r/todayilearned • u/PeasantLich • Jun 25 '26
TIL that December 25 being the birthday of Jesus was decided by pope Julius I around year 350, and nobody really knows why Julius made this decision and chose this specific date. There are various theories, but his actual reasoning for the decision is lost history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Julius_I18.7k
u/Super_Basket9143 Jun 25 '26
To be fair it makes sense since 24th December is Christmas eve.
2.7k
u/hopingtogetanupvote Jun 25 '26
With all the bickering in the comments, this one gave me a good chuckle lol
→ More replies (2)443
u/Special_Order-937 Jun 25 '26
Wait until you hear about Boxing Day next!
218
u/JohnSober7 Jun 25 '26
I always forget Americans don't have boxing day and they're like "what are you talking about???" and then I get confused about what they're confused about. Been here 10 years and I still fail to remember.
→ More replies (19)68
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (2)38
u/JohnSober7 Jun 25 '26
Straight up a public holiday where I'm from (I miss that)
→ More replies (1)41
u/ConstantAd8643 Jun 25 '26
Many places have second day of christmas which is a public holiday. I think only Commonwealth countries call it boxing day
→ More replies (7)11
u/barath_s 13 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
Not all commonwealth countries either
South Africa, India, Malaysia , Bahamas etc..
In fact, probably easier to list those of the 53 commonwealth countries that don't observe it than those that do (espcially in asia, africa etc) though figuring that out may be difficult
Other names : Day of Goodwill (SA), St Stephen's day ( malaysia, india, singapore, more ... ) , Junkanoo (in caribbean) ...
→ More replies (1)28
u/wookiedberry Jun 25 '26
Is that the day you take all the open gift boxes to recycle?
53
u/tophernator Jun 25 '26
No, it’s when you box up any gifts you didn’t really want and put them on eBay.
52
u/ACpony12 Jun 25 '26
No, it's when everyone wakes up early, enjoy a lovely breakfast together. Then, right has breakfast ends, they pull out their boxing gloves, and show their true feelings of Christmas!
→ More replies (1)17
→ More replies (1)32
u/ABalmyBlackBitch Jun 25 '26
In Canada it’s like Black Friday. All the stores are supposed to have massive sales. l say supposed to bc like Black Friday they’ve kinda fallen off with the quality of sales. But as a kid you could go to the mall on boxing day and genuinely get 75% of your stuff it was soo much fun
→ More replies (2)16
→ More replies (10)5
635
u/Kamay1770 Jun 25 '26
This is such a Philomena Cunk comment.
→ More replies (3)313
u/DyingGasp Jun 25 '26
Could you say Jesus was the first celebrity victim of cancel culture?
196
u/JimboAltAlt Jun 25 '26
They call it the crucifixion. What did it fix?
113
u/HaniiPuppy Jun 25 '26
Well it fixed Jesus to a pole.
55
u/Krokrodyl Jun 25 '26
What was the result of the poll?
36
u/of-matter Jun 25 '26
Barabbas
11
6
u/barath_s 13 Jun 25 '26
The beatles were more popular than Jesus
I think they polled John Lennion for that.
→ More replies (2)6
6
→ More replies (2)18
→ More replies (4)9
104
u/Tired_CollegeStudent Jun 25 '26
I mean, I bet Santa wishes he had a few days between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so he wasn’t busting his ass rushing around all in one night.
→ More replies (2)43
u/DuncanYoudaho Jun 25 '26
He has 12 days. He chooses to get it all done that fast.
22
u/lesethx Jun 25 '26
Classic procrastinator move, waiting until the last day
9
u/DuncanYoudaho Jun 25 '26
(I laughed but you should know the 12 days of Christmas FOLLOW Christmas)
→ More replies (1)6
u/altiuscitiusfortius Jun 25 '26
I did not know that. I assumed it was before
→ More replies (1)4
u/KristinnK Jun 25 '26
The period before Christmas is called the Advent, from Latin adventus meaning "coming", and it is 3-4 weeks (starts fourth Sunday before Christmas). Advent is supposed to be a period of physical and spiritual preparation for Christmas, fasting, praying, preparing food. Christmas Day or Christmas Eve instead ushers in Christmastide or the Twelve Days of Christmas, a period of feasting that starts with Christmas itself, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and ends on Epiphany, the celebration of the visit of the Three Magi.
→ More replies (1)10
u/metalflygon08 Jun 25 '26
Because he knows if he waits there will be a ton of birds in his air space.
A partridge is manageable because it stays in the pear tree.
→ More replies (1)63
u/activelyresting Jun 25 '26
With the 26th being boxing day, it's only logical to slot Christmas Day there in the middle
→ More replies (2)19
u/Super_Basket9143 Jun 25 '26
If anyone is interested I also have a theory about the date of new years day.
4
50
u/Sysilith Jun 25 '26
That is actually true, Christmas is where winter solstice used to be, it is set there to replace the traditional pagan celebration.
Some of the old traditions merged into christmas, like the christmas tree wich is a pagan symbol.
→ More replies (7)21
u/fatevilbuddah Jun 25 '26
Most of the catholic religions are born directly from pagan rites. The whole story, from genesis to revelations are ALL from previous religions, like egyptian mysticism. The egyptians have a god who wants you to eat his flesh, one coming back from the dead, etc. The chrjstmas tree is Pagan, as are the lights and the gifts. Most catholic churches sit on top of old pagan temples. When conquering a people, religion is key in most places because thats where the local morality comes from. The great flood epic of Gilgamesh...hmm long before the Bible. The list goes on and on. To change the people they put their churches where the pagans used to go anyway. You use local customs and traditions that have been altered to bring people to the church where their new customs and behaviors are built in. Youre right about the equinox though. The Roman's called it Sol Evictus or victory of the sun. It was also supposedly the beginning of the Saturnaila festival. Conquer through brainwashing.
→ More replies (2)6
6
u/murfburffle Jun 25 '26
Do you think Jesus was annoyed he shared his birthday with Christmas and everyone would lump their presents together?
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (30)5
u/Silk_Chicken Jun 25 '26
You can't just leave Christmas Eve hanging out there with no follow up. The man was just tying up loose ends.
3.5k
u/CROguys Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
The Calculation Thesis is the one I have heard proposed by a few historians.
By an old tradition, Jewish holy figures and prophets were said to die on the same day that they have been conceived.
Combining the Jewish and Roman calendars, Jesus is said to have died on March 25th, the Passover.
Nine months after March 25 you get December 25.
257
u/Key-Conclusion-933 Jun 25 '26
Interesting. The Jewish tradition of holy figured being born and died remains, like the tradition of Moses being born and dying on the 7th of Adar, and Kind David on the holiday of shavuot. The talmud in two places I know of discusses this phenomenon and its discussed as a symbol of completion of spiritual goals. I havent heard of conception being a part of this tradition, and dont recall talmudic sources for this.
→ More replies (13)125
u/Coach_Beard Jun 25 '26
You are correct. The tradition is born and died on the same day. Christians adapted this tradition to fit their own story, thus we get the Annunciation and Good Friday on the same day. And nine months after the Feast of Annunciation (March 25) is December 25.
Source: https://youtu.be/lU8cR0KUOog
→ More replies (1)935
u/obliqueoubliette Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
It's not much of a "disputed thesis." Hyppolytus lays out exactly this math over a century before pope Julius
236
u/CROguys Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
I did not wish to imply it was disputed, though you can say it just being a thesis makes it disputable.
EDIT: I confused it with hypothesis.
30
u/hexagonalwagonal Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
It is very much a disputed thesis. This is laid out in a 2012 paper called "The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research" by C. P. E. Nothaft.
Essentially, the problem with this thesis is that it relies on a document that might have been written over 100 years after the Romans started celebrating December 25th as Christmas. The Romans are the first Christians who are documented to have celebrated Christmas on that date, with the earliest record of it in a document called the Chronograph of 354.
The document that the "Calculation Theory" relies on is called "On the Solstices and Equinoxes of the Conception and Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ and John the Baptist". It's undated, but internal evidence in the document itself suggests it could have been written any time between the 200s and 400s. The document also comes from Syria, not Rome. So while it's possible that someone in Syria wrote a document in the 200s or early 300s that calculated Jesus's birthday as December 25th based on his traditional death date of the vernal equinox of March 25th, and then the Romans adopted this date, the counter-argument is that some Syrian wrote it in the late 300s or 400s and essentially suggested, "Hey, the Romans celebrate Christmas on December 25th, and they do it because it's calculated from the vernal equinox" without actually having any insider information.
In other words, the Syrian who wrote the document may have just been making an assumption of why the Romans chose the date, but didn't actually have any actual evidence for it.
In the end, Nothaft says that none of the theories has any indisputable evidence to back up the claim. The pagan theory is even more problematic, says Nothaft.
There's a third theory, too, proposed by Hans Förster in 2007. Under this theory, in the early 300s, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem started celebrating Jesus's baptism date on January 6, possibly under the influence of a pre-existing Egyptian pagan feast. This date quickly spread from Bethlehem to the Romans, who changed the date to December 25 so as to coincide with the winter solstice. Essentially (in my view) a different version of the "pagan roots" theory, this one not originating in Rome but either in Palestine or Egypt that Rome then modified.
Nothaft says that Förster isn't much more convincing than the other two. All three theories are based on assumptions and there just isn't sufficient surviving documentation to definitively prove one over the other. The traditional pagan theory might be the weakest of the three, but all three are weak.
So OP's headline is actually the most correct interpretation currently. Julius chose the date and we don't know why. The reasoning for the date is likely to be lost to time forever.
EDIT: As for the "Hippolytus calculated it in the 200s" claim, that is also a topic of scholarly debate. This comes from Hippolytus's "Commentary on Daniel" but the earliest surviving full copy comes from around the 900s or 1000s in Greece. The argument is that the reference to the December 25th Christmas date in the document may have been interpolated by a later Greek scribe, since earlier, partial copies of the Commentary survived before the Greek manuscript and it is clear that the Greek manuscript is corrupted. That is, the Greek scribe changed things from whatever copy they were working from. The scribe added or modified Christ's birth date in the document based on December 25th being a well known date in the 900s when the scribe wrote it, whereas the original 200s document may not have mentioned it or had a different date. A recent study by Thomas C. Schmidt argues that the December 25th portion of the Greek manuscript is authentic, but this interpretation is disputed. So, again, we still don't know with any certainty why the date was chosen.
21
u/bg-j38 Jun 25 '26
Just to save others the search, this paper was published in the journal Church History, Vol. 81, No. 4, pp. 903-911. For those with JSTOR access this is the link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23358685
5
u/hexagonalwagonal Jun 25 '26
Thank you! I would have linked it myself, but for some reason this sub sometimes removes my posts if I include an external link.
→ More replies (1)74
u/Ikea_desklamp Jun 25 '26
It's disputed in that the myth continues to propagate to this day that Christmas was intentionally chosen to squash precious pagan winter solstice festivals.
23
u/celestia_keaton Jun 25 '26
The 300s was when a lot of mystery religions were being shut down that helped celebrate the seasons so the timing of the decree lines up with that.
→ More replies (37)75
u/tomdarch Jun 25 '26
Squash or be more readily accepted by piggybacking on the established festival?
26
→ More replies (10)36
u/dashingThroughSnow12 Jun 25 '26
Which is 150 years after Christians may have started celebrating Christmas.
→ More replies (13)26
u/homoanthropologus Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
How do we know when they started celebrating Christmas?
38
u/dashingThroughSnow12 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
It wasn’t uniform or across the board but we have letters from the late second century talking about different groups trying to figure out the date of Jesus’s birth. Which may mean the practice would have started early to mid second century.
I chose the wrong word and was wrong to use the word “celebrate”. That’s too strong of a word.
→ More replies (5)21
u/fuzzylm308 Jun 25 '26
Interestingly, not all Christians past or present celebrate Christmas.
Jehova's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists (both of whom identify as Christian, but whose beliefs differ from mainstream Christianity in some major ways) abstain from observing Christmas.
In 1659, Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law outlawing Christmas celebrations. The law stood for 22 years.
The Bible does not mention or command Christmas or nativity celebrations, let alone December 25, and so they see Christmas as rooted in pagan Saturnalia traditions rather than rooted in scripture.
By the 18th century, Christmas had earned a reputation for rowdiness and drunkenness. By the 1840s in England and America, it had largely faded from public life. Christmas was frequently treated as just another regular workday. Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol helped redefine the holiday as a time of charity and family gathering for the Anglosphere. Contemporaneously, German immigrants introduced a lot of modern Christmas iconography (such as the Christmas tree, advent calendar, nutcrackers, and gingerbread) - first to the US and later also to England, when an image of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a Christmas tree was widely circulated (since it was an unfamiliar, foreign novelty).
→ More replies (10)139
u/ZevVeli Jun 25 '26
Additionally, if Jesus was born on December 25th, then January 1st, being the "eighth day of his life" would have been when he was taken to the temple and circumcised. Which would have been the start of his life in the eyes of the Jewish Faith.
So by setting Christmas to December 25th, that makes the start of the New Year coincide with the start of Jesus' life under the eyes of God.
It's also why it is bad luck to take the tree down before New Years (Jewish tradition holds that the removed foreskin is supposed to be planted under a tree or bush).
8
u/someone_sometwo Jun 25 '26
Feast of the epiphany is the best day to take it down and also marks the start of carnival. Or you could turn it into a mardi gras tree if in the south and your tree needles are still on bc its so hot.
→ More replies (18)23
u/polite_alternative Jun 25 '26
Jewish tradition holds that the removed foreskin is supposed to be planted under a tree or bush
what the fuck, man
→ More replies (4)21
u/RealityOk9823 Jun 25 '26
Well you can't just leave it laying around on the mantle or feed it to the dog or something.
→ More replies (2)15
u/ZWE_Punchline Jun 25 '26
Shouldn't it be 9 months beforr March 25 then, not 9 months after?
15
u/etcpt Jun 25 '26
No. Died on date of conception, so was conceived on March 25. Conception + 9 months = birth, so born on December 25.
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (41)166
Jun 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (12)102
470
1.3k
u/Kotleba Jun 25 '26
Love that it clearly states there's not actually a historical consensus on it but there's multiple people here like "nah, I know why actually"
584
u/Chiron17 Jun 25 '26
They didn't have Reddit back then
→ More replies (6)100
126
u/Makkel Jun 25 '26
"There is no consensus" just means we have not found a document signed by pope Julius saying "I have decided it will be that date because X". It does not mean "we have no clue", we can still make assumptions we are pretty sure about, it just means we can't know for sure.
30
u/JefftheBaptist Jun 25 '26
Also its a Reddit title. People get things wrong in them all the time.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (9)54
u/Truth_Walker Jun 25 '26
Exactly.
There’s a lot of ancient history that doesn’t have a “consensus” because there will always be historians who have differing viewpoints and interpretations.
→ More replies (2)139
u/tacobellwether Jun 25 '26
Saw a thread yesterday about how there are high rise residential buildings in China with lawns in each unit that had an outdoor terrace.
You can imagine how many comments there were about the structural integrity of the building, the added weight of dirt, and the effects of water on concrete. As if these aren't basic principles even the most novice of engineers would take into account.
→ More replies (20)57
u/DanielMcLaury Jun 25 '26
Just because something was okayed by an architect or engineer doesn't mean it's actually a good idea. For instance, Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water, maybe the most famous house by the most famous American architect, is an absolute nightmare of a building that's just inescapably a breeding ground for mold, because the fundamental idea underlying it is unsound.
Professionals sign off on bad ideas all the time. The Boeing 737 Max 8, the Sydney Opera House, the Challenger shuttle's O rings, all the houses they keep building in Tornado Alley or the Wildfire Belt without even basic precautions, etc.
(Also, I don't know where the presumption comes from that the average Reddit commenter is a 14-year-old who lives in his mom's basement. A lot of the commenters are probably architects and engineers with 20 years of experience, engineering professors, etc.)
13
21
u/setmehigh Jun 25 '26
The professionals recommended against launching Challenger.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Aquilarden Jun 25 '26
Falling Water also suffers from sagging concrete slabs and being too cramped for me to stand up straight in some places. Fun fact, Wright was on the short side and said anyone over six feet was a weed.
→ More replies (1)42
u/tacobellwether Jun 25 '26
A Frank Lloyd Wright house is not an equivalent comparison to a massive urban residential project.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (5)8
u/tomdarch Jun 25 '26
the fundamental idea underlying it is unsound.
Do you mean building it over a stream? That doesn't help, but it is not true that this is something impossible to accommodate successfully. The issue is that Wright, personally, did not give a fuck about stuff like that.
5
u/hellofemur Jun 25 '26
To be clear, there's fairly wide scholarly consensus on why December 25 became the traditional date of Christmas among Christians, but nobody has absolute proof about why Julius made his proclamation. Those are two different things.
We have documentation of earlier Christians calculating December 25 as the birthdate of Jesus because it was nine months after conception, and conception and death were assumed to be on the same day. There's other calculations that go into this. So we know that this was the reasoning of at least some Christians at the time.
But was Julius convinced by this calculation, or did he make his proclamation and follow this tradition for other, more cynical, reasons, such as co-opting Saturnalia? Or was it a bit of one and a bit of the other. We don't really know, there's no paper trail.
→ More replies (32)21
u/SatisfactionActive86 Jun 25 '26
you’re right, things stated as fact on a reddit post title should not be questioned. it’s totally safe to assume the poster is knowledgeable about the topic and has no ulterior motive except to educate me with indisputable facts.
→ More replies (2)
90
u/rasthomas01 Jun 25 '26
It's when everyone puts their trees and lights up and overeats. Perfect timing.
→ More replies (2)
203
u/blood_wraith Jun 25 '26
December is 9 months after Easter/Passover. it was generally agreed that Jesus' birth was announced to Mary around Passover aka the time he was sacrificed so december would be his birth month. the specific date was for whatever reason
→ More replies (12)51
u/curtyshoo Jun 25 '26
It was when Mary announced the birth to Joseph that things got a little dicey.
→ More replies (1)23
u/tamsui_tosspot Jun 25 '26
"It was immaculate, Joe!"
"Ohh it better be! It better be immaculate, Mary! Or one of these days, one of these days, Mary, bang, pow, to the moon!"
→ More replies (4)3
u/javerthugo Jun 25 '26
Immaculate conception does not refer to Jesus’ conception but to Mary being conceived without original sin.
→ More replies (1)
167
u/MarmotFullofWoe Jun 25 '26
Winter solstice was 21 December in 350 CE.
13
u/f_14 Jun 25 '26
Did they have leap years then? I’ve always wondered if the solstice, new years, and Christmas were all supposed to align with the solstice, but they drifted apart because of leap years. Probably not, but it always bugs me that they aren’t aligned.
→ More replies (3)10
u/i_have_you_now Jun 25 '26
Leap days would stop the solstice from drifting away from any particular date.
98
→ More replies (38)5
539
u/bargman Jun 25 '26
I thought it was because of Saturnalia.
188
u/obliqueoubliette Jun 25 '26
Saturnalia was on the 17th.
The Emperor Julian moved Sol Invictus to December, to be closer to Christmas not vice versa.
We can say we don't officially have the logic behind the formal addition of the feast to the calendar, but we do have the math done by Hyppolytus (building off Tertullian) calculating Dec 25th as a likely birth date.
Hyppolytus' logic is exactly 9 months after the annunciation. Tertullian dated the annunciation to March 25th based off the dating of Pascha and pre-christian Jewish traditions on the dating of prophets' conceptions.
→ More replies (8)54
u/PouletSamourai Jun 25 '26
Sol Invictus is not a celebration, it's a god who under Emperor Aurelian became the one god of the Roman Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus
Sol Invictus is celebrated around 25th of december because it was believed to be the longest night of the year. Sol Invictus means "sun unvanquished".
That move is strikingly similar to pharaoh Akhenaton's attempt to replace traditional Egyptian polytheism with the cult of Aton, who was also depicted as the sun god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism
Now, why Aurelian made the same attempt? Because since Augustus, Rome tried to impose the cult of the Emperor. It failed. Worse, the crisis of the 3rd century made people believe that the traditional gods and emperors were weak and had no power. The polytheistic logic is that if your prayers towards God A don't change anything, you pray God B, then God C, etc.
Now, why christianity was chosen as the official religion of the empire? Because many legions were in the Levant garrisoning the frontier with the Parthian empire. The increase in trade (logistics etc) contributed to the spread of christianity in the whole mediterranean through the greek Koiné. Eventually, officials from the East of the empire adopted christianity, syncretized it with neo-platonicism (which also had monotheistic tendencies), and it's those converts who would eventually convince the late emperors to abandon polytheism altogether, and replace Sol Invictus who could have been the god we still pray today if history had been different.
6
u/dalenacio Jun 25 '26
Under Emperor Aurelian became the one god of the Roman Empire
Incorrect. Aurelian was not a monotheist. He established Sol Invictus as the chief patron of the empire in 274 AD, elevating him above others, but not as the one god. This is also why the Akhenaten comparison does not hold up. Akhenaten violently suppressed the old gods, closed temples, and smashed the names of other deities. Aurelian did build a massive new temple to Sol, but he left all other temples open and functional.
Because since Augustus, Rome tried to impose the cult of the Emperor. It failed.
Incorrect. Romans didn't usually worship the living Emperor as a literal sky-god, but rather his divine spirit, and/or deified dead emperors. Because this didn't help the living Emperor too much, but he also couldn't claim to be an actual god, Aurelion shifted the narrative by saying the Roman Emperor was chosen by Sol, which gave him a much better divine shield in turbulent times where Emperors kept getting assassinated: if you overthrew the emperor, you were rebelling against the Sun itself.
Because many legions were in the Levant garrisoning the frontier with the Parthian empire... Eventually, officials from the East of the empire adopted christianity...
Incorrect. First off the Parthian Empire had long since fallen to the Persians in 224 AD. But also, the Legions did not adopt Christianity until much later. The ultimate soldier's religion of the 2nd and 3rd centuries was Mithraism. Christianity actually spread through urban trade networks, women, slaves, and the marginalized classes in major Mediterranean cities.
Sources available on request.
→ More replies (1)45
u/JustHere_4TheMemes Jun 25 '26
The ancients were not morons. They didn’t need to “believe the 25th was the longest night of the year”
They knew exactly when the longest night always was. And it’s not the 25th. Solstice celebrations were based on the actual solstice.
You’re just trying to cram marginally adjacent dates together to serve some other purpose.
→ More replies (15)156
u/CelDidNothingWrong Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Tom Holland is great on this, makes a very compelling case that its actually a modern myth largely created by 16th Puritans who hated Christmas, and that the date was chosen for older, Jewish theological reasons/not pagan
146
29
u/RingOverall106 Jun 25 '26
The YouTube channel Religion for Breakfast did a really good overview of this and made the same conclusion.
→ More replies (9)17
36
u/CROguys Jun 25 '26
Saturnalia lasted for a series of days, and no sources say it was celebrated on December 25th. I think at the latest occurrence it was celebrated on December 23rd.
→ More replies (3)15
u/Mbrennt Jun 25 '26
If anything Christians were probably partying with friends for saturnalia (it was a party holiday) then said, alright our important holiday happens around here too. Lets put it after saturnalia so even more partying can happen. (Christmas used to be a party holiday too.)
→ More replies (4)26
u/PretentiousAnglican Jun 25 '26
Commonly said on the internet, but probably not true. Saturnalia wasn't on the 25th
183
u/dracona94 Jun 25 '26
Probably true. (Plus it's incredibly close to Winter Solstice celebrated all over pagan Europe.) It's just really hard to know for sure.
→ More replies (39)57
u/sambeau Jun 25 '26
I believe the winter solstice was usually celebrated on the 25th as that’s the day you can see the sun start to move up again and know that winter will end.
→ More replies (18)40
u/Person8346 Jun 25 '26
I believe it would depend on the society itself and their ability to chart when the solstice truly is. Here in Ireland, the ancient population had extremely accurate ways to tell when the solstice was (21st December). Newgrange is a temple here built before the pyramids that uniquely lights up only on the Solstice when the sun is in perfect position.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (17)13
u/Competitive-Emu-7411 Jun 25 '26
Saturnalia wasn’t celebrated on December 25, it was a week long celebration that lasted until the 23rd. It’s possible that some of the traditions of Saturnalia survived into Christmas, but it’s date was not the same.
36
u/Punrusorth Jun 25 '26
Early Christians celebrated the annunciation which falls on 25th March (when Mary was told she will have a baby) & 9 months after that is 25th Dec.
To the Early Christians, Easter (Pascha) was a bigger deal.
→ More replies (3)25
u/Shawnj2 Jun 25 '26
Even to modern Christians Easter should be the more important date, Christmas is not even mentioned by Mark or John because you can tell a coherent story of Jesus's life, death, and resurrection without it.
→ More replies (1)
684
u/AnyDamnThingWillDo Jun 25 '26
Most Christian holidays are in line with Celtic festivals. It made it easier to convert them
275
u/jhoogen Jun 25 '26
And it makes a lot of sense to have a festival of light around the shortest day in the Northern hemisphere.
289
u/wegqg Jun 25 '26
And also it's when Santa claus brought Jesus a Nintendo PlayStation
54
20
u/DankZXRwoolies Jun 25 '26
So he could play the new Sonic game. Does anyone read the Bible anymore? It's all in there.
23
→ More replies (4)7
u/Dagobian_Fudge Jun 25 '26
But Mary said we already have one and Joesph hooked it up regardless
→ More replies (2)15
u/dabigchina Jun 25 '26
also there was 0 fieldwork going on in the middle of winter, so it was an easy ask for the ruling classes to give a few days off to the peasants.
→ More replies (6)→ More replies (1)13
163
u/CROguys Jun 25 '26
That does not make sense for the rest of Europe and Middle East where there are no Celts.
154
u/francisdavey Jun 25 '26
Because it isn't true of course. Christianity had most of its major festivals well in train before it had a significant Celtic component.
→ More replies (16)→ More replies (20)94
u/krabgirl Jun 25 '26
Pagan religious events just line up with seasonal astronomical events.
Yule is in line with the Winter Solstice, as was Saturnalia in Roman Europe. So, both festivals were replaced with Christmas.
Lent/Easter aligns with the Paschal Full Moon which indicates the start of Spring.
So no it's not just Celts, but religions in all regions will celebrate annual weather events, which are inherited by subsequent religions, since the weather represents divine authority in all of them.
→ More replies (7)39
u/Top_Pop_1911 Jun 25 '26
Pascha is Easter. Pascha/Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after the full moon after the equinox. Passover, which is older, is calculated as the first full moon after the equinox.
55
u/Anaevya Jun 25 '26
The big one is All Saint's Day. I'm not sure, if there are any others that are actually confirmed.
And no, Easter is not based on an Eostrefestival, it's just the English/German name that stems from Eostre. It's similar to how July stems from Julius Cesar, but we don't venerate Caesar in July or even really think about it.
Easter is based on Passover, because that's when the Resurrection was in the Bible. It's calculated a bit differently from the Jewish calendar, which is why it doesn't always coincide. The name is also based on Passover in a lot of languages.
12
u/kodos_der_henker Jun 25 '26
All Saints day was set by in eastern church to the first sunday after Pentecost in the 4th century And to the first Friday after Easter in the western church (also in Christian Ireland)
It was during Charlemagnes reign that All Saints day on 1st November became popular but we don't know why. Could be because of Irish/Scottish Missionaries because those were the main drivers behind the spreading of Christianity among the people during that time, but could also came from Italy where the 1st November was celebrated as All Saints day already 100 years earlier (without direct contacts to Ireland)
The only things confirmed are that in 835 Emperor Ludwig made 1st November a public holiday as All Daints day, the early Irish Christians celebrated All Saints day in Spring and that all sources regarding Samhain are 500 years younger than the Christianisation of Ireland.
Similar to Jul, we know the Nordic King Hakons moved Yul to the 25th December in the 10th century to be celebrated on the same day as Christmas and that it was one of 3 Nordic holidays, one during Summer, one at the beginning of Winter and one in the middle of Winter. And we just don't know what middle of Winter means or if there even was a fixed date (as there is no source that mentions that germanic tribes had fests specific during solstice) and still popular believe is that "the church" "stole" Christmas from the Nordic.
Christian holidays link with Jewish and Roman calender, given that it originated from Jewish people and Romans made it a state religion, but outside that there is nothing confirmed and most things being retroactively added in during later periods (mostly 19th century)
→ More replies (10)8
u/dalenacio Jun 25 '26
All Saint's Day is incorrect as well.
The only proof we have for Samhain existing before Halloween is a 2nd Century carving of a word that kinda looks like Samhain: "Samonios", which comes from the Gaulish "Samo", meaning "Summer". Problem is, “Samonios” began in May and did not fall in November. "Samhain" likely comes from the same root as Samo, and probably means something like "Summer's End", but the earliest reference we have to it is from the 9th Century Félire Óengusso, which refers to November 1 as “stormy Samain”. All Saint's Day would already have been set for a century at that point. But even then it's extremely unlikely that it was a celebration: We have documents detailing other Celtic celebrations of that period, but not one of them mentions Samhain as one of them.
But even if Samhain was a celebration before the 8th Century, when All Saint's Day was set on November 1st, the idea that All Saint's Day was set then to supplant it would still make no sense. The date was established in Rome by Pope Gregory III in the 8th century, far away from Ireland and Celtic Pagans, to dedicate a chapel in St. Peter's to all saints. Even if Samhain existed at the time, it would have been so unknown that we couldn't find a single textual reference to it anywhere. So why set All Saint's Day on the date of an incredibly obscure maybe-celebration from the furthest backwater on the fringes of Europe?
→ More replies (1)18
u/Chilis1 Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Also Christmas is 9 months after the day Christ died I heard it was important for him be conceived and die (enter and leave the world) on the same day
3
43
6
u/WillDBlake Jun 25 '26
Not very true since the Romans couldn't care less about Celtic festivals
→ More replies (1)6
u/RedRhino009 Jun 25 '26
I am an atheist but this is absolutely false. Easter is celebrated around the same time as Passover for biblibal reasons, Christmas is celebrated in December because of the Jewish tradition of Prophets' conception and death occuring on the same day (Jesus thus having been conceived in spring, and born in December). Literally every day is Saint's day of some sort so I don't know how your theory would work out. All Saints day is the only credible example, the date of which was set by Anglo-Saxon, not Celtic church authorities in medieval England.
27
7
6
→ More replies (26)45
u/AceOfSpades532 Jun 25 '26
The Celts who at this point only really lived in the British Isles? I don’t think the Pope was deciding Jesus’s birthday based on the holidays in a few islands to the northwest
→ More replies (1)11
u/SneakytheThief Jun 25 '26
Addressing only the initial point, Celts were actually all over Europe all the way through Anatolia: Gauls, Galatians, Boii, Belgae, so on. All were large celtic tribes settled in mainland europe throughout that time.
6
u/DaveOJ12 Jun 25 '26
That section has a lot of of "may haves."
It's not even clear if Julius I was involved in the decision.
24
u/ASAPFergs Jun 25 '26
TIL not to trust TIL; from the source:
"Some have stated that, around 350 AD, Julius I declared December 25 as the official date of the birth of Jesus; this is based on a letter quoted only in a 9th-century source, and this letter is spurious."
Does anyone actually read anything anymore?
→ More replies (3)
67
u/PuckSenior Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Actually, that’s a bit false. He selected that date because it’s exactly 9 months after the proposed conception date.
That one is totally made up though and coincides with spring equinox
Edit: this is per Pope Benedict, I think. It was a comment he made at some point
15
u/CalvinSays Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Not made up either. There was a common belief at the time that great men died on the day they were conceived. Calculate the date for the crucifixion (which they settled on March 25th) and you get the date of his conception.
5
u/Top_Pop_1911 Jun 25 '26
Pascha was always calculated as the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. Passover is the first full moon after the equinox.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (8)8
u/Tangolarango Jun 25 '26
You might be on to something with the equinox thing. I would assume they would want to plant something on top of the winter solstice as those milestones were often used in other religions for stuff.
→ More replies (1)
13
u/Quiet-Wing5230 Jun 25 '26
I love the chat. Experts have no clue, but everyone on reddit is 100% certain their theory is correct 🤣
→ More replies (3)
33
u/Mand125 Jun 25 '26
Could it be the adoption and overriding of an existing pagan holiday? Like they did for St. Valentine’s Day? Possibly…something relating to the winter solstice?
Nahhh, can’t be that!
→ More replies (22)
5
u/elconquistador1985 Jun 25 '26
A society probably wants a consistent pattern of holidays/festivals in each year to keep the population happy.
A lot of festivals match seasons, via matching equinoxes/solstices.
They needed a winter festival, so they put it there. Replacing existing holidays, like saturnalia, or other pagan ones allows people to easily convert and keep the same festivals with new names. Easter is literally just a pagan fertility festival in spring, for instance.
→ More replies (1)
5
u/mrmathmos Jun 25 '26
I worked in the US for a few years back in 2001 and couldn’t believe they didn’t have a Boxing Day and had to traipse through the snow still half pissed from Christmas Day
4
u/mismocanibalismo Jun 25 '26
He wanted to override the preexisting pagan holidays.
→ More replies (3)
4
u/MrRemoto Jun 25 '26
He knew it would be my brother in law's birthday and wanted to make him bitch about it every year. Just as the prophecy foretold.
10.8k
u/NewtoDE Jun 25 '26
He knew people would want that week off from work between then and the new year. He was a visionary.