I heard that jesus wasnt actually born on december 25th, anyone know when he was born?

Question

and if that is true why do we celebrate Xmas Dec 25th?

Answer 1

Somewhere around June 17th. There have been many studies and star chart mapping to find this date. As for why it is celebrated on the 25th of Dec. is because it was placed there in order to try to break paganism away. The Christmas tree is a pagan symbol btw. An evergreen symbolizing life throughout even winter. The Christian churches way of trying to conform the masses to their restricted and closed minded beliefs. The link below uses Astronomy to predict the date.

Answer 2

No one knows for certain. What we do know is that the shepherds were in the fields tending their sheep, so it is suspected that it was during a somewhat warmer and drier time of the year, possibly Spring or early summer. (So I've been told.)
Why Dec. 25th? Tradition.
Constantine, when he became the emperor claimed to be Christian. However, he actually tried to appease everyone. The Romans held a festival to their "sun god" on that day, and weren't about to stop having it.
He declared that Christ's birthday would be celebrated instead, but on the same day.
I cannot recall where I learned this all from, but with a little research into Christian history books should tell you.

Answer 3

Romans celebrated the birth of Mithras, the soldier's god, on December 25. When Constantine the Great converted Rome to Christianity, he usurped that date as the date Christ's birth was celebrated. A lot of our holidays and ways of celebrating them were adaptations of pagan holidays, like All Saints Day, to combat the pagan holiday of what became Halloween. Symbols used in spring festivals, like eggs and rabbits, were incorporated into Easter. We don't have any real reference in the Bible as to when He was born. The closest we have is the reference that the shepherds were grazing their flocks by night. In the Middle East, they still do that in April and May, because it's too hot to do it in the day. It would be too cold to do it in December or January. An astronomer ran a computer program to simulate what stars were in the sky at the possible times Christ was born. The 3 "kings" were portrayed with a certain type of head dress that only the Persians wore. They were master astronomers, and considered Jupiter to be the king star. Toward the end of May, 5 B.C., Jupiter appeared to be very bright in the constellation they associated with the Jews. They would have taken this as a sign that a King of the Jews had been born. This is the best evidence we have of when He was born.

Answer 4

Speculation as to the time of Jesus’ birth dates back to the 3rd century, when Hyppolytus (ca. 170-236) claimed that Jesus was born on December 25. The earliest mention of some sort of observance on that date is in the Philoclian Calendar, representing Roman practice, of the year 336. Later, John Chrysostom favored the same date of birth. Cyril of Jerusalem (348-386) had access to the original Roman birth census, which also documented that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. The date eventually became the officially recognized date for Christmas in part because it coincided with the pagan festivals celebrating Saturnalia and the winter solstice. The church thereby offered people a Christian alternative to the pagan festivities and eventually reinterpreted many of their symbols and actions in ways acceptable to Christian faith and practice.



December 25 has become more and more acceptable as the birth date of Jesus. However, some argue that the birth occurred in some other season, such as in the fall. Followers of this theory claim that the Judean winters were too cold for shepherds to be watching their flocks by night. History proves otherwise, however, and we have evidence that unblemished lambs for the Temple sacrifice were in fact kept in the fields near Bethlehem during the winter months.



The truth is, we simply don’t know the exact date of our Savior’s birth. In fact, we don’t even know for sure the year in which He was born. Scholars believe it was somewhere between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C. One thing is clear: if God felt it was important for us to know the exact date of the Savior’s birth, He certainly would have told us in His Word. The Gospel of Luke gives very specific details about the event, even down to what the baby was wearing – “swaddling clothes” - and where he slept – “in a manger” (Luke 2:12). These details are important because they speak of His nature and character, meek and lowly. But the exact date of His birth has no significance whatsoever, which may be why God chose not mention it.



The fact is that He was born, that He came into the world to atone for our sins, that He was resurrected to eternal life, and that He’s alive today. This is what we should celebrate, as we are told in the Old Testament in such passages as Zechariah 2:10: "'Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,' declares the LORD.” Further, the angel that announced the birth to the shepherds brought “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10). Surely here is the cause for celebration every day, not just once a year.

Answer 5

How much the date of the festival depended upon the Pagan Brumalia (Dec. 25) following the Saturnalia (Dec. 17-24), and celebrating the shortest day of the year and the 'new sun' . . . cannot be accurately determined. The pagan Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence . . . . The pagan festival with its riot and merrymaking was so popular, that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner. Christian preachers of the West and the Near East protested against the unseemly frivolity with which Christ's birthday was celebrated, while Christians of Mesopotamia accused their Western brethren of idolatry and sun-worship for adopting as Christian this pagan festival."

Remember, the Roman world had been PAGAN.

Thus the Roman Catholic Church is a PAGAN entity by adopting these beliefs and customs.

Answer 6

Well, you're going to get a lot of answers that say Jesus would have been born in the spring, but that doesn't match up with the biblical account. John the Baptist would have been born in the spring, probably around Passover. Jesus would have been born around the Feast of Tabernacles.. this accounts for the shepherds tending flocks in the field, and also for his birthplace in a sukkah (temporary shelter).

You celebrate on December 25th because the Catholic church deemed that the official date for this celebration to make christianity more palatable to pagans who celebrated the Winter Solstice around that time.
Early christians (prior to the Council of Nicea in the fourth century) would not have celebrated Jesus' birthday. Birthday celebrations were not a jewish custom, nor a biblically mandated holy day.

Answer 7

In Rome December 25 was made popular by Pope Liberius in 354 and became the rule in the West in 435 when the first "Christ mass" was officiated by Pope Sixtus III. This coincided with the date of a celebration by the Romans to their primary god, the Sun, and to Mithras, a popular Persian sun god supposedly born on the same day. The Roman Catholic writer Mario Righetti candidly admits that, "to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, the Church of Rome found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the birth of Christ to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the 'Invincible Sun' Mithras, the conqueror of darkness" (Manual of Liturgical History, 1955, Vol. 2, p. 67).


The important thing is that he was born, and his nominal birthdate of December 25th seems as good as any to celebrate his birth and his message. It also a wonderful catalyst for enjoying the precious and simple pleasures of being, if only for a brief time, close together in the warm familiarity of friends and family, renewing relationships and sharing memories.

Answer 8

I read somewhere that he was born in March!? We celebrate in December because when the christian church wanted to convert pagans they adapted the holy days so as to not cause too much upset. They put Christmas celebrations close to Yule, the pagan festival. You will find the same is true of Easter and the pagan festival Oestra.

Answer 9

He wasn't born on December 25.
He was born approx. October 1.
Since he lived 3 1/2 years and died in the spring, it backs us up to the beginning on October.
Dec. 25 is thought of a Christ's birthday only because in the 300's, the church had become corrupted and to get more
parishoners they tolerated alot of paganism.
One example is something called the Roman Saturnalia.
Any decent encyclopedia will explain it all.

Answer 10

No one knows, but shepherds watching sheep overnight would seem to imply spring or summer.

We celebrate on December 25 because there was already a major Roman festival around that day (just as there tends to be in many cultures)