When Christians gather together each year on December 25, they are celebrating not so much the “birthday of Jesus” as the meaning of that birth.

In fact, no one knows the year or date of the Savior’s birth. Assuming that Jeshua Binzaret, Jesus of Nazareth, was 30 years old, the minimum age for becoming a rabbi (although Saint John suggests that Jesus was older), when he began his public ministry, and assuming that his public ministry lasted 3 years (something on which Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do not agree), then he would have been 33 years old when he died and rose. But when did his death and resurrection take place? Christians often assume that the calendar devised in about 600 by the monk Dionysius Exiguus is exact, and that Jesus had to have been born in the year 1 and died and rose in the year a.d. 33. But the scholars point out that the year 30 is more likely (because of the counting of Passover) for Christ’s saving death, so his birth would have taken place in or before 3 b.c.! And we have no idea at what time of year he was born, let alone a specific date.

The reason why Christians have celebrated the Lord’s birth on December 25 since the fourth century is that the Emperor Constantine wished to institute a feast celebrating the Incarnation, the “becoming man” of the Son of God, to popularize the decisions made at the Council of Nicaea, and thought, quite brilliantly, that December 25, more or less the darkest night of the year, long celebrated by the pagan Romans as the feast of Sol Invictus, would be the most fitting date. Instead of celebrating the “unconquered sun,” the people would henceforth celebrate the coming of God as man on December 25. And so they have since about 325.

That year was highly significant in the history of Christian theology, because it resolved the Christological controversy sparked by a priest named Arius, a controversy that threatened to split the newly-legalized Christian Church in two. Arius had interpreted John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”) in a twisted way. He said that this famous passage meant that the Logos or Word of God was a divine creature, but not really God. Arius went on to say that John 1:14 (“and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory”) did not mean that the Word or Son of God became a complete human being, body, mind and soul, but only that the Logos (Word) took on human body (“flesh) and perhaps a mind, but that it, the Logos had replaced the human soul of Jesus. Thus, to Arius and his followers, Jesus Christ was not quite God and not a complete man.

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria sounded the alarm and pointed out the dangers of Arius’ teaching. The Emperor Constantine, who had legalized Christianity in 313 and had done everything in his power to further its spread, was appalled that his favored Christians could not seem to agree on who their Savior was. So he summoned the bishops to the first ecumenical council (not counting the apostolic council in Jerusalem mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles) to resolve the issue.

Persuaded by Athanasius, with some difficulty, the bishops agreed on the Profession of Faith now known as the Nicene Creed. Against Arius’ claim that the eternal Word or Son of God was a “divine creature” but not God, the Creed says this: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father, through whom all things were made.”

Against Arius’ claim that the word did not take on or assume a human soul, but only a human body (and, perhaps, mind), the Creed says, “he became man” (enanthropesanta, literally, “manning it”), which in the context of the debate meant, “he took on a human body, mind and soul,” a complete (“perfect”) humanity.

It is this astounding truth that we celebrate at Christmas, that the eternal Son of God, the Word that he has spoken from all eternity, through whom all things were made, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary and became “a man like us in all things but sin”— while remaining God. The Son of God has chosen to share our common human nature so that we mere humans might become “sharers in the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The seemingly unbridgeable gap between God and man has in fact been bridged in and by the God-man, Jesus Christ. He is the incarnate covenant between God and man.

Every aspect of our Christmas celebrations should remind us of this mystery. When we see an image of the babe in the manger, we are invited to contemplate the fact that God became a helpless child out of love for us. When we consider his Blessed Mother’s courageous consent to God’s will that she should bear his Son, we are reminded that she, who was full of his grace, mirrored on earth his eternal consent to the Father’s will when she said, “Be it done to me according to your word.” When we read of shepherds and magi paying him homage, we should see ourselves as called to adore him, not only in our acts of worship, but even more in the way in which we respond to his grace and call by the way we live out the new and everlasting covenant made in the blood of Christ’s.

That is the deep meaning of our Christmas celebration, the reason for our holiday joy.
—DKC