Was Jesus Actually Born on December 25th?

Why do we celebrate Christmas on the winter solstice? Did the Catholic Church originally choose December 25th just because it was an existing pagan holiday to a Roman solar god? We’re going to find out all of this and more as we travel back in time over 4,000 years, looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient Roman artifacts. We’ll even dive into the writings of the early Church fathers and Catholic bishops to discover what they have to say on the topic. We’re going to get to the bottom of this, my friends. Let’s put December 25th on trial and find out what the enemy is really trying to hide.

Introduction

Hi, I’m Jim Staley with Passion For Truth Ministries. In this video, we’re going to discover the answer to why we celebrate the birthday of Christ on December 25th. Did the Roman Church choose it simply because it was an existing pagan holiday to a sun god, and they wanted to keep Christians from worshipping the sun? Or is there more to the story? We’ll answer these questions and many more in this video.

But right off the bat, I want to say that if you consider yourself an academic, you may not agree with every piece of evidence presented in this trial. You don’t have to. We all have our own biases, and even scholars disagree on the most obvious and clear evidence. Everyone has a bias. At the end of the day, our own court system pronounces guilt when the evidence is just beyond a reasonable doubt, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

After all, how much poison needs to be in a glass of water for the whole glass to be polluted? Not much at all. Right now, you’re probably asking yourself, “Who cares when Jesus was born? What does it matter if the Catholic Church chose December 25th to be the date of His birth, or any other date for that matter?” Well, if it was all about us, it wouldn’t matter. But the reality is, it’s not about us—it’s about Him. We’re worshipping Him, and according to Deuteronomy, chapter 12, He already told us that we’re not allowed to take traditions or days from how the pagans worshipped their gods, look into them, then creatively borrow and Christianize them, throw a little holy water on them, and offer them up to the one true God. We’re not allowed to do that. We’re supposed to worship Him in spirit and truth, the way He commanded. We’re not allowed to add or take away from that.

So, if December 25th was the birthday of pagan sun gods, and the Roman Church chose to change the birthday of Christ to that day, that would be like me trying to change the birthday of my wife to the birthday of one of my old girlfriends. Imagine if a husband came up to his wife and said, “Honey, I don’t want to celebrate your birthday on July 24th anymore. It’s just too difficult for me to remember. My old girlfriend had a birthday on October 31st, which happens to be a really popular holiday. It’ll be much easier for me to remember if we move your birthday to that day.” How well do you think that would go over? I don’t think you’d be married very long for sure. If our own wives would be offended at the thought of moving their birthday to one of their archrivals, how much more would the God of the universe, who says He is a very jealous God, be offended?

This topic is incredibly important. If it’s possible for the unsaved to unknowingly offend God, then it’s possible for us, as believers, to offend Him as well without realizing it. Because mixing the profane with the holy is a big deal to Him, we need to make sure that we’re not just blindly following a Catholic holiday schedule when it comes to something as holy as the birth of the Messiah. I believe God wants a bride without spot or wrinkle. The days of the religious spirit of worshipping God however we want, making everything about us and our feelings, are over. God is pervading the nations right now and preparing His bride for His return.

After all, right now, virtually all Christians are following a religious calendar created by the early Roman Church, which does not contain a single holiday from God’s calendar. Could the body of Christ be missing out on blessings and suffering from a lack of power because it has chosen to worship God through manmade holidays and traditions rather than the holy days created by God? If you believe you’re a Christian who wants to worship God in spirit and truth, we need to examine everything we believe in and find out where it comes from—is it the truth?

So, we’re going to look into this topic today. We’re going to put December 25th on trial, put the Catholic Church on trial, and find out where this came from and how it affects us today. At the end of this video, I’ll reveal exactly what the enemy is trying to hide and how he used the Roman Church to cover up what God has truly set aside for you. Stick with me as we find out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Pontius Maximus Quote

Let’s begin by uncovering ancient documents and archaeology, zooming in on some of those ancient quotes, and finding out if the evidence leads us to a definitive conclusion. We’ll start with an ancient manuscript discovered in 1918, containing 38 sermons that most scholars attribute to John Chrysostom, who lived in the 4th century. Among these sermons is a homily attributed to an obscure author named Pontius Maximus. The oldest manuscript we have of these sermons is from the 9th century, meaning the author was either a contemporary of Chrysostom in the 4th century or a Christian author sometime after John but before the 9th century.

In this homily, the author details how December 25th was considered by the ancients to be the birthday of the Roman sun god. He also explains how the early Church attempted to appropriate this day and Christianize it. He says, “They also call it…”—‘they’ being the pagans—“the birthday of the Invictus, which means unconquered. But who is Invictus if not our Lord, who suffered death and then conquered it? Or when they call it the birthday of the sun? Well, Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, as the Prophet Malachi spoke of.” This ancient quote indicates that the pagans, possibly as early as the 4th century, called the winter solstice the birthday of the sun god. This is strong evidence that December 25th was not only the named birthdate of Christ but also coincidentally the birthday of Roman sun gods.

St. Augustine Quote

Furthermore, this quote is corroborated by St. Augustine of Hippo, considered one of the most influential Christian writers in history after the Apostle Paul. He tells us in a Christmas sermon given in the late 300s or early 400s that December 25th was still being celebrated by pagans as a holy day to their sun god. He said, “So, my brethren, let us hold this day as sacred, not as unbelievers do because of the material sun, but because of Him who made the sun. Though He is over that sun, even in the flesh, the sun which people worship instead of God because in their mental blindness, they cannot see the true Sun of Justice.”

According to Augustine, December 25th was not just the day the Church celebrated Christ’s birth, but the day the pagans worshipped their sun gods and the physical sun. As you’ll see later, this was not just a Roman practice—the winter solstice was celebrated as the birthday of nearly every sun god around the globe, across centuries and continents.

Winter Solstice Worship Worldwide

Before we go further, it’s important to understand why the winter solstice was so important to ancient cultures. Nearly all sun god worship revolved around it. Why? Because the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, when the sun appears to stop and then begins to turn back, making the days longer. The ancients called it the day when the sun was reborn. This is why the birthdays of sun gods were celebrated on this day—it symbolized the sun’s rebirth as it began to overpower the night.

We see the winter solstice being used to worship sun gods throughout time and across nearly every continent. Take the Newgrange tomb in Ireland, where a small window aligns with the winter solstice for just 17 minutes each year. This tomb, created over 5,000 years ago, was designed to harness the sun for that brief moment, shining light directly onto the tomb of ancient chieftains.

Now let’s move to Stonehenge, one of the most famous structures in the world. This 4,500-year-old pagan structure was built with the winter solstice in mind, designed specifically around sun god worship on that day.

But that’s not the only structure. Take a look at Goseck Circle in Germany. It’s almost 5,000 years old and is totally created around the winter solstice. Two of the three entrances operate only under the sun of the winter solstice, one at sunrise and the other at sunset. But probably the most famous structure in world history that deals with the winter solstice, and that is completely connected to a sun god, is the Egyptian sun god, Amen Ra.

This almost 4,000-year-old temple in Egypt was built in such a way that only on one single day a year, the winter solstice, the light comes through a single window and shines in the Holy of Holies onto his face. The fact that the ancient Egyptians built their sun god’s temple to harness the sun of the winter solstice, because they believed this was the day their sun god was reborn, connects the winter solstice as an existing day of worship to a solar deity.

The reason why this is so important is because it establishes that sun god worship is connected to the winter solstice for thousands of years before Rome was ever built. Long before the birthday of Christ was ever chosen by the Roman church, this day had already been set apart and celebrated by all the ancient cultures before it. And this pattern doesn’t just exist before Christ, but long after as well. Even in the Americas, we see Mayan and Aztec temples, all oriented towards the winter solstice.

So, to ensure everyone is on the same page in understanding the significance of why I’m going through these temples and the winter solstice, which are found in every culture: Why did Satan choose to connect physical temples to sun god worship? We need to back up and find out why the enemy is influencing these cultures to do this. We know that God is not involved in this deity or sun god worship, but why, out of everything Satan could have chosen, did he influence these cultures to create physical temples in such a way to have the sun, the created object in the sky, shine through them and then create a deity around that sun? Why did he do it?

I’m going to suggest to you it’s because he only knows how to twist what God has already established. He only knows how to fake things, to imitate and mock the Most High God. The Bible says that those who follow God, who believe in Yeshua, Jesus, are the temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple was never supposed to be a physical structure. It was supposed to be the creator of the universe, the Son of the living God, shining through us. Revelation chapter 21, verse 23, says that when the New Jerusalem comes down, it won’t even need any light. There’s not going to be any need for the sun or the moon, because the glory of God will be its light; the lamb will be its lamp.

In other words, the Son of the living God will be the only light that shines in the New Jerusalem. We are the predecessor to that light, and that’s what Satan is trying to hide. He wanted the ancient people of the earth to be distracted from the one true God by worshipping the creation. And today, his agenda is to get God’s people to worship him through man-made holidays, instead of God-ordained holy days. Satan chose this day, the winter solstice, to be the rebirth of the sun, added a solar deity to it, and threaded it throughout all of time. Eventually, his plan was to get it into the church. If he could get it into the church, then the people of God would move away from the true calendar of God and be paralyzed from receiving the full power and authority in the earth that He desires for His people to have. He would trick us into not doing Bible things in Bible ways, but literally mocking God through a date chosen by Satan to worship him, and all the while, we wouldn’t even have a clue that we’re offending the one true God the entire time.

My friends, this date is critical. It’s important that we understand where it comes from because in the evidence that we’ll be showing throughout this video to answer the question of “December 25th On Trial: Why Did They Choose It?” this winter solstice and the temples are a foundational part of that evidence. If it can be established that the pagans were worshipping solar deities on the winter solstice before the Roman church chose the date for the birthday of Christ, then it’s all too possible that the church chose that date because it was a pagan celebration. In their effort to displace it, an act that we will see later is biblically illegal.

But before we make any conclusions just yet, let’s get back to our trial. Earlier, we showed how the Egyptian temple of Amun Ra was connected to the winter solstice, and how they believed that the rays of the sun on that day caused the sun to be reborn. Now, let’s go over to a Greek philosopher, Plutarch, who lived in the first century, and let him tell us why they built his temple around the winter solstice. He says, and I quote, “For this reason it is said that the goddess Isis, when she was aware of her being pregnant, put on a protective amulet on the sixth day of Phaophi, and on the winter solstice, she gave birth to Harpocrates.”

Now, Harpocrates was the sun god Horus as a child; it literally means ‘the Child Horus.’ Horus was the sun god of Egypt, and Plutarch is reporting that he was born on a winter solstice. So, not only does Plutarch tell us that the sun god of Egypt was born on the winter solstice, but he does so long before a single Catholic writer ever decided to figure out what the birthday of Christ was. This piece of evidence is critical because it proves that both Rome and Egypt had sun gods that they believed were born on the winter solstice. In the first century, it was December 25th. And in the case of Rome, there is evidence that they actually worshipped the sun god on December 25th, which, of course, was the winter solstice in that time period.

But Egypt and Rome are not the only cultures that bring us a sun god who was said to be born on the winter solstice. Bishop Epiphanius of Solomon, who lived in the fourth century, details for us that the Greeks also had a celestial god born on this very same day. He describes what happens on December 25th in his time, when he says the following: “First, at Alexandria, in the Coreum, as they call it (a very large temple, the shrine of Core), they stay up all night singing hymns to the idol with flute accompaniment. When you ask them what this mystery means, they reply that ‘today is the hour of Core, that is, the Virgin, when she gives birth to Aeon.’”

Aeon is the chief cosmic god of the Greeks, and he’s depicted as being in charge of the entire year and the zodiac. Epiphanius tells us that this false god was also born on December 25th. And although the Roman church today has done a great job of convincing a lot of people that December 25th was never a pagan holiday, much less the birthday of a pagan sun god, history and their own bishops tell a completely different story. Epiphanius not only tells us that the Greeks celebrated the birth of a god on December 25th, but within a few lines of that quote, he goes on to say that virtually every other pagan culture of his time period had a celebration on December 25th.

He says this, and I quote, “Greeks, I mean, the idolaters, celebrate this day, the winter solstice on the eighth before the kalends of January…”, which is another way of saying eight days before the first of January, or December 25th, “…the Romans call it ‘Saturnalia,’ the Egyptians ‘Cronia,’ the Alexandrians ‘Cicellia.’” The winter solstice was not only the birthday of the Egyptian and Greek gods, but Epiphanius says it was celebrated by the largest cultures of his time, and he lived in the 300s.

Speaking of the 300s, let’s take a look at the next exhibit, which is none other than a Roman calendar from 354 A.D. that literally states December 25th was the birthday of the Roman sun god. This calendar was created by a calligrapher named Philocalus for a wealthy Christian named Valentinas. In part six of this calendar, it actually lists December 25th as a pagan Roman holiday. Here’s the exact entry: it says, quote, “‘Birthday of The Unconquered,’ games ordered, 30 races.” Now, this is the oldest literary reference to a pagan feast of Sol Invictus, the sun god of Rome, that we have. Did you hear what it said? December 25th is marked on the only surviving Roman calendar that we have from that time period, and it says it’s the birthday of a Roman sun god.

We know that Roman Christians were celebrating December 25th as the birthday of Christ at this time because, ironically, on this very same calendar from 354 A.D., December 25th is also mentioned as the birthday of Christ. We know that they didn’t celebrate it in the third century on December 25th, because Dr. Steven Heijmans tells us that in The De Pascha Computus, written in 243 A.D. to determine the date of Easter, they argued that Christ, the new Sun of Righteousness, must have been born on March 28th. This tells us that in the mid-third century, the date of Christmas was not yet known and it’s date would be chosen sometime after this, and before the 354AD calendar, most likely during the reign of Emperor Constantine of the 330s. But do we have any more evidence of sun worship in Rome before 354 A.D.? We most certainly do. Not only do we have Emperor Aurelian dedicating a temple to Sol Invictus minted on Roman coins the sun god Sol Invictus in 274 A.D., archaeology has uncovered the sun gods Sol Invictus minted on Roman coins in the fourth century, third century, second century, first century and even as far back as the first century B.C.

Out of every god available in the Pantheon, in every century that Rome existed, the Emperor chose to have Sol Invictus as the head of every Roman coin. It is also a well-documented fact that Emperor Constantine, before his alleged conversion to Christianity, was a dedicated sun god worshiper, proving that sun worship was alive and well in Rome.

And what day do you think they celebrated the birthday of the sun and all of the sun gods? The only day of the year they believed the sun was reborn—the winter solstice, December 25th. Emperor Julian confirms when the Romans worshiped their sun god. He says this in 361 A.D., quote: “Before the beginning of the year, at the end of the month, which we called after Kronos…” (our December), “…we celebrate in honor of Helios, the Greek sun god, the most splendid games, and we dedicate the festival to the Invincible Sun.”

My friends, it cannot get any clearer than this. Even the Roman Emperor states that at the end of December, they had a major celebration for the sun god. We know the day in question was December 25th because the calendar in 354 A.D. tells us this—we’ve already displayed that. The Catholic Encyclopedia says this about Helios: “Helios Mithras is one God and Sunday was kept holy in honor of Mithra. The 25th of December was observed as his birthday, the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter sun, unconquered by the rigors of the season.”

You can see that even Catholic scholars admit that the Greek sun god Helios and the Roman sun god Mithras became one god, and His birthday was December 25th. Sunday was His day, which, by the way, is exactly why today most of Christianity celebrates the Sabbath on Sunday. It’s not because Jesus rose from the dead on Sunday, but because the Romans chose to change it in 321 A.D., under Emperor Constantine. That was the day the pagans had their Sabbath, and it was easier to get pagans to convert to Christianity if they were allowed to keep their traditions. The Church’s position was to let the people still celebrate it, but now “we’re going to do it for Jesus.”

That kind of compromise in changing the laws and times is how the Church has operated from the very beginning. That’s exactly how they chose December 25th. They tried to conquer a pagan day and redeem it, forgetting that God has never been interested in redeeming pagan days of worship—He already has His own special days that He wants His people to worship Him on. He has only been interested in redeeming people from pagan worship.

Can you imagine the Israelites trying to take a pagan altar and use it to worship the God of Israel when they were specifically forbidden to do so? In Deuteronomy chapter 12… By the way, if the subject of the Sabbath interests you, and you’d like to find out how it too was changed, I encourage you to click the link at the top of this video or in the description for more information.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Isn’t the winter solstice on December 21st?” If you’re talking about today’s corrected Gregorian calendar, you’d be correct. But the current calendar has only been in effect since 1582, replacing the Julian calendar created in 46 B.C., which was off by 11 minutes each year. So, in the original Julian calendar, the winter solstice was on December 25th, and it continued to be celebrated on that day out of tradition, even though the solstice began to shift to different days due to the Julian calendar not being perfectly accurate.

We know that December 25th was originally the winter solstice because the Roman historian Pliny the Elder, in 63 A.D., confirms it. He says, quote: “The bruma…” (the winter solstice) “…begins on the eighth degree of Capricorn, the eighth day before the calends of January,” which, again, is another way of saying eight days before the first of January, which is December 25th. That comes directly from a historian in the first century.

And speaking of cultures that worshiped sun gods on the winter solstice, as I mentioned earlier, it wasn’t just the ancient Egyptian and Roman cultures of the early centuries that venerated the sun. On this day, we see the same pattern all over the world and throughout all time. The Aztecs, for example, of Mexico, not only had many temples built with the winter solstice in mind, but according to Aztec theology, their god Huitzilopochtli was also said to be born on the winter solstice.

If we head back across the Pacific Ocean to Japan, we find another sun god story that takes place on the very same winter solstice. According to Japanese Shintoism legend, the sun goddess Amaterasu is coaxed out of a cave on the winter solstice by the god of happiness after fleeing from her brother, who was in a state of rage. When the sun goddess comes out on the winter solstice, she is said to be reborn—the sun comes alive again. In Shintoism, their followers still celebrate this ancient ceremony called Tojitosai by lighting candles and worshipping the sun goddess every year on this day.

I’m certainly not saying that the Aztecs of the 13th century or Japanese Shintoism had any influence on the decision in the 4th century to make Christ’s birthday on December 25th. What I am displaying, though, is a pattern of sun god worship that happens to occur on the winter solstice. It’s found on every continent for the last 5000 years, and since we know the Aztecs had no clue that the Romans ever existed, either they migrated originally from the Middle East thousands of years earlier and brought sun god worship on the winter solstice with them, or they learned it directly from demons, possibly the same demons that they summoned during their human sacrifices. Either way, it seems that one of the most important days of worship for Satan was December 25th.

Even modern-day Wiccans celebrate the birthday of their god on the winter solstice, celebrating it at none other than the ancient Stonehenge we mentioned earlier. They call it, of all things, Yule Day, which is the same ancient name that the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples gave it thousands of years earlier. Interestingly enough, the ancient Vikings referred to Yule Day as Odin’s Day. Did you catch that? Out of every single day of the year they could have chosen, most scholars say this is the precursor for the development of some of the attributes of Santa Claus. They chose December 25th, the winter solstice, as his day.

Although I could continue to list other pagan deities worshiped on this day, we will leave this section with one final piece of evidence. This evidence comes from none other than the Church of Satan themselves. Although the following quote is not an ancient academic piece of evidence, it is definitely eye-opening, to say the least. Here’s what they say on their own website about December 25th, and I quote: “The Christians stole this holiday from the pagans. The Nazarene…” (or Christian) “…has little place in the general public celebration of this season, which was meant by pagans to be celebrations of abundance during the season of cold and emptiness. So for the Yule holiday season, we enjoy the richness of life and the company of people whom we cherish, as we will often be the only ones who know where the traditions really came from.”

I don’t know about you, but we are not even halfway through this trial, and December 25th is not looking as innocent as we’ve been led to believe. When the Church of Satan is claiming that, one, their master invented this day for the worship of himself, and two, that each individual is supposed to indulge in self-gratification (which is exactly what happens most of the time during the Christmas holidays), and three, it’s backed up by countless cultures throughout time being influenced by Satan to worship sun gods on this day, it appears to me that the ancient winter solstice was, in fact, a major pagan day of worship to Satan himself. This gave the Catholic Church the motive to try to take it over and make it their own.

The main problem for the Roman church was not only December 25, Tertullian (155-220AD) says that Christians were joining in the pagan feast of Saturnalia the winter solstice, and the birthday of the Roman sun god. The Christians were joining in the celebrations left and right at such an alarming rate, that even in the second century, the early church leaders were up in arms about what to do about it.

Saturnalia, on the winter solstice and New Year’s Day. Saturnalia was a massively popular Roman festival that ended right before the birthday of the sun god on the winter solstice, and Christians were getting caught up in the celebrations of it. Take a look at the following quotes from that early time period. This is from literally an early church father, from 145 to 220 A.D. He says this, and I quote:

“But the same apostle…”—talking about the Apostle Paul—”…elsewhere bids us to take care to please all: ‘As I,’ he says, ‘please all by all means.’ No doubt he used to please them by celebrating the feast of Saturnalia and New Year’s Day. The Saturnalia and New Year’s and Midwinter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented, presents come and go, New Year’s gifts, games join their noise, and banquets join their din! Oh, better fidelity of the nations to their own sect, which claims no solemnity of the Christians for itself! Not that the Lord’s day, not Pentecost, even if they had known them, would they have ever shared them with us; for they would have fear that they should seem to be Christians. We are not apprehensive, lest we seem to be heathens!”

My friends, do you hear what he’s saying? In other words, he’s sarcastically saying, “Look, you guys are reading that Paul was all things to all people, but does that mean that he went out and celebrated with the heathens, for crying out loud?” He says, “You guys have no problem going out and celebrating the feast days and looking like heathens, but you know that they would never come and celebrate a Christian holiday because they would be afraid that they would look like a Christian.”

And this is the second and third centuries when Christians were getting caught up in celebrating pagan winter festivals. And that’s exactly what we’re doing today. We are celebrating things that pagans celebrate, and we have no shame in it at all. It should be a big red flag that Christians were celebrating right alongside the pagans, and it should be a greater red flag that actual physical pagans today and Wiccans celebrate it too, saying this is their holiday and we stole it. I tend to agree, based on the evidence.

Bishop Martin (575 A.D.) says the entire celebration is pagan.

Even Bishop Martin of Braga in 575 A.D. had this to say about Christians who were adopting pagan practices into Christmas. Look at this particular quote. He says, quote: “You shall not perform the wicked celebrations of the calends and observe the holiday of the gentiles, nor shall you decorate your houses with laurel and green branches. This whole celebration is pagan.”

While we’re trying to figure out in the 21st century whether or not Christmas comes from pagan roots, this 1,500-year-old bishop seems to already know exactly that: that these winter holidays at the end of the year are pagan. So the dilemma was that Christians were celebrating this particular holiday with the pagans and borrowing their traditions, and the newly budding Catholic Church didn’t know what to do about it. Since Christians everywhere were celebrating these pagan feasts and the church couldn’t get them to stop, the only option was to use the old “if you can’t beat them, join them” philosophy, and that’s exactly what I believe happened.

By choosing the pagan feast day of December 25th as the birthday of Christ, the church could tell the Christians to keep on celebrating but now do so in the name of the real Son of God.

During this entire trial, my friends, we’ve been trying to answer the question: why did the Catholic Church choose December 25th to be the birthday of Christ?

Jacob Bar-Salibi (1100s) says the Catholic Church changed the date of Christ’s birth to December 25th to prevent Christians from celebrating a pagan feast.

The following quote by a 12th-century bishop is our last eyewitness testimony. He answers this question quite plainly. Check out what he has to say; it’s powerful. Syriac Bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi says this in the 1100s, quote:

“The reason why the Fathers of the Church moved the January 6th celebration to December 25th was this, they say…” Listen carefully. “It was the custom of the heathens to celebrate on this same December 25th the birthday of the sun, and they lit lights on it to exalt that day. Even Christians were participants in these rites and ceremonies. When, therefore, the teachers of the church saw that the Christians inclined themselves to this custom, they established a plan…” And what was their plan? “The true natal feast Christmas would be celebrated on this day…”—December 25th—”…and the Epiphany on January 6th.”

Brothers and sisters, you can’t get any clearer than this. This 12th-century Christian bishop, who knows his history, said, “Look, this is why we’re celebrating this on December 25th: it was a pagan day, the Christians were celebrating it, the church didn’t know what to do, so they adopted the date as their own. They continued to allow the Christians to celebrate it because they knew they weren’t gonna be able to stop them and just told them to celebrate it for Christ.”

It appears that in the 1100s, it was very common knowledge in the church that the December 25th date was chosen because it was an existing pagan day of worship to a sun god, and the church tried to hijack it. As the Catholic Church grew exponentially, it eventually displayed sun god worship on December 25th. Instead of teaching the heathens to follow the one true God His way, they simply began to syncretize and borrow from the customs of those pagans until we get to almost every custom that we do today dealing with Christmas.

Now, you might be thinking to yourself, “Who cares if the date they chose was previously the birthday of a sun god? Wouldn’t it be a good thing that the church took over a pagan date for Christ? That sounds great from our perspective,” but in just a few minutes, I’m going to show you in scripture where God forbids us from taking a former pagan practice of worship and converting it over to Him. Stick with me, because I’m also going to show you at the end the shocking truth of what the enemy is really trying to hide through all of this, something that when our family discovered it, it changed our lives forever.

Now, some say that December 25th was chosen because the early church writers mathematically concluded that Christ was actually born on that day. They mainly quote Hippolytus and Africanus as their sources, but as we shall see shortly as we walk into these particular quotes, you’re going to see just how much of a lack of evidence there really is. Although it’s true that there were a few writers who came up with the December 25th date as a guess, a closer examination reveals, one, that these guesses did not come from any academic mindset but from superstition, and two, these early quotes have been suspiciously hand-picked from a myriad of dates that Christians calculated.

Clement Miles (1912) says that early writers guessed dates from every month of the year.

Historian Clement Miles explained this in his classic 1912 work, Christmas Customs and Traditions. He said this: “There’s not a single month in the year to which the Nativity has not been assigned by some writer or another. The December 25th is only one of various guesses of early Christian writers.” St. Clement himself, who lived at the end of the second century, believed that Christ was born on November 17th. This means by the end of the second century, the date had not even been set yet.

We know from all the previous empirical evidence that has been presented thus far that the church chose December 25th to dethrone the pagan sun god and to make it easier for pagans to convert to Christianity. So I don’t know about you, but it’s awfully convenient that in modern times they retroactively went back and found a couple of people who actually guessed that date, right? They could have guessed about any date of the month and found someone who guessed that date, but that’s not what really happened.

Hippolytus of Rome (3rd c.)—supposedly chose Dec. 25th as the birthday of Christ.

So let’s take a look at a couple of these quotes from the other side of the aisle and see how credible they actually are. One of the most popular early writers or chronographers that came up with the December 25th date is apparently someone named Hippolytus of Rome in the third century. His entire chronography timeline was not only debunked within a decade of releasing it, but there is evidence that it’s not even credible.

Let’s take a look at that quote, and you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. Quote: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, eight days before the kalends of January, the fourth day of the week, while Augustus was in his 42nd year, but from Adam five-thousand, five hundred years.” According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, they say this quote is not even authentic.

First of all, you can see that he has 5,500 years being completed up until the time of Christ when he should have had only around 4,000. Second, the Catholic Encyclopedia says this quote is not even authentic. They say, quote: “The relevant passage, which exists in the Chigi manuscript without the bracketed words, says this and every time it’s quoted prior to circa 1000 A.D.” In other words, the original quote is the following: “For the first coming of our Lord in the flesh in Bethlehem took place in the reign of Augustus, in the year 5500. And he suffered in his thirty-third year.”

Everything you see in brackets is not in the original. This means we have to throw out Hippolytus—it’s not even genuine. At the very least, it’s extraordinarily questionable. The Catholic Encyclopedia goes on to say, “interpolation is certain and admitted by scholars Funk and Bonwetsch.”

The next quote we have, and the last one we’ll deal with today, is Julius Sextus Africanus. All over the internet, he’s quoted as stating that December 25th is the birthdate of Christ, yet virtually no one ever actually states his exact quote. After extensive research, I finally found the actual quote in question and was shocked by what he actually said.

Here is the quote: “Judea has seen its bloom and the country is fading. To gentiles and aliens, salvation has come; to the wretched, relief is ministered abundantly. With right do women dance and say, Lady Pege, Spring-bearer, thou Mother of the heavenly constellation.” Now, friends, this is where they say Julius Sextus Africanus claimed that Jesus was born on December 25th. But where is that? It’s not actually there because he never said it. You have to do some extreme gymnastics with his words, which is exactly what they did. Here’s how they did it.

First, they start with the understanding that the ancients believed the Earth was born on March 25th, the spring equinox, and that great men are born and die on the same day. So, because they believe Christ died on March 25th, being a great man, he must have been born on that date as well. And because Africanus uses the word “spring-bearer,” that somehow means Julius believes Christ must have been born in the spring. The problem is they didn’t even stick to the superstition formula that great men were born and died on the same day—they changed it to Christ died and was conceived on the same day. And of course, if you go nine months from March 25th, you end up on December 25th.

The truth is that not only is all of that based on superstition and manipulation of a formula, but it’s also not even what he said or meant. In context, if you keep reading, he’s talking about water; he’s referring to a spring of water, not the season of spring. The actual Greek bears that out because Lady Pege is simply a personification of the Greek word pege, which simply means “the well fed by a spring.” He’s basically saying that Mary, the Mother of Christ, has a wealth of water inside her that’s fed by Christ Himself. He’s the water; He’s the spring. So, it becomes clear why no one actually quotes Africanus in regard to his supposed belief that Christ was born on December 25th—because there’s no quote to support that invented claim.

Now, we’ve nearly come to the end of our trial, so let’s begin the process of recapping all the evidence we’ve discovered. In the end, the only argument used to prove that December 25th was not chosen because it was a pagan holiday is these church writers, who we’ve just shown are not legitimate and cannot be used as credible evidence. Even if they could be trusted, they could in no way overturn all the previous evidence to the contrary—irrefutable evidence that December 25th was celebrated as the birthday of sun gods before the Roman church chose it as the birthday of Christ.

The strange part of this argument is that those who support it claim the church didn’t choose December 25th due to any syncretism or merging of pagan ideas, yet we’re supposed to believe they chose December 25th because a few early church writers arrived at that date using pagan traditions and ancient Jewish superstitions? That doesn’t make any sense.

Every early writer on this subject uses legitimate formulas for determining the death and birth of Christ, except for those who arrived at December 25th. They used a formula based on superstition. Furthermore, to believe the Catholic Church was somehow pure in this decision and would not mix paganism with the holy ignores all historical facts, even modern history. After all, they’ve had no problem putting the same solar disk behind the heads of all the saints that pagans used behind their solar deities. They’ve had no issue placing actual pagan statues in the Vatican itself, even renaming some to the names of biblical characters such as Peter, Mary, and even the baby Jesus.

Even Pope Francis had no problem controversially displaying modern pagan idols in the church. In 2019, he said they were displayed “without idolatrous intentions.” Now, would any of you have a pagan idol in your home just for display? And if that’s not enough, they assigned John the Baptist’s birthday to the summer solstice, chose All Saints’ Day to be on the pagan Day of the Dead (which became the famous Halloween of today). By the way, if you haven’t seen the teaching Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?, I encourage you to click the link above or in the description to watch it. You will be utterly shocked at what you’ve not been told.

So, for us to believe the Catholic Church did not choose December 25th because it was pagan, but rather because some early writers used pagan superstitions to arrive at that date, is not only confusing—it’s disingenuous at best and goes against all existing evidence. But speaking of evidence, let’s review some of that evidence and bring this trial to a close so we can reach a final verdict. The winter solstice was on December 25th and celebrated as a pagan holiday to sun gods, as stated by multiple early church writers, historians, and Egyptian sources.

December 25th was not only the pagan sun god’s birthday in Egypt, but the Roman calendar of 354 A.D. reinforces this by indicating it was the Roman sun god’s birthday as well. Records show that the Roman church faced a problem when they discovered Christians were celebrating the feast of Saturnalia and other winter feast days, forcing them to take action.

We found a 12th-century manuscript from a Syriac writer that tells us the teachers of the church changed Christ’s birthday to December 25th because Christians were celebrating with pagans on that day. We learned that Hippolytus and Africanus can’t be trusted—one being a later interpolation, and the other having nothing to do with the birth of Christ, but more about the spring of water in Mary.

From the Egyptian sun god Horus being born on the winter solstice to cultures all over the world celebrating their sun gods’ birthdays on this day, from multiple quotes from early church writers telling us that December 25th was a pagan holiday, to those same writers rebuking their congregations for celebrating these days in the church—I think it’s safe to say, without a shadow of a doubt, the evidence points to a single conclusion: guilty as charged.

Final Verdict

December 25th was an existing pagan holiday dedicated to the birthday of the sun for thousands of years. Christians joined the pagans in their celebrations, and the Roman church adopted the holiday, changed the name, and called it their own. Then, in modern times, in an attempt to whitewash the original motives of the church, some chose to highlight a few quotes from early church writers who selected December 25th—or rather, guessed December 25th—based on superstition simply because it happened to match the date they had already chosen.

This is biblically illegal. I’ve mentioned this several times before, but now we’re actually going to go through the scripture and show you why it’s biblically illegal. Deuteronomy 12 makes it clear that we cannot borrow from pagans and worship our God in the same way. Read it with me: “Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow after them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I will do so likewise.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord, which He hates, they have done to their gods. For they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it or take away from it” (Deut. 12:30-32).

This is what happened with ancient Israel. When they entered the Promised Land, God warned them not to look into how the nations worshipped their gods and then borrow from them to worship Him. He said, “Don’t add to or take away from my word—worship me as I request.” Somehow, we’ve reached the point where we say, “That’s not what it means to me. I’m celebrating the birthday of Christ—what’s wrong with that?”

My friends, if you are the one being worshipped, as I’ve said multiple times, there’s no problem. But unfortunately, as I’ve said many times now, it doesn’t matter what it means to us; it only matters what it means to Him. He’s the one being worshipped. Either we care about how He wants us to worship Him, or we care only about how we want to worship Him.

So, as the verdict becomes guilty, we find ourselves asking the question: Why would the enemy do this in the first place? Why create such an elaborate parade of different players to pull God’s people’s attention away from the real stage? And what is that stage? That stage is the real holiday calendar of God, the real prophetic feast day calendar that the enemy is trying to hide. He knows that if he can keep us away from what God really wants us to do, we’ll be out of sync with His calendar and miss the incredible blessings that go along with it.

For instance, Yeshua (Jesus) died on Passover at the precise time they killed the Passover lamb, was put in the grave during the Feast of Unleavened Bread when they were removing all leaven, which represents sin, from their homes. He rose on the Feast of First Fruits when the high priest was cutting the barley from the earth and waving it before God, asking for a great harvest in the fall. The Holy Spirit came down on Shavuot, better known in Greek as Pentecost. These are the first four spring days of the Lord that deal with His first coming.

Every one of these feast days is about Christ, but did you know that the second coming of Christ is foretold through the last three fall feast days? He comes during Yom Teruah, the Feast of Trumpets, more commonly known as Rosh Hashanah, the day when all the ancient kings of Israel were coronated as kings through the sound of a trumpet. Then there’s Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once per year to atone for the sins of Israel, connected to the final Great White Throne Judgment of God. Lastly, we have the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), which is when the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation happens, and it’s also the time when Jesus was actually born and began “tabernacling” among us.

With the sun fully set, what we discover is the enemy is trying to hide our inheritance. He’s stolen it, and in place of it, he’s given us a Catholic Feast Day holiday schedule that’s pulled our attention away and destroyed our ability to teach our children the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If you’re Catholic and you’re okay with the fact that the church replaced God’s calendar with their own, I suppose it makes sense for you to celebrate Catholic holidays. But if you’re a believer who truly wants to follow God and be in rhythm and in sync with His ways, doesn’t it make more sense for us to start learning His calendar?

My friends, there is so much in our history that we don’t know, and it has radically affected our lives, our spirituality, our kids, and our families. We need to learn these things and our history so we can do Bible things in Bible ways. We need to put aside the doctrines and traditions of men and start following God in spirit and in truth. Speaking of truth, now that you know the truth, there’s only one question left to answer: What are you going to do about it?

Thank you for following along with me on our little trial journey of when, why, and how December 25th got chosen as the birthday of Christ.

Watch full teaching here: