First Followers

THE FIRST CHRISTMAS: It was later than you think!

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Historians and theologians have for many years sought to link the birth of Jesus Christ with December 25. Yet all their efforts to find support in ancient records have failed to provide genuine evidence. The internal evidence from the Gospel accounts indicates a timing of the fall or autumn of the year.  So scholars have probed the literature written by the church fathers to try and establish the birth date of Jesus and when it was first associated with December 25. All efforts to date to find evidence linking the actual birth to that date have failed to provide conclusive evidence, acceptable to all.

Of recent date, a classical scholar, who is the Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Toronto, has made an observation that transforms the understanding of the relationship of December 25 to Jesus Christ.

Timothy Barnes has studied the Patristic period, from the 2^nd through 5^th centuries, specializing in one individual in particular, Constantine the Great. He is considered a foremost authority on the individual and his accomplishments.

Barnes has noted that December 25 first appears as a Christian event in Rome linked to the events of 312, the year that Constantine fought his battle at Milvian Bridge and conquered the city and thus becoming supreme Emperor.

In his latest book, Constantine, Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire, published in 2011, Barnes writes: “in the winter of 3122/313 Constantine began to grant fiscal privileges to Christian clergy and to raise the status of the Christian church within Roman society” (Barnes 2011, 84).  Barnes also noted that he remained in Rome until January 6, 313, what is traditionally known as Epiphany day. By the end of his reign, Roman Christians were dating the nativity of Christ to December 25. So Christmas began in Rome with a newly ‘converted’ Roman emperor. Barnes questions whether it is “rash to suggest that it was Constantine who introduced this synchronism in 312, thereby in some way equating the traditional pagan god with his new Christian God” (Barnes 85).

It remained over half a century more before December 25, as the date of the birth of Jesus, was introduced by John Chrysostom, into Antioch in the eastern part of the Empire. John Chrysostom's misunderstanding of Scripture is a story for another day.

PETER NATHAN