Why was the “only true god” born on a Pagan date—25 December?

There is no reason to suppose that Jesus the Nazarene was born on Christmas Day. The birth date of Jesus is unknown. Both the year and the day of his birth are unknown. Neither the New Testament  nor later tradition provide reliable evidence. The Christian world had no chronology. There is no clue in the gospels as to the date when Jesus was born, except Luke’s reference to shepherds watching their flocks by night, if that can be considered as evidence. Certainly, if shepherds were out at night watching their flocks, it could not have been in mid-winter that the birth took place. Winter is the rainy season, and even in Palestine flocks are folded at that time of the year, and not roaming about in the rain and sleet accompanied by cold and damp shepherds.

Mary forgot the date of a uniquely wonderful day or forgot to mention it. Admittedly, poor and illiterate parents in undeveloped societies do not remember the dates when their children were born and often do not even remember the year—simple people are not ruled by clocks and calendars as we are. But, if, as Acts claims, Mary, Jesus’s mother, lived with the disciples after the crucifixion, she never told them when her son was born, and this is surprising even for a poor person considering the interest shown by kings, shepherds and angels at the time.

Indeed, the traditional Christmas story stands in curious isolation from the rest of the New Testament. Neither Jesus himself, when grown up, nor his earliest followers claimed authority on the grounds of a special form of birth. The apostle Paul, in his extensive writings, discusses in detail the nature of Jesus without once mentioning a miraculous birth. It was only on later generations that the story of a miraculous baby adored in a stable by shepherds and kings began to make an impact. To this day it inspires art, poetry and a salutary humility in the lives of many, but Mary could have experienced none of it because the gospels indicate that she had no recollection of it.

Nor had the first Christians ever heard of it. Early Christians found themselves having to tell the world of the most tremendous birth there ever was on this planet not knowing when it happened. Christian scholars of the first two centuries even differed over the year Jesus was born, some believing that he was born fully twenty years before the currently accepted date. Centuries after the event, the year of Christ’s birth was determined but was determined wrongly. Nobody now holds that Jesus was born in the year 1 AD. Our calendar, which computes years supposedly from the birth of Jesus, was drawn up by a miscalculating monk in Italy in the sixth century. The miscalculation is obvious in that, on the basis of the New Testament story, Jesus must have been born by 4 BC, the year when Herod died.

Considering that an omnipotent God descended from heaven and performed astounding miracles to prove that people could now be saved in everlasting life, it seems odd that no one noted the year of his birth, even though many beings from shepherds to angels knew about it. The Holy Ghost was being his usual incompetent self. This should be sufficient to banish all faith in Christianity.

No event of Christian history was marked by justifiable dates for nearly four hundred years. For these first three or four hundred years, various Churches celebrated the birthday of Jesus on different dates. The day chosen as the birthday of Christ was the day which best fitted the doctrines of that Church, not the day upon which Jesus had actually been born. No one knew what day that was, but nobody cared. What was important was to select an auspicious and a suitable date. The eastern Churches kept it on 6 January, now the Epiphany. The Basilidians celebrated Christ’s birthday on the 24 or 25 April. Other Christian sects celebrated it, so Clement of Alexandria informs us, on the 25 May.

Perhaps they believed that Jesus’s birth date was irrelevant—only his divine life was relevant and that began at his baptism. Sadly, they did not know the date of the baptism either and arbitrarily chose 6 January. Why? Because that date had long been associated with people bathing in blessed water. Followers of the god Osiris, the deity of the Nile, had held a festival, the “Festival of the Immersion”, on the river on 6 January from time immemorial. Christian Copts celebrate it still. The Hierophant poured holy water into the river and blessed it, then people bathed in it. The Greeks identified Dionysos with Osiris and so on 6 January the sacred waters were blessed in both the religions of Osiris and Dionysos! Epiphany is a continuation of these Pagan rites.

The Egyptian Gnostics known as Basilidians, seeing the immersion ceremonies as a symbol of the baptism of Jesus, celebrated it on 6 January and gradually Christians elsewhere adopted this date as the anniversary of the Jesus’s baptism. By 386 AD the two great Christian festivals were Easter, the festival of the crucifixion, and Epiphany when rivers and springs were blessed and water was drawn and saved for baptisms throughout the year. Aristides Rhetor in about 160 AD tells us that water drawn from the Nile at the “Festival of the Immersion” is at its purest. Stored in wine jars, he says, it improves with time just like wine. And so does the myth! Two centuries later Epiphanius writes that the stored water actually changes into wine! In Dionysos worship, water turns to wine on 6 January. The miracle at Cana when Jesus turned water into wine is celebrated in the Christian calendar on 6 January!

Today the Epiphany celebration is most closely associated with the visit of the Magi at Jesus’s birth and has been since the fourth century AD. Magi were Persian priests so it seems likely that the legend was introduced from Mithras worship, originally a Persian religion. The Epiphany of Mithras was observed by shepherds who brought gifts, as in the Luke version of Jesus’s birth. Rather than merely equalling a rival, the editor who inserted the birth narrative into Matthew took a more positive tack. He aimed to show the superiority of Christianity over the other eastern religions—the divine baby Jesus is superior to the divine Mithras whose priests bring gifts to the new god. So the three Zadokites who officiated at Jesus’s rebirth were adapted into Magi from Persia appearing at his actual birth to prove that even the priests of Mithras worshipped the Christian God.

Cassian at about the beginning of the fifth century says the Egyptian provinces regarded Epiphany as being the birth date of Jesus. This was because Jesus was thought to be exactly 30 years old on his baptism. Note also that the Persian law-giver Zoroaster was exactly thirty when the spirit of god descended on him, and the Egyptian Pharaohs held a celebration calledSed exactly 30 years after the day they had been chosen by their father as his successor, their spiritual birthday. As many Churches commemorated the birth and the baptism of Christ on the same day, the festivals will have originated before any birth story was known, when the gospels began, like Mark, with the baptism of Jesus. On the day that Jesus was baptized, Christ was born.