For millions of Christians around the world, the celebration of Christmas has a deeper significance than presents, tinsel, and turkey.
According to their beliefs, December 25 this year will be the 2,023rd birthday of Jesus Christ.
However, the surprising reality is that Jesus almost certainly wasn’t born in the winter of 1 AD.
Experts say Jesus may be significantly older than most people would expect, dating his birth back to the first century BC.
And, in bad news for anyone planning their festive celebrations, historians say there is no reason to believe that Jesus’ birthday is really December 25.
Based on ancient astronomical records, experts theorise that Jesus was likely born in the Spring.
And, while it might seem shocking that Christ was born ‘before Christ’, the confusion can be traced back to a 1,500-year-old clerical error.
Professor Lawrence Mykytiuk, of Purdue University, told : ‘It remains a humbling fact that despite various claims, no one in modern times is really certain of the exact year of Jesus’s birth.’
According to Christian beliefs, Jesus was born on December 25, AD 1. However, expert historians say that Jesus was probably born much earlier
How old is Jesus?
According to the traditional view that Jesus was born on December 25 1 AD, he should be turning 2023 this Christmas.
No matter your religious views, there is almost no denying that there really was a man named Jesus, born in the Roman province of Galilee around 2,000 years ago.
However, as a man born into the peasant class there would be no record of his birth.
According to Professor Mykytiuk, the best evidence we have for figuring out when Jesus was really born is to relate his life to famous figures who left lots of evidence behind.
One key reference scholars refer to is the life of King Herod the Great of Judea who was appointed by Rome to rule over the lands including Bethlehem and Jerusalem from about 37 BC.
According to the Bible, upon hearing that the ‘King of the Jews’ was about to be born, Herod decreed that all Jewish boys under two years old were to be killed.
If this is true, then Jesus must have been born at least two years before King Herod’s death.
As a man born into the peasant classes, no records exist of the actual date of Jesus’ birth. In fact, early Christians didn’t start mentioning the 25th of December until hundreds of years after he had died. Pictured: A 12th-century fresco showing the Nativity
The historical and archaeological evidence points to the existence of the historical Jesus. Unlike most depictions today, the real Jesus would have had short curly hair, a well-trimmed beard, dark skin, brown eyes, and worn a short tunic
Luckily for us, there are a lot of contemporary sources which provide evidence about the life and death of King Herod, like Jewish historian Flavius Josephus’ vast ‘Jewish Antiquities’ which was written just 60 years after Jesus’ death.
Critically, Josephus tells us that there was a lunar eclipse shortly before Herod’s death.
This could be referring to four possible dates: September 15, 5 BC, March 13, 4 BC, January 10, 1 BC, and December 29, 1 BC.
Professor Mikytiuk says: ‘Josephus also tells us in two places that the Jewish Passover occurred soon after the death of Herod the Great. Because the Passover is observed in the spring; September, January, and December are ruled out.’
This tells us that King Herod must have died shortly after March 13, 4 BC.
Based on this calculation, most scholars date Jesus’ birth year to sometime around 4-6 BC which would make him about 2029 this year.
The only snag is that we don’t have a single shred of evidence outside of the Bible that King Herod ever really ordered the fabled massacre of the innocents.
While the historical record certainly paints Herod as a tyrant, ordering the death of thousands of children stretches credulity a little far.
However, massacre or not, the Gospel writers themselves are certain that Jesus and Herod briefly lived at the same point in time.
Since the Bible is correct about the dates of other historical figures such as Pontius Pilot and emperor Augustus, it is fair to suggest that it is roughly correct about Herod.
When is Jesus’ Birthday?
Many experts link the date of Jesus’ birth to the massacre of the innocents, illustrated here in a painting by Sir Peter Rubens, in which King Herod the Great ordered the death of Jewish boys under two years old
The first real reference to December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth appears in the mid-fourth century AD within a Roman almanac listing the death dates of various Christian martyrs.
However, most scholars agree that this date probably bears little relation to the actual day of Jesus’ birth.
Professor Mykytiuk says: ‘It is most unlikely that Jesus was born on any day in December, let alone on December 25th, because “there were shepherds living out in the field, keeping watch over their flocks at night”‘.
‘During winter, shepherds kept sheep in the fold to protect themselves and their sheep from severe weather.’
Another key point is that the grass which the sheep fed on was most abundant in March before it was scorched by the heat of the sun.
‘This fact of plentiful grass in March fits with the lunar eclipse occurring shortly before the death of Herod the Great,’ says Professor Mykytiuk.
‘The narrowest date one can confidently arrive at for Jesus’s birth seems to be the month of March, during the years 6, 5, or 4 BC.’
In search of a more precise answer, some scholars have followed the example of the Three Wise Men and looked to the stars.
Retired medical artist Richard Neave has recreated the face of a first-century Judean (pictured) using forensic techniques and Semite skulls found in archaeological excavations
As imagined here by 14th-century painter Giotto di Bondone, some experts believe that the star of Bethlehem which the wise men followed might have been a comet
In the Gospel according to Matthew, the three Magi seek Jesus by following ‘his star in the East’.
And thanks to Chinese astronomers’ careful records of the night sky, we have plenty of contenders for what this star could be.
In 5 BC, astronomers in the Han Dynasty recorded the passage of a ‘Broom Star’ sweeping its way across the sky for 70 days.
Although the comet has never been named, Professor Colin Humphreys, a physicist from the University of Cambridge, believes that this was the Star of Bethlehem.
Professor Humphreys told : ‘According to the Chinese records, the star appeared in the spring of 5 BC, consistent to the Gospel of Luke saying that there were shepherds out in the fields, watching their sheep by night, as they would be in the spring lambing season.’
‘Any comet that is visible to the naked eye for over 70 days has to be very bright, we haven’t seen a bright comet like this in our lifetime.
However, while Professor Humphrey’s maintains that by 200AD comets had become signs of greatness, other scholars argue that they would have been seen as signs of misfortune during the first century AD.
As an alternative, other researchers have suggested that the Star of Bethlehem wasn’t a bright comet but rather an astronomical event which would have been invisible to the untrained eye.
The star of Bethlehem could have been a comet recorded by Chinese astronomers in 5BC which reported lingered in the sky for 70 days. Pictured: a comet appears over Lebanon in 2024
The wise men, or Magi, might have been astronomers who would have had a particular interest in the movements of the planets. Particularly Jupiter (pictured) which had associations with royalty
The Bible describes the wise men as ‘Magi’, the ancient word for astronomers who would have been far more interested in the movement of the planets than the passage of shooting stars or comets.
At the time of Jesus’ birth some 2,000 years ago, one of the leading scientific theories of the day was the notion that the motion of the planets could be used to predict events on Earth.
Jupiter in particular was associated with royalty so any rare events associated with the planet could have been the trigger for the Magi’s search for a new King.
As it happens, in 6 BC there was an extremely rare astronomical event called a triple conjunction.
During this event, Jupiter and Saturn would have come close together in the sky three times over a very short period.
Most notably, on April 17 Jupiter would have risen before the sun in an event called heliacal rising before passing behind the moon.
American historian Michael Molnar suggests that this would have been seen as a particularly auspicious sign, perhaps heralding a Royal birth.
If the biblical account of the Star of Bethlehem is correct, then this could date Jesus’ birth to the Spring of 7 BC.
A conjunction is an astronomical event where two planets appear close together in the sky. Jupiter and Saturn meet once every 20 years but, on April 17, 6BC Jupiter and Saturn entered a rare period called a triple conjunction
During a conjunction, as pictured here in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn can appear like one bright star in the sky. This means the 6BC conjunction could be the event the Wise Men observed
So, whether it was a visiting comet or a rare planetary alignment, all the evidence points towards the spring rather than winter as the most likely candidate for Jesus’ date of birth.
Why do people think that Jesus was born on December 25, 1 AD?
Since the eighth-century, historians have divided time into Anno Domini (AD), meaning ‘year of our Lord’, and Before Christ (BC).
It might therefore be a surprise that historians seem to have got the date of Jesus’ birth so wrong when it plays such a key role in all of our lives.
The error can be traced back to an East Roman monk named Dionysius Exiguus, who lived between 470 and 544 AD.
At this time, the date was calculated from the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian who had ruled between 284 and 305 AD.
However, since Diocletian had harshly persecuted the Christians, Dionysius wanted to find a new way of measuring time that wasn’t linked to such a bad memory.
Professor Mykytiuk says: ‘He devised a table in order to determine future dates of Easter, a table which used the term he is credited with inventing: anno domini nostri Jesu Christi [year of our lord Jesus Christ].
‘Following a request from Pope John I, in 525 AD he prepared this table to determine the dates of 95 future Easters.’
The source of the error can be traced back to a 5th-century monk named Dionysius Exiguus (right) who miscalculated the date of Jesus’ birth while trying to come up with a new basis for the calendar
While it took a while to catch on after the British historian Bede used the dating system in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People during the eighth century, the new AD system became standard.
The only problem was that Dionysius’ maths for working out the date was a few years off, shifting the entire world’s calendar slightly out of alignment.
As for why December 25 was chosen as the supposed date, the issue is a little more contentious.
According to one theory, Christians deliberately moved their festival to align with the Roman mid-winter celebration of Saturnalia in order to lure in pagan converts.
There is indeed some good reason to believe this might be the case as modern studies have shown that Christmas trapping such as the Christmas tree have their roots in druidic solstice rituals.
Likewise, Roman emperor Aurelian really did establish a pagan festival of Sol Invictus, the unconquered Sun, on December 25.
However, the evidence of a deliberate shift towards a winter date is rather thin on the ground.
Reverand Professor Andrew McGowan, of Yale Divinity School, points out that the first suggestions of pagan origins didn’t emerge until the 12th century – a thousand years after Christmas was first celebrated.
Christmas traditions like the Christmas tree have their roots in druidic tradition, but experts suggest that the date of December 25 might have its roots in Christian theology rather than pagan practices
Writing in the Biblical Archaeology Review, Professor McGowan says: ‘Most significantly, the first mention of a date for Christmas and the earliest celebrations that we know about come in a period when Christians were not borrowing heavily from pagan traditions of such an obvious character.’
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Instead, Professor McGowan suggests that the date of December 25 might have been chosen because it is exactly nine months before the supposed date of Jesus’ crucifixion on March 25.
Early Christians strongly believed that Jesus died on the exact date that he was first conceived by the Virgin Mary.
Professor McGowan writes: ‘Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.’
‘Connecting Jesus’ conception and death in this way will certainly seem odd to modern readers, but it reflects ancient and medieval understandings of the whole of salvation being bound up together.’