Debunking the Myths of Christmas

Christmas Myths About Jesus’ Birth Date

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There are many myths about Christmas as we come into the Christmas season, a time that we think about Christ and His birth, and so many non-believers want to think about gift giving. And for many Christians, they think, no, this is a corruption of the holiday.

Well, let us take a look at what the Bible actually says sometimes about some of the things we think of when it comes to Christmas and those nativity scenes that we have in our homes and ask, are there some myths of Christmas?

And then we look at these myths and get maybe some corrections. The real question is, should we celebrate Christmas? Well, let's see what we have as we examine the text. Merry Christmas. This is the time of year that we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, having been born on December 25th in the year 0 A .D.

Is that right? Well, this is actually one of the myths of Christmas. Jesus actually wouldn't have been born on December 25th, nor 0 A .D. There has no references in the early documents of when Jesus was born.

The first we see any reference to trying to find a date for the birth of Christ was Clement of Alexandria in the 3rd century, and he had several potential dates, none of them being December 25th. Many people would think he would have been born more in the April time frame in the spring.

Now the first record that we have of December 25th being a birth date of Jesus is the 4th century in an edition of a Roman almanac. And that came out in 364 A .D. Now it wasn't until Pope Julius I that the date was set, for at least the Western Christians, in the 4th century.

Some people say that this was a taking of a pagan holiday and making it a Christian one, but that ritual didn't start happening until the 7th century. Was Jesus actually born in 0 A .D.? Well, no. From dating of times of events that we have historically, we would think that Jesus probably was born somewhere between 6 B .C. to maybe 3 A .D.

So the reality is Jesus was probably born, most people think, around 3 B .C. This time of year we always think about Mary riding on a donkey into Bethlehem as she can't find any room in the hotel and goes to the stables to be able to give birth.

Is that accurate? Well let's take a look. When we actually look at the account in Luke 2, the first 6 verses, we don't see any reference to Mary being on a donkey. Now could she have been on a donkey on that 65 mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem?

That could be, but that is assumed. We don't see that in the scriptures. And then we have the question, was it really a stable or could it have been something else? Well, the reality is that what we have for the word stable and what we call an inn wouldn't be what we think.

There were two different Greek words, one for what we would think of a hotel, but the word that was used in Luke 2 is actually one that would be more like an upper room, part of a house. So this was probably more a relative of hers that she would have been staying with and there was no more room in the relative's house in the upper room which was where most people would end up sleeping.

So the idea would be that they had to be more in the downstairs part, probably not a hotel like we think of. So it's more likely that she was going to stay with family, probably Joseph's family, and that there was no more room in the family house with everybody in town.

And it wouldn't be the hotel that we think of. Now was it a stable? Hmm. Let's get to that next. Now as we saw that the word inn is not the word for hotel like we think of or that would have been used in the Greek.

When it says that Mary and Joseph came to an inn, it was more like a family residence and therefore there was no room. And many people think that Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room in the inn, the way the English translates it.

However, the word stable is really what we think of when we think of all those manger scenes and is that accurate? Well what we end up seeing is that the word that is used there is for a feeding trough and there would have been feeding troughs that would have been both inside and outside of the homes.

And so what you end up having in those homes back then is you'd have animals that would live inside the house, not just outside the house. And so it is conceivable that there was no more room upstairs in the house that Mary and Joseph were staying in and therefore they were downstairs in part of the house that was where some of the animals would be.

And therefore they were sitting there with nowhere to put Jesus after he was born and Mary put him in a feeding trough. Now that doesn't mean that it's outside in a stables in a barn the way many of us think.

I hope this doesn't ruin your manger scenes that you have at home. But the reality is it would have been more likely that she was born inside of a home with the feeding trough inside. Now we know so many of the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the nativity scenes that we see, they always seem to have three wise men who come with a star that is shining over above the stables where he's born.

The Wise Men, the Child, and the Timing of the Visit

Well let us look today, were there three wise men? Well there's nothing in the text of scripture that says there were only three. Now there were mention of three shepherds and there was mention of three gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, but there's no mention that there were only three wise men.

And there's no mention that it would be in the stables. In fact when we actually look at the account, Jesus is referred to not as an infant but as a small child. What we end up seeing is Herod, when he finds out about these wise men, kills everyone two years and under, which might mean that when they started to see the sign of the star, they started to travel and that was two years later.

So the idea would be that there would probably be more than three wise men, enough to get Herod nervous because many think these are the magi from the east that would have been the king makers and therefore there would probably have been many of them to anoint him king, though they only had three gifts.

And that would be enough to get Herod very anxious in Matthew 2 .16. If there were many of these king makers to anoint a king and they come to him, they want to find out what house he is in. And he is in a home at this point and called a child, not an infant.

So we see that there seems to be many myths around Christmas. We see that Jesus actually might not have been born in a stable as many think. Definitely probably wasn't born on December 25th. There weren't probably three wise men that came to visit him and they didn't visit him at his birth.

Why Christians Should Celebrate Christmas

With all these things, should we celebrate Christmas? Well, it is good to set aside a day, even if it's just one day of the year, that we celebrate the fact that God Almighty, the King of kings, creator of the universe, left heaven and came into humanity as a human being for the explicit purpose that he would one day die a gruesome death.

Though he was sinless, he came that he might die a sinner's death that you may have eternal life. Though you and I are guilty, Jesus Christ, the Almighty God, came and died in our place that we could be set free.

Is it good to celebrate Christmas? Well, there's nothing special about December 25th. There's nothing special about much of the nativity things that many people think of when they think of Christmas. That's not even getting into the other things that people think of with Christmas trees and all of that.

But here's the important thing. It is good that we celebrate a day that we worship God and thank God for what he did on our behalf, that he became a punishment of death, a punishment of sin on our behalf, that he paid the eternal fine that we owe, that we could be his children.