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Christmas and the Invention of a Birth Date

by Ram ben Ze’ev



Christmas and the Invention of a Birth Date
Christmas and the Invention of a Birth Date

Christmas is presented to the world as a celebration of a birth said to have taken place on 25 December. That claim is repeated so often that it is assumed to be historical fact. Yet when examined carefully—using the very text relied upon by its proponents, alongside historical, agricultural, astronomical, and Jewish considerations—the December birth narrative collapses entirely. What remains is not history, but construction.


The idolater’s handbook claims that shepherds were sleeping in the fields at night, guarding their flocks. In Eretz Yisrael this detail alone is decisive. Shepherds do not remain in open fields during December. Winter in the Judean hills is cold and wet, with regular rainfall and low night temperatures. Flocks are brought into shelters during this season, not left exposed. Night-time grazing belongs to spring and early autumn. A December birth is therefore ruled out by basic agricultural reality.



The same text introduces a Roman census requiring people to travel to ancestral towns. Roman administrative practice never conducted censuses during winter, particularly not in mountainous provinces such as Judea. Roads were dangerous, weather unpredictable, and movement deliberately limited. Taxation and registration were organised in seasons that allowed safe travel. A winter census is not merely unlikely; it is administratively implausible.


Much emphasis is placed on a supposed celestial sign—a prominent star visible in the night sky. Yet this claim fails under astronomical scrutiny. No known comet, nova, or stellar event occurring in December of the proposed years fits the description. A nova bright enough to draw attention, guide travellers, or “stand over” a location would have been recorded by Babylonian, Chinese, or Roman astronomers. No such record exists. Planetary conjunctions do not move, do not point to houses, and do not behave as described. The “star” functions as a literary device, not an observed phenomenon.


The choice of 25 December itself exposes the fabrication. Early Christian sources openly admit that the birth date was unknown. The date was selected centuries later to coincide with existing Roman pagan festivals, particularly Dies Solis Invicti—the birthday of the unconquered sun—and the broader Saturnalia period. The adoption of this date was theological and political, designed to overlay a new narrative onto an established pagan calendar. It was not preserved memory.


Internal contradictions further undermine credibility. Competing birth narratives disagree on genealogy, geography, chronology, rulers in power, and subsequent events. One account requires flight to Egypt; another suggests an uneventful return. Such contradictions point to myth-making, not historical transmission. When a foundational story cannot agree with itself, its historical claims deserve scepticism.



There is a line, often attributed to Henny Youngman, that cuts through the entire edifice with humour sharper than argument. Asked about the so-called “virgin birth,” he reportedly quipped that the real question is not theology but probability: which is more likely, that a virgin conceived, or that a Jewish girl told a lie? The line endures because it exposes something fundamental. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, yet what we are offered is myth framed as history, dressed in cosmic language to obscure a very human story. Jewish humour has always functioned this way—not to mock truth, but to strip away pretence. In one sentence, the joke does what pages of apologetics cannot: it restores proportion, humanity, and common sense.


Equally telling is the silence of Jewish sources. No record exists in Talmudic literature, communal memory, or historical Jewish writing of such an event. Given the magnitude of the claims being made—cosmic signs, divine intervention, mass movement—this silence is not accidental. It is decisive.


Beyond history lies theology. The attribution of divine incarnation, salvific purpose, or cosmic necessity to a human birth violates the very foundations of Torah. Such concepts reflect Hellenistic and pagan worldviews, not Hebrew thought. The narrative framework itself reveals its origins.


All of these points converge on a single conclusion. The December 25 birth claim fails agriculturally, administratively, astronomically, historically, and theologically. It is not a harmless calendrical error. It is a constructed myth, deliberately positioned to replace existing pagan observances and later presented as historical truth.


Publishing this on Christmas Day is intentional. When repetition substitutes for truth, clarity becomes necessary. There is no evidence supporting a December birth for the man Christians call Jesus. There is, however, overwhelming evidence against it.



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