Christmas

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. Many churches observe it on 25 December, while others use calendars or traditions that place the celebration in January.

Two Gospels tell the birth. Luke has the census, the journey to Bethlehem, the manger, and the shepherds who hear the angels sing. Matthew has Joseph's dream, the naming of the child, and then the magi who follow a star from the east with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Neither Gospel has the other's visitors; the shepherds and the magi never meet in the Bible, and it was the church's crib scene that put them together ¹.

Mark and John have no birth story. John instead opens with the Word who was with God and was God and became flesh (John 1:1-14), which is the Gospel read at the Christmas day Mass and at the Orthodox Paschal liturgy alike, and Paul says only that when the time had fully come God sent his Son, born of a woman (Galatians 4:4-5). For the churches Christmas is the feast of the incarnation, God becoming human, more than a birthday; the Orthodox liturgy sings that the eternal God is born as a little child ².

Christmas developed in the early centuries of Christianity. A fourth-century Roman calendar records the celebration on 25 December, but the reasons this date became established remain debated.

The Gospels do not give a date for Jesus' birth. The Chronography of 354 records it on 25 December in material associated with the year 336. This is evidence for an early Roman observance, not a record of one decision that set the date for all Christians. ^11,12

Historians have explored two main explanations for the December date: early Christian calculations linking Jesus' conception with the date of his death, and its relationship to Roman celebrations of the sun. Andrew McGowan explains the evidence and the difficulties with a simple borrowing theory. Neither explanation establishes Jesus' actual birthday. ^11,12

Early Eastern celebrations could bring Jesus' birth and baptism together on 6 January. The Armenian Apostolic tradition continues this combined celebration. Several other churches observe Christmas on 25 December in the Julian calendar, currently 7 January in the Gregorian calendar. Armenian practice in Jerusalem has a further calendar difference, explained below ⁵.

Christmas has not always been kept everywhere. England's Puritan Parliament banned it in 1647, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed its observance in Boston in 1659 with a fine of five shillings, a ban lifted in 1681; Christmas did not become fashionable in New England until the middle of the nineteenth century, and Congress made it a federal holiday only in 1870 ⁶.

Who keeps it Nearly every Christian church, on 25 December in the West and in most Orthodox churches; on 7 January (25 December on the Julian calendar) in the Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Jerusalem churches and Ukrainian churches that keep the old calendar; on 6 January in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Jehovah's Witnesses do not keep it.

Christmas observances include church services, carols, family gatherings and acts of generosity. The surrounding seasons and customs vary by church and country.

In the Catholic Church the Roman Missal provides a Vigil Mass and Masses during the night, at dawn and during the day; the midnight Mass reads the shepherds, the dawn Mass their visit to the manger, and the day Mass the opening of John ¹³. Christmas is a holy day of obligation, opens an octave that ends on 1 January with the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, and begins a Christmas season that runs to the Baptism of the Lord in January. Anglican and Lutheran churches keep the same shape with a midnight or late-night service, a Christmas morning service and the twelve days to Epiphany; Methodist, Presbyterian and Reformed churches keep Christmas Eve candlelight services and Christmas Day, and the lessons-and-carols service that King's College, Cambridge, made famous is now kept across the English-speaking churches.

In Eastern Orthodox worship, the Nativity Fast prepares for Christmas. Services include biblical readings, hymns and the liturgy of the feast, with details depending on the calendar and parish. ² The Orthodox Church in America's fasting guide lists 25 December through 4 January as fast-free, followed by a fast on 5 January, the eve of Theophany. These are church-calendar dates; their civil-calendar equivalents differ for churches using the Julian calendar. ¹⁴

Baptist, Pentecostal and non-denominational churches keep Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, often with a nativity play and a carol service, without a fixed Advent or octave. Jehovah's Witnesses do not keep Christmas, holding, in their own words, that Jesus asked to be remembered at his death and not his birth, that the apostles did not keep it, that there is no proof he was born on 25 December, and that the day's customs come from outside the Bible ⁷. Some Reformed and Presbyterian congregations in the Puritan tradition, and the Churches of Christ, keep no church calendar at all and treat the day as an ordinary Sunday or a civil holiday.

The customs around the day are later and vary by country: the crib, which Francis of Assisi is credited with staging at Greccio in 1223; carols from the Middle Ages; the tree, from Germany, which reached Britain and America in the nineteenth century; St Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century bishop, who became Santa Claus by way of the Dutch Sinterklaas. None of these is in the Bible, and the churches keep them as customs, not as commandments ¹.

Christmas readings include the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke and John's account of the Word becoming flesh. The selection depends on the church and the service.

The Roman calendar lists different readings for the Vigil, Night, Dawn and Day Masses. For example, the Vigil uses Acts 13:16–17, 22–25, and the Night Mass uses Luke 2:1–14. The linked USCCB calendar gives the full selections and shorter options. Bible editions sometimes number the Isaiah passage differently; the reading links here are for study, not a substitute for a church's lectionary. ¹³

Byzantine rite: Galatians 4:4-7 and Matthew 2:1-12 at the liturgy of the feast, with Matthew 1:18-25 at the vigil and the prophecies of Micah 5 and Isaiah 7 at vespers ². The Christian reading of Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2 as prophecies of this birth is Matthew's own (Matthew 1:22-23, 2:5-6); Jewish readers read the same verses in their own context, as discussed below.

In brief Roman lectionary. Night: Isaiah 9:1-6; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14. Day: Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18.

Jewish readers and Christmas

Hanukkah and Christmas have different histories and religious meanings. Their proximity on the calendar has also shaped the experiences of Jewish families living in Christian-majority societies ^9,10.

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. In some settings, especially in North America, the surrounding Christmas season has influenced its public celebration and gift-giving customs. These cultural connections do not make it a Jewish version of Christmas ⁹.

Matthew interprets Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2 in relation to Jesus' birth. Jewish interpretation considers these passages within the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, without accepting Matthew's identification of Jesus as their fulfillment.

There is hard history in the season, and a Jewish source records it: for centuries the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe feared Christmas-time, and wary of being attacked in the street they stayed home from the study house and played cards or chess with their families ¹⁰. In America, the same source says, 25 December has become for Jews a time to consider one's relationship to the wider society, and Jewish families answer the December question in every way from keeping clear of the season to sharing a neighbour's table ¹⁰.

Christmas is 25 December, or 7 January in churches that keep the Julian calendar, or 6 January in the Armenian Church.

The principal dates discussed here are 25 December, 7 January and 6 January. Churches that celebrate Julian-calendar 25 December currently do so on Gregorian 7 January. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the Nativity and Theophany together on 6 January; in Jerusalem, its use of the Julian calendar places that celebration on Gregorian 19 January ^1,5. Other Eastern church calendars have their own rules, so a local church calendar is the best guide to a particular service.

Advent begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, so its start moves between 27 November and 3 December; the twelve days run from Christmas to Epiphany on 6 January; and the Orthodox Nativity Fast begins on 15 November. The Presentation follows forty days after Christmas on 2 February.