Thread by @andrewmarkhenry

Hi, PhD in ancient Christianity here. Since apparently you want primary sources and not “unsourced opinion pieces,” I’ll try my best. But complex historical analysis requires much more space than Twitter allows, so I will include peer-reviewed articles at the end.

https://twitter.com/godless_mom/status/1465857630077743106

Christians prob settled on Dec 25 for Xmas b/c they were obsessed with calculating Jesus’ conception, birth, and death based on the vague info in the Gospels. March 25 (the Roman vernal equinox) became popular for his crucifixion, Dec 25 (the winter solstice) for his birth.

Early 3rd c. evidence demonstrates that these chronographers started to settle on March 25 as the crucifixion day. Source: an “Easter calculation calendar” that likely was produced by the priest Hippolytus.

Scholar @SarahEBond has some excellent photographs of replicas of this artifact here: sarahemilybond.com/2018/03/31/ann…

Christian writer Tertullian also floated a March 25th crucifixion-date in the early 3rd c. And this is definitely not a coincidence. This day was when the Romans marked the Vernal Equinox. (Source: Columella "De re rustica" 9.14.1, 9.14.12).

Apparently, a lot of Xstians were motivated to align Jesus’ death w/ this day to place him in a big cosmic narrative. Source: a Xstian text “On the solstice and equinox,” which tries really hard to link dates for Jesus’ and John the Baptist’s life to solstices or equinoxes.

For more on this homily, see: roger-pearse.com/weblog/2019/12…

So where does Dec 25 come in? Dec 25 was the day Romans recognized the winter solstice (See Pliny, Natural History 18.220–221). Notice this wasn't the actual winter solstice in antiquity, just the traditional day (Julian calendar fail). Notice also it is 9 months after Mar 25.

Many Jews and Christians believed that saints and prophets lived “perfect lives.” That means, they were born and died on the same day. Some apparently started believing Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day (March 25).

For an explicit example, see St. Augustine’s quote here from his text “De Trinitate Libri IV, 5(9):
“For he [Jesus] is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered...But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”

Augustine is late, but the table quoted earlier (as well as Tertullian and Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel) implies Xstians were already buying into this “perfect life” idea as early as the 3rd c, and placed the 3 life moments (conception, birth, death) on March 25 and Dec 25.

Obviously this implicates the Roman Sun God: Sol Invictus, who apparently was also celebrated on Dec 25, probably starting around the late 3rd c. under Emperor Aurelian (but earliest evidence of this from a Christian calendar dating to 354. Not great evidence for this festival).

Though, rather than outright “stealing” between Christians and pagans, scholars see this as everyone (pagan, Christian, and otherwise) having a vested interest to link their god to a day already considered cosmologically important for half a millennium: the Winter Solstice.

So in the end, the topic is much more complicated than “Christians stole a pagan holiday.”

More like, “Xstians, living in a society that marked the equinox and solstice on Mar 25 and Dec 25, influenced by solar theology and a desire to raise Jesus’ life to a cosmic scale, embarked on chronographic speculations, settling on Mar 25 and Dec 25 for his death and birth.”

Scholarly, peer-reviewed sources easily available online:
-Nothaft, “The Origins of the Christmas Date” Church History 81:4 (Dec 2012), 903-911
-Nothaft. ‘Early Christian chronology and the origins of the Christmas date.’ Questions Liturgiques 94: 2013, 247–265

- Hijmans, “Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas,” Mouseion, 2003,
(see also Hijmans’ huge book on Sol Invictus: “Sol. The sun in the art and religions of Rome," 2009)
-Michele Salzman: “Aurelian and the Cult of the Unconquered Sun," 2017

For easier to digest sources: I get into this topic a bit in my video on Saturnalia:
And "Why Dec 25th?":

Also, scholar @PeterGainsford has some truly excellent blog posts on this topic: kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2021/10/dates-…

History is hard. It is subjective and interpretive. But it is an evidence-based, empirical discipline. I have read all of the primary and secondary sources I just quoted, and am convinced by their arguments. Will you?