It was while I was in third grade, I think, that I first heard the idea that Jesus Christ wasn’t born in December. The reasoning was that, in December, the shepherds wouldn’t have been in the fields with the sheep. Besides, the tribes in Europe all had festivals that fell at the end of the year, and the early missionaries tied a celebration of the birth of Jesus to those festivals to make Christianity more appealing to them. I never gave it much thought: after all – December, September, or April – the important thing was that He was born.
A couple of years ago, though, I got to thinking about the early Church and those early missionaries, and realized that the idea of their adapting the tribal festivals did them a great disservice. At that time, the Christians were still being persecuted, they were still convinced of the truth of their faith, and were not so spiritually pusillanimous to compromise with the pagans. The early Church must have had some good reason for giving a December date to the birth of Jesus.
It turns out, the answer comes from the Gospel of Luke. Let’s look at the chronology of events in the first two chapters.
In Chapter 1, Zacharias (the soon-to-be father of John the Baptist) is taking his turn to work at the Temple. He is selected to enter the Temple and burn incense, while the congregation prays outside. The fact that he is entering alone (v. 21), while the congregation prays outside (v. 10), has led some commentators to believe that he must have been entering the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement (see the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, verse 17 in particular). The Day of Atonement takes place around the end of September or beginning of October. In 2003, for instance, it was October 6, with Rosh Hashanah (the New Year) coming about a week before (September 27).
While Zacharias is there, an angel appears and tells him that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son. After a little unpleasantness, he goes home, and before long, Elizabeth is pregnant. Judging from the story of the birth of Samuel (1 Samuel 1:19-20) and of Isaac (Genesis 18:14), when an angel states one will have a child, he means now. So John the Baptist would have been conceived about the end of September/beginning of October.
The narrative then turns to Mary. In the sixth month, an angel tells her that she will bear a son, and that her cousin Elizabeth is six months pregnant. If the months are counted from Rosh Hashanah, and if Zacharias received his annunciation on the Day of Atonement, this Annunciation would have taken place about March. She goes to visit Elizabeth, who recognizes that Mary is carrying Jesus*. Human reproduction being what it is, nine months later, she would have given birth. Nine months from March is December.
Now, this isn’t to say that Jesus wasn’t born in September or April, and I don’t know why the shepherds might have been in the fields in cold weather, either. (Well, yes I do know: if the town is full of tax collectors, and if flocks are considered as wealth, it would make sense for people to hide their assets out of town. But be that as it may.) But we can see that, when the early Church set Jesus’s birth at the end of December, it wouldn’t have been as a concession to the pagans they were trying to reach, but because they had reason to believe it was true. Happily, it appears to be much easier to put a date on the Resurrection.
(*Incidentally, this part of the story (Luke 1:39-44), also makes a pretty good argument for when life begins. It says Mary left "with haste" to see Elizabeth, and when she arrived, Elizabeth exclaims that blessed is the fruit of her womb. Mary couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks pregnant, yet the fetus is recognized as being Elizabeth’s "Lord".)
