December 25 · Catholic · traditional calendar

Christmas 2026: why December 25? Is Christmas pagan, and why some churches keep January 7

Christmas falls on Friday, December 25, 2026. The Bible gives no date for Jesus' birth, and December 25 is first recorded in a Roman almanac of 354. Why that date, was it borrowed from pagans, and why do some churches keep January 7?

Era: Gospel event

The short answer

Nobody knows the day Jesus was born. The Gospels give no date, and around the year 200 Clement of Alexandria listed several birthdays that Christians in Egypt had proposed, none of them December 25. The first certain record of Christians keeping December 25 is a Roman almanac made in 354, and the same book is also the first to give a pagan "birthday of the Unconquered" on that day. Historians offer two explanations: the church chose the date to answer a winter festival of the sun, or Christians reached it by calculation, counting nine months on from March 25, the day some early writers gave for Christ's death and believed was also the day of his conception. Neither can be proved. Churches that keep Christmas on January 7 are not keeping a different feast: they keep December 25 on the older Julian calendar, which now runs 13 days behind the civil calendar. In 2026 Christmas falls on Friday, December 25; the old-calendar Christmas falls on Thursday, January 7, 2027. In our take, near the end of this page, we argue that Christmas is not pagan, and that the popular story says more than the evidence does.

What Luke 2 says, and what it does not

Luke opens with a decree from Caesar Augustus for a census, the first "while Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2:2, Berean Standard Bible). Joseph goes up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the city of David, with Mary, who is expecting a child. There Mary "gave birth to her firstborn, a Son. She wrapped Him in swaddling cloths and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (2:7, BSB). Shepherds are keeping watch over their flocks by night when an angel tells them, "Today in the city of David a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord!" (2:11, BSB). A multitude of angels praises God, the shepherds hurry to Bethlehem and find the child in the manger, and Mary treasures up all these things in her heart (2:13–19). Matthew adds the visit of the Magi, which the Epiphany page covers. What Scripture does not say matters just as much here. No Gospel gives a day, a month or a year. Luke ties the birth to a reign and a census, not to a calendar date. The shepherds in the fields by night (2:8) are often used to argue that Jesus could not have been born in winter, but Luke names no season, and the verse cannot fix a month either way. Luke 1:26 and 1:36 date the angel's visit to Mary to the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, which gives the order of events, not a date. No passage commands Christians to keep the day of Christ's birth, and none forbids it: Paul writes that "One person regards a certain day above the others, while someone else considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind" (Romans 14:5, BSB). One verse often quoted against Christmas trees, Jeremiah 10:3–4, describes a tree cut from the forest and adorned with silver and gold; the next verse makes clear that the prophet means carved idols that "cannot speak" (10:5, BSB), written some six centuries before Christ.

The oldest evidence: a Roman almanac of 354

The key document is an illustrated book made in Rome in 354 for a wealthy Christian named Valentinus, written out by the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus, and often called the Chronograph or Calendar of 354. It holds two entries for December 25. In its civil calendar the day reads N·INVICTI·CM·XXX: the birthday (natalis) of the Unconquered, with thirty chariot races ordered. In its list of the burial days of the martyrs of Rome, the first entry, under the eighth day before the Kalends of January, reads "natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae", Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia says that list may go back to 336. Before that, there is no certain evidence for December 25. A line in the commentary on Daniel by Hippolytus of Rome (early third century) gives the date, but the same Encyclopedia judged it a later insertion. In the East the older date was January 6. Gregory of Nazianzus brought the December feast to Constantinople in 379 or 380, and John Chrysostom, preaching at Antioch in about 386, urged his hearers to keep the December feast, which, the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia says, part of the community had kept for some years. The Armenian Apostolic Church never took up December 25 and still keeps the birth of Christ on January 6.

Explanation one: a festival of the sun

The first explanation, which historians call the history-of-religions theory, was set out by the German scholar Hermann Usener in 1889. It runs like this. The Emperor Aurelian made the cult of the sun god Sol a state cult in 274. Romans kept the Saturnalia, a festival of gifts and feasting, from December 17, and it came to last several days in late December. Christians already called Christ "the sun of righteousness" from Malachi 4:2 (BSB). So, the theory says, the church set the birth of Christ on the sun's birthday to draw people away from it. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia itself thought the solar feast had "a strong claim" to explain the date. The evidence is thinner than the popular version suggests. The sun's birthday on December 25 is first attested in the same 354 book that first records Christmas; no earlier source puts a festival of Sol on that day. The same calendar marks games of the sun (ludi Solis) on October 19–22, and the scholar of Roman religion Steven Hijmans, as summarised by Roger Pearse, identifies those, not December 25, with the games Aurelian founded. Hijmans argued that there is no evidence of a solar festival on December 25 before the mid-fourth century, and suggested the December entry may even be a later addition to the calendar; he stops short of claiming that Christmas came first. The Saturnalia ended before December 25, and even the 1908 Encyclopedia said the origin of Christmas should not be sought there.

Explanation two: counting from the cross

The second explanation, the calculation theory, starts from the date of the crucifixion. Around 200 Tertullian of Carthage dated the passion to "the eighth day before the calends of April", that is, March 25 (An Answer to the Jews, chapter 8). Some early Christians believed that Christ was conceived on the same day of the year on which he died. An anonymous fourth-century North African treatise, On Solstices and Equinoxes, links his conception and death to March 25 and his birth to the winter solstice. Augustine, writing On the Trinity between about 399 and 419, says Christ "is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered", and was born, "according to tradition, upon December the 25th" (book 4, chapter 5). Count nine months from March 25 and you reach December 25. In the East, some reckoned the crucifixion by April 6, and nine months later is January 6, the older Eastern date. The French historian Louis Duchesne proposed this theory in the early twentieth century and the American liturgist Thomas Talley developed it; the Anglican scholar Andrew McGowan set it out for general readers in Bible Review in 2002. It has its weaknesses too. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia called a March 25 death date historically impossible and found no fourth-century feast of the conception on that day, and Tertullian himself gives no day for the birth. In 2012 the historian C. P. E. Nothaft wrote in Church History that recent work had challenged both theories and called for a more nuanced account, one that keeps a place for contact between religions while taking early Christian date-reckoning seriously. McGowan's own conclusion is that "We cannot be entirely sure."

Why some churches keep January 7

The Julian calendar, introduced under Julius Caesar, assumed a year of 365.25 days, about eleven minutes too long. Pope Gregory XIII corrected it with the bull Inter gravissimas of February 24, 1582: Thursday, October 4, 1582 was followed by Friday, October 15. Britain and its colonies changed only in 1752, when September 2 was followed by September 14. The gap between the two calendars is now 13 days, so December 25 on the Julian calendar falls on January 7 on the civil calendar. That holds until 2100; the Julian Christmas of 2100 will fall on January 8, 2101. The Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Macedonian Orthodox churches, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the monasteries of Mount Athos still use the Julian calendar for fixed feasts. In January 2026 the Speaker of Serbia's National Assembly greeted believers celebrating Christmas "according to the Julian calendar" on January 7, and Euronews reported that on the old-calendar Christmas of 2024 Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem led the midnight service at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Other Orthodox churches, among them the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and the Orthodox Church in America, use the Revised Julian calendar approved in 1923 and keep Christmas on December 25, while nearly all Orthodox still date Easter by the Julian calendar. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine moved to December 25 from September 1, 2023, and Ukraine moved its state Christmas holiday by a law signed on July 28, 2023; the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church keeps January 7. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt also keeps Christmas on January 7, with its Christmas Mass on January 6, the eve. The Armenian Church keeps the Nativity and the baptism of Christ together on January 6, and the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which follows the Julian calendar, on January 18–19. The difference is a calendar, not a doctrine: every one of these churches celebrates the same birth.

When Christians banned Christmas

The most famous attacks on Christmas came from Christians. The Westminster Assembly's Directory for the Public Worship of God (1645) said: "Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued." On June 8, 1647 the English Parliament passed An Ordinance for Abolishing of Festivals, ordering that "the said Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide" be "no longer observed as Festivals or Holy-dayes"; in their place scholars, apprentices and servants were to have recreation "on every second Tuesday in the moneth". Christmas 1647 fell on a Saturday, churches were not to hold services, and shops were to open. Many resisted; the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia records that at Canterbury blood was shed. The historian Rachel Foxley notes that Christmas stayed banned through the 1650s; the restrictions lasted until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In New England the General Court of Massachusetts Bay passed a law on May 11, 1659 fining anyone found "observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way" five shillings for each offence. It was repealed in 1681 under pressure from the government in London. The objection in these texts is that the feasts had no warrant in Scripture and were kept in a "superstitious" way, as Foxley puts it, together with the drinking and disorder of the season; none of them rests its case on December 25 being a pagan date.

What different Christians think, and why

Catholic: Christmas is one of the great feasts. Canon 1246 of the Code of Canon Law names the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ among the holy days of obligation, and the Catechism (525–526) reads the poverty of the stable and the shepherds as the first witnesses to the mystery of God made man. In 2026 December 25 is a Friday and the obligation applies. Eastern Orthodox: the Nativity is one of the great feasts of the year, kept on December 25 or January 7 depending on the calendar each church follows. Oriental Orthodox: the Coptic Church keeps January 7; the Armenian Church keeps January 6. Anglican: in the Church of England's Common Worship calendar Christmas Day is the first of the Principal Feasts. Most Protestant churches also celebrate Christmas on December 25. Reformed (strict Westminster tradition): some Presbyterian churches still keep no Christmas services. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland teaches that the date of Christ's birth is unknown and "It is wrong, therefore, to invent a date", that the origins of Christmas lie in the pagan observance of the winter solstice, and that the first day of the week is the day God has appointed to be kept holy. Most American Presbyterians once took the same line, but the practice changed: the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly still denied any scriptural warrant for Christmas in 1899, 1903, 1913 and 1916, and officially sanctioned its religious observance in 1950. Jehovah's Witnesses, who describe themselves as Christians, do not celebrate Christmas: they say Jesus' birth date is not recorded in the Bible and that the holiday is rooted in pagan customs, while respecting each person's right to decide.

Our take: Christmas is not pagan

This is our own view, not a ruling for any church, and some readers will disagree with it. The claim that "Christmas is pagan" is repeated every December as though it were settled, and it is not. The sun's birthday on December 25 has no earlier witness than the Christian feast: both first appear in the same book of 354. The Christian reasoning that leads to December 25, by contrast, starts with Tertullian's March 25 around 200 and is spelled out by Augustine, and it runs through the cross, not the sun. We think the calculation theory is the stronger explanation, though we do not claim it is proved. And even if fourth-century Christians did choose the date with one eye on a solar festival, an answer is not a borrowing. What the church put on that day was Luke 2 and "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us" (John 1:14, BSB), not Sol. So we disagree with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland and with Jehovah's Witnesses on this point, while respecting their reasons: the history does not show that Christmas was a pagan feast renamed, and Jeremiah 10 is about idols, not trees. Two honest admissions belong next to that. No one should say Jesus was born on December 25: Scripture does not say so, and the date was chosen, not recorded. And the Puritans had a real point that no verse commands the feast; Romans 14:5 leaves Christians free to keep the day or not. But a Christian who keeps December 25, or January 7, is not honouring the sun. They are doing what the shepherds did, going to see the thing that has happened.

Over to you

When someone tells you Christmas is pagan, what do you answer: the date, the history, or what your church actually does on the day? Share this page with the friend who asked, and if you want to keep the feast going for twelve days, the 12 Days of Christmas readings, linked below, begin on December 26.

Sources and references

Comments

No comments yet. Start the conversation; comments are public and checked for spam. How comments are handled