On December 25, millions of people throughout the world hold Christmas celebrations to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ. Despite this, most scholars believe he was not born on that date, or even in A.D. 1.

The Bible does not provide the date of Jesus' birth. Early Christians did not commemorate his birth. As a result, there are numerous stories about how and when December 25 became known as Jesus' birthday.

The Nativity of the Sun was celebrated on the winter solstice, which occurred on December 25th in the Julian calendar. The early Church did not recognize Christ's birth because the Gospels do not identify the date. "It was a heathen custom to celebrate the birthday of the Sun on the same twenty-fifth day of December," Augustine says. According to Leo the Great, Christmas was not solemnized because of the birth of the new sun.

Some scholars assume he was born between 6 and 4 B.C., based in part on the biblical tale of King Herod the Great. In an apparent attempt to murder Jesus, the monarch allegedly ordered the execution of all male babies under the age of two in the Bethlehem area, a massacre known as the Massacre of the Innocents. This occurred just before Herod's death, which is still controversial. Most scholars, including Peter Richardson and Amy Marie Fisher in their book "Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans: Second Edition" (Routledge, 2018), think Herod died in 4 B.C.

Historians disagree on Herod's actual year of death, and many believe the mass infanticide was a hoax. According to Reza Aslan's book "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" (Random House, 2013), Herod's massacre was "an event for which no shred of corroborating evidence survives in any chronicle or history of the time, whether Jewish, Christian, or Roman."

Sources

https://www.newsweek.com/december-25-really-day-jesus-was-born-what-bible-says-1270667?amp=1

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