Introduction

When exactly was Jesus born? Pop­u­lar belief puts his birth on Decem­ber 25^th in the year 1 AD. The Gos­pels would have been the sources for the date of the birth of Jesus, but this seems not to be their interest. The Chris­ti­an (New) Test­a­ment gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth.  Mark the earli­est Gos­pel (writ­ten about 65–70 AD), begins with the bap­tism of an adult Jesus.  This sug­gests that the interest of the earli­est Chris­ti­ans was on the mis­sion of the Mes­si­ah and not his birth­d­ate. Today, it is the con­trary. We place more accent on our birth­days than our respons­ib­il­it­ies. Two dif­fer­ent worlds and two dif­fer­ent approaches to life. The earli­est men­tion of Decem­ber 25 as Jesus’ birth­day comes from a mid-fourth-cen­tury Roman alman­ac that lists the death dates of vari­ous Chris­ti­an bish­ops and mar­tyrs. The first date lis­ted, Decem­ber 25, is marked: natus Chris­tus in Betleem Judeae – “Christ was born in Beth­le­hem of Judea.”

There are so many opin­ions about the date of Jesus’ birth. Among all, I have decided to men­tion this. As we all know, Christ­mas is an ancient feast. It may not have been called exactly Christ­mas, but the feast is older than Chris­tian­ity. In fact, it pred­ates con­tem­por­ary Chris­ti­an Christ­mas. Do you remem­ber the pop­u­lar and import­ant fest­iv­al that was cel­eb­rated in the East, the fam­ous Nat­al­is Sol­is Invicti – the birth of Sol Invictus? In the Roman cal­en­dar, the Nat­al­is Sol­is Invicti was held every Decem­ber 25. This feast was impor­ted from the East. Is this the same as the Roman mid-winter Sat­urnalia fest­iv­al in late Decem­ber? What is or what was this feast all about? In the West, the feast retained the same mean­ing that was attrib­uted to it in the East. Decem­ber 25 is con­sidered to be the time of the year when the sun reaches the low­est point in the sky and at the same time begins to rise again, thus, giv­ing rise to a new cycle. At its resur­gence, the East­ern­ers adorned this Sun. This is the reas­on for the name Nat­al­is Sol­is Invicti. That is, the birth (Nat­al­is – Christ­mas) of the Invin­cible (Invicti) Sun (Sol­is).

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