December 2025
Christmas is celebrated on December 25 primarily due to historical and theological reasons. The date was chosen to coincide with existing pagan festivals, particularly the Roman festival of Saturnalia and the winter solstice, which celebrated the return of longer days. Early Christians aimed to provide a Christian alternative to these popular celebrations. Additionally, some early church leaders believed that Jesus was conceived on March 25, leading to a birth date of December 25, nine months later. This date has been widely accepted in Western Christianity, while Eastern Orthodox churches celebrate it on January 7 due to differences in calendar systems
The Bible offers few clues: Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; the date is not given, not even the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season; in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled. Yet most scholars would urge caution about extracting such a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical.
The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century is equally spare: There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) goes so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices—a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time.1 As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point.
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