@tenniebenson and co
I. When was Jesus born?
A. Popular myth puts his birth on
December 25th in the year 1 C.E.
B. The New Testament gives no
date or year for Jesus’ birth. The
earliest gospel – St. Mark’s,
written about 65 CE – begins
with the baptism of an adult
Jesus. This suggests that the
earliest Christians lacked interest
in or knowledge of Jesus’
birthdate.
C. The year of Jesus birth was
determined by Dionysius Exiguus,
a Scythian monk, “abbot of a
Roman monastery. His
calculation went as follows:
a. In the Roman, pre-Christian
era, years were counted from ab
urbe condita (“the founding of
the City” [Rome]). Thus 1 AUC
signifies the year Rome was
founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5th
year of Rome’s reign, etc.
b. Dionysius received a tradition
that the Roman emperor
Augustus reigned 43 years, and
was followed by the emperor
Tiberius.
c. Luke 3:1,23 indicates that
when Jesus turned 30 years old,
it was the 15th year of Tiberius
reign.
d. If Jesus was 30 years old in
Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15
years under Augustus (placing
Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28th
year of reign).
e. Augustus took power in 727
AUC. Therefore, Dionysius put
Jesus birth in 754 AUC.
f. However, Luke 1:5 places
Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod,
and Herod died in 750 AUC – four
years before the year in which
Dionysius places Jesus birth.
D. Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor
Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the
Catholic University of America,
member of the Pontifical Biblical
Commission, and former
president of the Catholic Biblical
Association – writing in the
Catholic Church’s official
commentary on the New
Testament [1], writes about the
date of Jesus’ birth, “Though the
year [of Jesus birth is not
reckoned with certainty, the birth
did not occur in AD 1. The
Christian era, supposed to have
its starting point in the year of
Jesus birth, is based on a
miscalculation introduced ca. 533
by Dionysius Exiguus.”
E. The DePascha Computus, an
anonymous document believed
to have been written in North
Africa around 243 CE, placed
Jesus birth on March 28.
Clement, a bishop of Alexandria
(d. ca. 215 CE), thought Jesus was
born on November 18. Based on
historical records, Fitzmyer
guesses that Jesus birth occurred
on September 11, 3 BCE.
II. How Did Christmas Come to Be
Celebrated on December 25?
A. Roman pagans first introduced
the holiday of Saturnalia, a week
long period of lawlessness
celebrated between December
17-25. During this period,
Roman courts were closed, and
Roman law dictated that no one
could be punished for damaging
property or injuring people
during the weeklong
celebration. The festival began
when Roman authorities chose
“an enemy of the Roman people”
to represent the “Lord of
Misrule.” Each Roman
community selected a victim
whom they forced to indulge in
food and other physical
pleasures throughout the week.
At the festival’s conclusion,
December 25th, Roman
authorities believed they were
destroying the forces of
darkness by brutally murdering
this innocent man or woman.
B. The ancient Greek writer poet
and historian Lucian (in his
dialogue entitled Saturnalia)
describes the festival’s
observance in his time. In
addition to human sacrifice, he
mentions these customs:
widespread intoxication; going
from house to house while
singing naked; rape and other
sexual license; and consuming
human-shaped biscuits (still
produced in some English and
most German bakeries during
the Christmas season).
C. In the 4th century CE, Christianity
imported the Saturnalia festival
hoping to take the pagan masses
in with it. Christian leaders
succeeded in converting to
Christianity large numbers of
pagans by promising them that
they could continue to celebrate
the Saturnalia as Christians. [2]
D. The problem was that there was
nothing intrinsically Christian
about Saturnalia. To remedy this,
these Christian leaders named
Saturnalia’s concluding day,
December 25th, to be Jesus’
birthday.
E. Christians had little success,
however, refining the practices
of Saturnalia. As Stephen
Nissenbaum, professor history at
the University of Massachussetts,
Amherst, writes, “In return for
ensuring massive observance of
the anniversary of the Savior’s
birth by assigning it to this
resonant date, the Church for its
part tacitly agreed to allow the
holiday to be celebrated more or
less the way it had always been.”
The earliest Christmas holidays
were celebrated by drinking,
sexual indulgence, singing naked
in the streets (a precursor of
modern caroling), etc.
F. The Reverend Increase Mather
of Boston observed in 1687 that
“the early Christians who first
observed the Nativity on
December 25 did not do so
thinking that Christ was born in
that Month, but because the
Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that
time kept in Rome, and they
were willing to have those Pagan
Holidays metamorphosed into
Christian ones.” [3] Because of its
known pagan origin, Christmas
was banned by the Puritans and
its observance was illegal in
Massachusetts between 1659
and 1681. [4] However,
Christmas was and still is
celebrated by most Christians.
G. Some of the most depraved
customs of the Saturnalia carnival
were intentionally revived by the
Catholic Church in 1466 when
Pope Paul II, for the amusement
of his Roman citizens, forced
Jews to race naked through the
streets of the city. An eyewitness
account reports, “Before they
were to run, the Jews were richly
fed, so as to make the race more
difficult for them and at the same
time more amusing for
spectators. They ran… amid
Rome’s taunting shrieks and
peals of laughter, while the Holy
Father stood upon a richly
ornamented balcony and
laughed heartily.” [5]
H. As part of the Saturnalia carnival
throughout the 18th and 19th
centuries CE, rabbis of the ghetto
in Rome were forced to wear
clownish outfits and march
through the city streets to the
jeers of the crowd, pelted by a
variety of missiles. When the
Jewish community of Rome sent
a petition in1836 to Pope
Gregory XVI begging him to stop
the annual Saturnalia abuse of
the Jewish community, he
responded, “It is not opportune
to make any innovation.”[6] On
December 25, 1881, Christian
leaders whipped the Polish
masses into Antisemitic frenzies
that led to riots across the
country. In Warsaw 12 Jews
were brutally murdered, huge
numbers maimed, and many
Jewish women were raped. Two
million rubles worth of property
was destroyed.
III. The Origins of Christmas Customs
A. The Origin of Christmas Tree
Just as early Christians recruited
Roman pagans by associating
Christmas with the Saturnalia, so
too worshippers of the Asheira
cult and its offshoots were
recruited by the Church
sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.
[7] Pagans had long worshipped
trees in the forest, or brought
them into their homes and
decorated them, and this
observance was adopted and
painted with a Christian veneer
by the Church.
