ONE of the most powerful, persistent fake news that has been around for many centuries is that December 25 is the birthday of Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, the biggest religion today with 2.4 billion adherents. This is not opinion or conjecture, but has been a well-established fact, even by Catholic scholars.

The only other competing thesis of course, is that the man called Jesus has never existed. Indeed, ancient religions all had similar man-gods â born of a virgin, with a God as invisible father â even born around December 25 â or near the December 22 solstice, that marked the beginning of the end of the âdark and coldâ period of winter.
In the first place, the widely accepted account of Jesusâ life, the New Testament, doesnât of course mention the date of his birth, by whatever calendar the Jews or the Greeks used in that time. In fact, the Bibleâs reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesusâ birth (Luke 2:8) points to a spring date.
Guess who designated December 25 as Jesusâ birthday? The Roman Empire did, after it made Christianity its state religion. (And the fact that it was the largest such empire in the world in that era, and had Europe as its descendants, explains how Christianity became the worldâs biggest religion â and not that is the âtruestâ religion.)
Andrew McGowan, dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University, in an article in the scholarly journal Bible Review wrote: âThe earliest mention of December 25 as Jesusâ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked : âChrist was born in Bethlehem of Judea.ââ
That December 25 was designated as Jesusâ birthday bolsters the widespread view among scholars on religion that the clever Roman emperors â in their (very successful) attempt to establish a single state religion which made ruling easier â merged the emerging Jewish cult that was spreading in the Mediterranean Greek-speaking world to the Romansâ more ancient religion in which the supreme God was the sun personified â Sol Invictus.
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictusâ feast day of course was â scholars argue over the exact date â December 21 or December 25. This roughly coincides with the winter solstice or the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year. Since after that, the days become longer. That day was seen as the day when Sol is reborn again after the long death of winter. As the Sol image was merged with that of Christ, it was logical to assume that Jesus, if he existed, and Sol were born on the same day.
Historian Kenneth Davis in a recent CBS program similarly pointed out: âMost of the traditions that we have that relate to Christmas relate to the solstice, which was celebrated in ancient Rome on December 25. So, when Christianity became the official religion in a sense, in Rome, they were able to fix this date⊠Thereâs a little discrepancy about it, but thereâs no question that the fact that it was celebrated in Rome as an important day with gift giving, candle lighting, and singing and decorating houses really cemented Christmas as December 25.â
Many of the practices during Christmas originated from pagan customs in pre-Christian Europe as Christianity spread. Ronald Hutton, a historian at Bristol University in the United Kingdom pointed out in an article in the reputable website Livescience.com:
âAs Christians spread their religion into Europe in the first centuries AD, they ran into people living by a variety of local and regional religious creeds. Early Christians wanted to convert pagans, Shaw said, but they were also fascinated by their traditions.â
âChristians of that period were quite interested in paganism,â he said. âItâs obviously something they think is a bad thing, but itâs also something they think is worth remembering. Itâs what their ancestors did.â
Traditions
Perhaps thatâs why pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention. But it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendant of Englandâs Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter.â
The Livescience.com article pointed out: while gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Yearâs Day.
âThey were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends,â Hutton said. âIt wasnât until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas.â
And, of course, gift giving both at Christmas and New Yearâs Day has been a boon to capitalism, more precisely to its retail section. In the United States, sales for November and December account for 25 percent of retailersâ sales, with each of the other 10 months just 7.5 percent of their sales.
But donât misinterpret me, and I donât mean to steal Christmas.
Saturn
In fact, I subscribe to the competing claim that what the ancient Romans celebrated was not Sol Invictus, but the earlier Olympic god of agriculture, Saturn. After all, in that epoch whether people lived a life of happiness or misery in the year that was ending depended on how good or bad the harvest was.
Called âSaturnalia,â this was a days-long festival held on December 17 of the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities through to December 23. The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.â
Thatâs the kind of Christmas Iâd prefer, instead of a boring celebration of a birthday of somebody weâre not sure was really born.
However, it originated, and less the superstition, letâs all enjoy these days when we celebrate the sheer joy of having families and friends, and well, a fact emphasized this year of the pandemic, just being alive. Life is short, so very short. Enjoy it.
Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com
Facebook: Rigoberto Tiglao
Twitter: @bobitiglao
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Dear Mr. Tiglao
While I like reading your columns in the Manila Times, I resent your statement aboutâ the boring celebration of a birthday of somebody weâre not sure was really born.âThis is an insult to 2.4 billions of CHRISTians who believe in JESUS as our Lord and Saviour.We will be praying for your enlightenment that at the end of this short life HE will be at your side to welcome you to his kingdom.
The only church written in the bible is the Church of God where true religion is practice…please listen to ADD bible exposition for clearest biblical explanation…interpretation not by man