[...]
In Egypt, less than 300 years after Christ’s death, some Christians
celebrated his birth in the spring. As the Biblical Archeology Society
has noted, the earliest references to Christmas come at about 200 A.D.,
at a time Christians were not incorporating other religious traditions
into their own. By 300 A.D., many Christians were celebrating his birth
around Dec. 25th. Within 100 years, Christmas was on the calendar
record. Christians looked to December because the early church was far
more interested in Jesus’s death. His death and resurrection is what
matters to the Gospel, and that was the date the early church focused
on.
“Around 200 A.D., Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that
the 14th of Nisan in the year Jesus died was the equivalent to March 25
in the Roman calendar,” said Andrew McGowan last year at the Biblical
Archaeology Society. That would be the day of Crucifixion. The math
from there is rather simple. Nine months later would be Dec. 25. Early
church history held as fact that the prophets and martyrs of the church
were conceived on the day they died.
So if Christ died on March 25, it was also the anniversary of his
conception.
Separately, and more directly from the Bible, Luke 1 tells us
Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father, was in the priestly division of
Abijah. Based on a calculation of this and the division of priest in
the temple in 70 A.D. when the temple fell, a number of early Church
historians presumed Zacharias would have been in the temple in early
October. Later historians, however, speculate it would have been June.
The Gospel of Luke tells us when Zacharias left the temple, his wife
conceived. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a
city of Galilee named Nazaerth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose
name was Joseph, of the house of David,” Luke 1:25-26 notes.
Six months after Zacharias left the temple would be March as Mary’s
time of conception. Fast forward nine months and again we find
ourselves in December. With the very earliest Church fathers settling
on March 25th as Christ’s death and believing fully that Christ’s death
would occur on the anniversary of his conception, the early church
reinforced its belief well before there is any written accusation or
evidence of the church incorporating Saturnalia or Sol Invictus into
its celebrations. It is important to note, however, that most scholars
reject setting Christ’s birth to Zacharias’s temple service because of
problems related to really knowing when he was there.
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