existed in the Middle East for an estimated 5,000 years. It is the only indigenous breed of sheep in Israel. They are raised for wool, meat, and milk. Awassi sheep breed in the summer and drop lambs in the winter, when there is sufficient pasture for the ewes in milk. In Israel, the principal lambing season is December through January.

I just don’t find the argument, “There is no way shepherds would be out in their fields at night with their sheep” to be convincing at all. There’s too much evidence against it.

As for the Roman pagan festivals: when people say this, they usually have two festivals in mind: Saturnalia festivals and Sol Invictus festival.

The Saturnalia festivals of ancient Rome were held in the days between December 17 and 23 – but not on December 25^th.
The Sol Invictus festival was held on December 25^th – but was only established later in the Roman Empire.

The first person on record to claim Jesus was born on December 25 made the claim about AD 204 was Hippolytus of Rome (170–235). The Roman festival of Sol Invictus has no mention for more than 70 years after that. And, according to some sources, there is no evidence that Sol Invictus was celebrated on December 25 until around the year 360. There isn’t enough evidence to say for certain, but it is entirely likely that the pagan December 25^th celebration was founded on the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25^th.

After Hippolytus, we have record of Julius Africanus, Tertullian, and Augustine all connecting the birth of Jesus with December 25.

Now, if the Bible doesn’t say that Jesus was born on December 25, where did that idea come from?

There was an idea in the ancient world that great men – or, very holy men – often died on the same calendar day they were conceived. Some early Christians calculated that Jesus was conceived by a miracle in the womb of the virgin Mary on March 25^th. They did this by calculating what they thought was the date of Jesus’ death (Passover) on March 25^th of the year Jesus died. Go back 9 months, you get December 25^th.

Is that the only reason? Is that reason enough? That’s for you to decide. Here’s some take away points.

The Bible doesn’t tell us the day Jesus was born.
The idea that Jesus could NOT have been born on December 25^th is wrong.
The idea that celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25^th is a pagan practice is wrong.
If you want to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25^th, you’re welcome to!
If you don’t want to, you’re welcome not to.

As modern Christians, why should we celebrate Christmas and how should we do it?

First, it’s appropriate to honor Jesus Christ and His incarnation, the fact that God the Son added humanity to His deity and came to earth as a weak and dependent child. That says something powerful about the love of God, the nature of God, and the great miracle of the Incarnation. It is appropriate for Christians to celebrate that. Secondly, there’s a cultural reason. This is a time when our culture is looking at and thinking about Jesus, as they think and talk about Christmas. This is a good opportunity for us to take advantage of.

How should we do it? I think that Christmas is up to you. Now, don’t leave Jesus out of it. Make Jesus part of your Christmas celebrations, whether it’s participating in a Christmas Eve service, a Christmas day service, or telling the Christmas story. Our family does cool things with the parts of the manger scene, and we go around and have the kids explain things. We have special times of honoring Jesus, and we have a ton of fun together as a family in the Guzik household. My wife Inga-Lill makes a very special Swedish Christmas meal for us to enjoy together. We do that together on Christmas Eve and just enjoy ourselves immensely. We do all of that and eat a lot on Christmas Eve, and then we enjoy wonderful family time on Christmas Day. Your family can decide your own traditions but put Jesus in the midst of your Christmas celebrating.

What is anointing?

What is anointing? I mean, I know the ritual, but when people say, “Anointing is here, anointing is working,” I don’t understand. When people mention anointing in an abstract or collective sense, is it just the physical ritual or something more than that?

This is a wonderful question. You’ve exposed a way in which Christians sometimes speak. We might use the term Christianese. They’ll use Christian words in a way that is peculiar to Christians and has its own special meaning among Christians.

Oftentimes when Christians use that word anointing, what they mean is spiritual power or spiritual presence. That’s it. They don’t mean a literal anointing that someone might give to another person with actual oil. They don’t mean the literal anointing of the Holy Spirit that comes upon a person, as mentioned in 1 John to all believers, that we have an anointing. That is an important promise, but it’s generally not how this phrase is used. Like I said, it typically refers to spiritual power or presence.

This terminology is most commonly used in Pentecostal circles, where somebody might say, “I really felt the anointing.” What they mean is they felt a sense of spiritual power and presence. If they say the anointing is working, what they really mean is they just feel a unique sense of spiritual power and presence, the presence of the Spirit, or the presence of the Lord. This word is basically a buzz word among Christians, and you really don’t have to be too technical about it.

Does Christmas have pagan roots?

I’ve been seeing Christians saying that Christmas is pagan, and that we shouldn’t participate in it. I looked into things because I don’t want to be deceived. You’ve spoken about the history of Christmas and that it doesn’t seem to be as simple or cut and dry as it is or isn’t. Our Father calls us to be a set apart people. If we’ve joined in with the pagan cultures and traditions of other gods, the Bible tells us what happened to people of old when they did that. Could we be held responsible for possible pagan roots, or is the new Christian purpose for Christmas and Easter far enough from pagan roots to make it safe?

I’ll give you a quick answer. First of all, I don’t agree that Christmas and Easter have pagan roots. I discussed the reasons why earlier in this episode. When people compare something like Roman December festivals and Christmas, they’ll look at similarities and make assumptions, but they often fail to consider or explain the things that make them different. There could be many, many things that make things similar, but there are also some substantial things that make them different. If you wanted to compare me to a chimpanzee, you could say, “Well, look: four fingers and a thumb, two arms, two eyes, hair, walking upright. Look at all the similarities there are.” But by comparing a human being with a chimpanzee, you’d be ignoring many substantial differences between the two. So, don’t trust comparisons which only look at similarities. They also have to deal with and examine the differences.

Therefore, I don’t agree with the premise that Christmas and Easter have fundamentally pagan roots, but even if someone did, any potential pagan associations with Christmas and Easter happened centuries ago, but people don’t associate Easter or Christmas with those things today. You might say, “Well, yeah, but 1800 years ago they did,” but that’s 1800 years ago. We’re living today. There is a place for taking things as they are now.

Christians are never commanded to celebrate Christmas. There have been godly believers in times past who decided, “We are not going to celebrate Christmas, because we feel that the way the rest of the world celebrates it is a disgrace, and we want to separate ourselves from that.” The Puritans of England were much like that. Even some of the Puritans who colonized the United States did not universally celebrate Christmas, because they felt that the pagans of that day made such a debauchery of Christmas that they didn’t want to have anything to do with it. These people quite rightly understood that there is no biblical command to celebrate Christmas.

We have a wonderful freedom in Jesus Christ concerning things like this. It really is a matter of individual Christian liberty. If you tell me, “David, I’m convicted in my conscience, and I’m not going to celebrate Christmas,” I may feel bad for your kids, but I’m not going to tell you to do differently. And if you tell me, “David, I believe that Christmas is a wonderful thing and I’m going to celebrate it to the glory of God,” then I say, “Right on, brother. You and I agree on that point, but we won’t despise our brother or sister who thinks differently on the matter.” I think these questions are good because we want to live out the Christian life in a way that genuinely glorifies God.

What is the significance of bones in the Bible?

Hebrews 11:22 – By faith Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the departure of the children of Israel, and gave instructions concerning his bones.

2 Kings 13:21 – So it was, as they were burying a man, that suddenly they spied a band of raiders; and they put the man in the tomb of Elisha; and when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.

These two passages mentioning bones communicate two very different lessons and applications.

First of all, nobody ever really came in contact with the bones of Joseph. He was not entombed in one of the great pyramids or memorials of Egypt, but rather, his sarcophagus or coffin stayed above ground until the time that Israel went back to Canaan 400 years later. Then they buried him. The significance of that is just as a testimony of the faith of Joseph. He knew that his people were going back to the Promised Land. Joseph was a success in Egypt. He was a man of power in Egypt. He had gained so much in Egypt, but he declared that it was not his home. He and the Israelites would eventually go back to the land that God had promised by covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants.

The instance of bones in 2 Kings 13:21 is completely different. We need to understand that, under Old Testament law, touching a dead body or the remains of a dead body was significantly defiling. If you touched a dead body or the remains of a dead body, you were unclean and had to be ritually cleansed by some ceremonies and wait until sundown of the next day to be called clean again. God did not want His people to be trafficking in the dead, so to speak. There wasn’t the same obsession with death and the dead among the Israelites as there was in much of Egypt, where they mummified the dead and glorified the dead in the Book of the Dead and the cults of the dead. No, Israel wasn’t to be like them. They treated the remains of the dead with respect, but never with veneration or obsession connected to death. In general, dead bodies and their remains were commanded to be kept separate from the people of Israel and the holiness that God wanted them to live in.

What is the evidence of a Spirit-filled Christian?

I believe that Christians should actively seek to be filled with the Spirit and to walk in the Spirit. That doesn’t mean living on some super-spiritual plane where God speaks to you in every breeze of the wind. No, we’re not talking about that. I’m talking about being filled with the Spirit and living with the Spirit. Remember what Paul said in Ephesians 5:18 – And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit. Understanding the grammatical construction of these words, he’s saying, “Be constantly being filled with the Spirit.” That’s what believers should be doing. We should be constantly being filled with the Spirit. This isn’t to deny the Spirit’s prior working. Brothers and sisters, if you’re born again, you have the Spirit of God. There’s no doubt about that. Yet there is also a freshness and a continual supply of the Spirit into which God invites us to walk in every day of our lives.

So, yes, I want to be filled with the Spirit. When I was 16 or 17 years old, I prayed in my bedroom, “Lord fill me with the Spirit and give me all the fullness of what You have for me.” Yes, I did that, and God wonderfully poured out His Spirit upon me. But that wasn’t the end of my ongoing relationship with the Spirit of God. We should pray every day, “Lord, fill us with your Spirit.” When I pray together with my wife, that is something we commonly pray. I won’t say we pray it absolutely every day, but we often pray, “Lord, fill us with Your Spirit today, and help us to walk in the Spirit.”

Walking in the Spirit is simply to live in the conscious awareness of our reliance upon the Spirit of God. It is the heart posture from which we can truly say, like the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.” (Zechariah 4:6)