Why the early Christians did not celebrate Christmas.

Rev. Brian D. Blacker explains:

It was strongly felt that the celebrating of any day or date – be they birthdays or anniversaries of an event – was a custom of the pagans. By the word ‘pagans’ they meant irreligious people who still live in the darkness of superstition. In an effort to divest themselves of all pagan practices, therefore, they did not even set aside or note down the date of their Saviour’s birth....

Most scholars agree that the birth of the Redeemer did not take place in the month of December at all. In fact, the 25th of December was not even chosen by the Christians, but by the Romans – the traditional arch enemies of the early church...

[The Romans had begun] to celebrate the “Feast of the Sol Invictus” (the Unconquerable Sun) on December 25. Soon many Christians began to join in this pagan festival and the various celebrations that went with it. Their faith wasn’t vibrant enough (or real enough) to stand against the strong pull of the festivity and celebration around them. They drifted with the crowd.

Thus, in order to keep the Christians away from all the pagan rituals that was part of this worship of the sun, Bishop Liberius of Rome declared, in 354 A.D., that all Christians everywhere should celebrate the birth of our Lord on December 25...

We must recognise a parallel in what took place in church history and what is taking place in this day and age....

Uh oh. Here comes the sermon. You can go to the link if you want to see what lessons Rev. Blacker draws from this sequence of events. It seems to me there are quite a few different lessons you might teach with that intro, and I believe the conversation we have right here will be more interesting and enlightening than what Rev. Blacker says.

And then there's the separate question whether the Feast of the Sol Invictus theory of Christmas is even correct. Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, has observed that December 25 is simply 9 months after March 25, and March 25 was the date of the Annunciation, that is the date of Jesus' conception.

Getting the date right matters far less than the question whether we should be doing annual celebrations on a particular date — including all kinds of birthdays, death-days, and anniversaries — and which days should be the ones that we single out as the biggest occasions. Even if you're a Christian, you could decline to celebrate Christmas and even then, it could be for one of a number of reasons: 1. because it's less important than other days within Christianity, 2. because celebrating birthdays and anniversaries is not what Christianity should be, 3. because it's too closely associated with the pagan festivities having to do with the sun, or (least convincing reason) 4. because December 25th is the wrong day.

ADDED:  Sorry, but I'm going to argue with the Pope. Doctors calculate the length of pregnancy from the first day of the woman's last period, not the date of conception. If Mary conceived on March 25, then the first day of her last period — I've never before in my life thought about Mary's periods! — was  March 11th or thereabouts. (I'm assuming Mary had 28-day periods and conception occurred on the day of ovulation, 2 weeks later.) If the first day of Mary's last period was indeed March 11th, using the standard calculation, the predicted due date is December 17th. I can't believe it was so easy to point out a hole in a Pope's argument!