Is Tonight (Sept. 22) Really Christmas Eve? This article thinks so.

Image by Ron Dauphin via Flickr

Most Christians, while thankful for the birth of Christ and the fact that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him would have eternal life" have understood that the date of Christmas in the calendar is probably not historically accurate.  Shepherds in the fields.  Census.  There are clues.  And, I would argue that the date doesn't really matter that much to persons of faith as the gracious gift Jesus' birth is for the world.

Well, what if we really knew the date?  Would we change our Christmas to meet the facts of the birthdate?

Jesus Needs New PR brought something to my attention.

There's an article in the Belfast Telegraph on September 21 which claims that September 23rd is really the day of Christ's birth and that evening tomorrow, September 22nd, is Christmas Eve.

The Gospels inform us that John the Baptist, who was Jesus's cousin, was born six months before Jesus. John's father, Zechariah, was a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem in the order of Abijah. We can find when the order of Abijah served in the Temple in I Chronicles 24:10, and from this we can calculate that the birth of John fell at Passover.

Jesus, then, was born six months later, on Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles, which falls on Tishrei 15.

This may not mean very much to us who use the Gregorian calendar, but Tishrei 15 falls this year on Thursday 23 September.

Biblical days begin at sunset, so the feast actually starts on the evening of 22 September, which would have been the "silent and holy night" we will all be singing about three months later.

So Jesus's real birthday will pass with hardly a soul knowing it.

As one might guess, I took the Belfast article with a grain of salt.  So, I poked around a little.  There are those out there who say that late September is a pretty accurate guess for when Jesus was born, essentially using the logic applied above.  However, there are problems here and assumptions that need to be in place to make it work--which is more complicated than I could ever care to get into.  If that's important to you, please feel free to get right on that.

I think one of our problems here is that we just don't get enough information from the Bible to pinpoint the time of the year for Jesus' birth.  I would argue that the FACT OF JESUS' BIRTH was much more important to the Gosepl writers...and to us...than the time of year.  And so we celebrate his birth...on December 25th and on September 23rd and all throughout the year.

But if you have any Christmas gifts to open Thursday morning, I won't complain.