25th December - we might have known this to be the Birthday of Jesus Christ – but there is absolutely no written evidence of this particular date to be associated with the birth of God’s beloved son. In fact as per the record, the first 25th December in the Christian way was celebrated after about 330 years of the messiah’s birth.
The time close to the winter solstice
(21st December) has been always special across the world, it is
after the winter solstice the size of the day starts increasing, and the pagans
linked it with the win of light over darkness. This brought the concept of a
mid-winter festival, with a view of celebrating the sign that winter will pass
as the days started overpowering nights. In the early pastoral society, live
stocks were kept in the buffer for food for he humans to be able to pass through
the winter where hunting was not as easy as the other seasons. A couple of days
post the solstice, when the early pagans were confirmed about the increase of
the length of days – those buffer stocked animals were killed for the feast, and by
this time the brew kept after autumn harvest used to also be matured to be
drunk.
This prehistoric celebration
became traditions in different names in different parts of the northern
hemisphere especially towards the of the tropic of cancer; in Scandinavia it
was called Yule, in Eastern Europe, it was called Koleda.
In Rome later on this festive tradition
just took the shape of “Sol Invictus”, or the birthday of the unconquered sun, and
in Persia is came to be known as Yalda, the word itself means birth. The
Jewish, way before the birth of Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, the festival of
light on the day of Kislev 25 i.e
December 25. All these were associated with the start of increasing day phenomenon
as the birth of a new sun, which would gradually grow.
In the year 336, when the Roman
Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman
Empire understood the importance of merging the old paganism into the new
official religion from the political angle and celebrated the birth of the
prophet on the good old day of 25th December. Christians believed
that Jesus is the light of the world, it is tempting to hypothesize that the
birth of a new sun or festival of light propositions could be readily merged
with the birth of Jesus. This could ensure a smoother transition of
Constantine’s subjects from Paganism to Christianity.
But the question remains, when
was Jesus born then?
As mentioned earlier there is no solid textual evidence of when was the prophet born. However, some
practical guesses can be made from the stories associated with Jesus’s birth.
Bible (Luke 2.8-20) says, there were shepherds out on the field who were
keeping watch on the grazing sheep, had the time been around the mid-winter of the festival, it would have been a bit too cold for this to happen.
Mary and Joseph to whom the
prophet was born had to travel to Bethlehem for a Roman census. A census at any
era stood the least chance of being conducted in the middle of winter as the
turnout would have been a low as possible due to obvious reasons.
As for when Jesus was really
born, many Christians would love to base their calculation on the birth of John
the Baptist. As per the texts, John was conceived about six months before
Jesus. In this way, Jesus would have to be born in June. According to the United
Church of God June 13 to 17 is the likely time when Jesus probably was born.
When the star of Bethlehem is
taken into consideration this gets further validated, many astronomers argued
that the Star of Bethlehem actually Jupiter and Venus coming too close to
each other in the sky, so together looking like a different star, far bigger
and brighter. This happened on 17th June of 2nd BC.
Some other theologists even say,
Jesus was an autumn baby as the census is most likely to have happened during
the Jewish festival of Sukkot when all the Jews people gathered in Bethlehem
to celebrate their great escape from Egypt. The time could have been an apt
one for a census as most of the Jews were in the town only, also the non-availability
of the rooms in the inns across the towns also gets justified in this way.
Today after 2000 years of the
event, remembrance of which brings us the most celebrated festival in the world
–humbly raises a question, are facts always more important than opinions? Especially
in a time when we find ourselves lamenting in the post-truth world. Perhaps, neither the adaption curve of Christianity
could see that much up-move, had it not been the “post-truth” political move
of Constantine and his men, nor we could see such a fairy idea namely
Christmas as we see today.
~Avirup Chakraborty
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