why do christians celebrate jesus birth on 25th december?

Question

in the bible there is no date for the day jesus was born!

Answer 1

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No matter how many thumbs-down they get, people like Mike Sanders, RC, Chris Howe et al, who say that it was to replace a pagan festival are correct.

Constantine (thank you everyone who knows his role in the development of modern Christianity) chose dates of pagan festivals that would simply be forced out of existence by Christianity.

See, not everything is in the Bible.

Bonzafooey's comments are also interesting and the point (if a touch cynical, babe) - however, although it has Biblical origins (Matt. 16:17-19; John 21:15-17; Luke 22:32) Papal Infallibility was not properly defined until First Vatican Council of 1870.
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Answer 2

"It is unknown exactly when or how December 25 became associated with Jesus' birth. The New Testament does not give a specific date. Several scholars have suggested that Sextus Julius Africanus gave this date in Chronografiai, a now lost reference book for Christians written in AD 221. This date is nine months after the traditional date of the Incarnation (March 25), now celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation. March 25 was also considered to be the date of the vernal equinox and therefore the creation of Adam. Early Christians believed March 25 was also the date Jesus was crucified. The Christian idea that Jesus was conceived on the same date that he died on the cross is consistent with a Jewish belief that a prophet lived an integral number of years."

Answer 3

coz ancient Britain's celebrated a Mid-winter solstice around the same time.
adopting Christ way back b4 records began, leaves a cloudy and inaccurate account of why Christians chose Dec 25th. but it is more likely that changing the calender from BC 2 AD, may explain it.
pagans wanted 2 keep their celebrations in mid-winter so the invading Romans allowed the ancient Britain's 2 keep their holiday by joining the two 2gether hence, Christmas.
& i must add, any birthdays celebrated in the Bible always had fatal consquences 4 some poor bugger!
Christ birthday is not mentioned as it really is of no importance 2 mankind.
being christain, generous and " good will 2 all men " should b a year-long attitude & not just reserved 4 just the 25th Dec!

that said.
Time, days, weeks and years r A MAN-MADE invention.
God has no need 4 Time, so neither does his son.

Answer 4

It's the winter equinox, when the days start to lengthen, therefore the start of a new year and the ending of winter, a time to celebrate, Now, just think, your King is starting a new religion, you don't want to give up the holidays that you have had for generations, so----- the establishment of the time use the feast days to suit themselves, thus making you happy with the change. It's happened lots of times with lots of religions. Easter is a different one, Christmas can be on any day, but Easter has specific days Good Friday etc,so the Catholic Church had to work out a complicated formula to suit the days, it works, and that's why Easter can be 'early' or 'late' on different years, it can vary up to six weeks! So the answer to your question is The Catholic Church decided the dates a long time ago. Protestants followed on as their religion only started when Henry the Eighth couldn't get a divorce! and yet again, the dates stayed the same.

Answer 5

No one knows when Jesus was born the Romans decided to celebrate his birth day on the 25th of December but what we do know from his life it is more likely that he was born nearer the middle of the year not the end also western culture says that Jesus was white but this cannot be true because hew was born in the middle east so he would be of an Arab descent

Answer 6

Jesus said that " I am the light of the world," and so early Christians celebrated his arrival into the world when the light begins to exceed night, the winter equinox... Dec 23. Unfortunately after some date shifting it became 25.

Another reason is that pagans used to celebrate the Feast of the Sun on this date. As Jesus, The Lord is the Sun- The eternal light, of the world early Christians celebrated his birthday then.

Answer 7

Christianity took the date 25th and many other factors from the Mithraism pagan religion. The two religions share a surprising number of parallels (as anybody who watches the BBC programme QI would know). Some of these include: Mithras was born from a virgin on December 25; his followers identified with him by eating a sacred meal of bread and wine; and his devotees were baptized in water.

Interestingly, JRR Tolkien explained these similarities by saying the pagan myths were imperfect reflections of divine truth.

Answer 8

the precise date doesn't extremely count number ..Dec. (twelfth month=a million+2=3), 25 (2+5=7)..3 the Holy Trinity, 7 the suitable type of Jesus Christ. The numbers in fantastic condition, no be counted what detractors say about the day..it truly is nonetheless celebrated because the delivery of our Lord. Pagans and non believers will cherry %. some thing to devalue Jesus, I do basically not pay a lot interest to it. it really is a set of bitter, redundant nonsense. God bless and Merry Christmas.

Answer 9

The Christian church in it's current form was created by the emperor Constantine at the council of Nicea in 325AD as a form of mass crowd control (hence Catholic meaning Universal). The Roman God de jour at the time was Mithras - born of a virgin on the 25th of Dec, turned water into wine (sound familiar?). Constantine's mum was a Christian, so he put Jesus the Christ in as the figurehead of his newly created church - most of the Christian festivals are taken from other religions such as easter (pagan) - it made it easier to get people to convert if some of the content/dates were already familiar to them. Did a good job too - managed to get the half the world signed up to a contrived religion that gave them a PHd in guilt & had the surfs "confessing" what was going on. Saved paying spies! Then of course they added papal infallibility in the 12th century - genius! Who could argue with God's representative on earth if he was infallible? They could do what they liked & pretty much still do!

Answer 10

The first reason is that Christmas coincides, or almost, with the shortest day of the year. This was a time when the Sun was reborn ans summer was on its way once more.

The second reason is that, in the Middle Ages, the powers that be decided on the 25th Dec as the peasants could celibrate at this time without interupting their work in the fields as it was winter time and not much happening outside.