Did You Ever Wonder... about the actual birth date of Jesus?

We celebrate Christmas, the birth of Christ, literally a word meaning "Christ's Mass", on December 25th.  But as many dates in history, this is a strongly debated topic.  Understand that regardless of what the true date is, Trinity Lutheran Church will always indeed celebrate Christmas on the 25th.  The importance is in celebrating God's gift of Jesus, even if the actual date is debated. 

However, it is worth noting that in both Nativity stories in the Gospels, in Matthew and Luke, no details on the time of year are present.  Both stories attach Jesus' birth to Herod the Great, who most biblical scholars believe died between 4 BC and 1 BC.  Being that our Bible is a book of faith, the stories are more interested in the theological reasons of Jesus' birth rather than the historical dates. 

In the early church, in the 1st and 2nd centuries, the first holiday celebrated was something called Lord's Day, which was what they simply called their day of worship.  This was a Sunday, because Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday.  In fact, most of the early church history places much greater significance in the celebration of Easter than any celebration of Jesus' birth.  It simply did not have the prominence in the church that it does now. 

So why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th?  This is something that didn't come into great practice until the 4th century.  Most historians have speculated that this was because the church was coming into greater influence in the world, and as such, it began to replace traditional Pagan holidays with Christian ones.  Around the same time, the Winter Solstice was a major celebration, but as communities became Christian, they began to stop celebrating the Winter Solstice and instead celebrate Christmas, usually urged on by kings and political leaders.   

So when was Jesus actually born?  We really do not know.  What matters is not the date, but the event itself.  And what Jesus' birth means for us is that God was so invested with humanity that he gave his son over to us, and that through Jesus, God broke into the world to remind us of who we really are, and of whose we really are.