How about the thesis that the fabricators of the story felt pretty confident that if they said there was a star, three magi, a virgin birth, a census etc. fifty or seventy years ago, the human race will never have advanced enough to check their nonsense out, so HAHAHA on you!
"…the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was."
Makes me wonder how high up said “star” was. Finding a single place under something like a streetlight is one thing. Pinpointing one location under a star, comet, meteor – any astronomical entity – doesn’t strike me as remotely possible.
I heard a Muslim imam say that Jesus must have been born in August or September. Because the Qur’an says that Mary gave birth under a date palm tree, and she was told to shake the trunk so that fresh ripe dates would fall for her to be refreshed. Dates ripen in August or September.
There is an alternative theory regarding the dating of Christmas. Some may balk at its source, and the fact that it contradicts Cecil. But it’s there nevertheless, and it seems reasonable to me:
Interesting thread/username combo there, Annie-Xmas. 
Herod the Great did order heirs to his throne drowned, e.g. his young brother-in-law Aristobulus, so the baby-killing myth may have a half-basis.
Since OP’s question has been answered (we don’t know when Jesus was born – the Springtime claim also relies on Nativity stories of doubtful validity), may I hijack to ask about Herod’s grandchildren?
I suppose it is historic fact that Salome danced for her half-uncle/stepfather Herod Antipas, but did he really give her John the Baptist’s head as reward?
I heard Dr Kaufmanis speak at the University of Minnesota back in the '80s. He explained how the triple conjunction (Mars was included as well) took place in the constellation of Pisces, which the Magi would have associated with the Hebrews, and would have stayed in the sky long enough to guide them on their journey from the East.
He also noted that there was a mistranslation from the Greek at the passage in the Bible where it says “We have seen his star in the East and have come to worship him.” What was meant was that they had seen his star rising with the Sun, rather than in or at any geographical location (anatoli instead of anatolai).
When the calendar was altered to reflect Jesus’s birth, it was done on the basis of a statement that he was born in the 28th year of the reign of Augustus. It was, however, overlooked that Augustus had also ruled for four years under the name Octavian, so the calendar was off by at least that amount of time.
Also, Jesus was not born in “Year Zero.” The concept of zero was introduced to the Christian world much later by the Muslims. In Roman times, the calendar went from 1 BC directly to 1 AD (which is why the current millennium began in 2001, not 2000, and will end in 2100).
I’ve never understood why the Church doesn’t celebrate the Nativity in the spring, despite the evidence that it happened then. It would give added significance to Jesus’s life if it were considered to have begun and ended at Passover.
No, no, no. The statement in the gospel of Luke was that John the Baptist began doing his baptizing in 15th Tiberius (now called AD 29), and that Jesus “turned about 30” when he came to John for baptism. Dionysius Exiguus assumed that Jesus turned exactly 30 (despite the fact the text of Luke is honest about its uncertainty about the exact age) when he was baptized, assuming that was early in John’s ministry hence what we call “AD 30”. Exiguus himself actually preferred “AP” dating, Anno Passionis starting at Easter (rounded off for convenience to April 1) in the year of the Crucifixion: the task he was given by the church when he came up with his chronology was finding a good formula for the first full moon of spring (the Passover moon when the crucifixion happened), and of course he calculated when that full moon would have fallen on the weekend during the governorship of Pontius Pilate, giving AD 33 or AD 36 as possibilities (I think 36 more likely, but he went with 33).
No, in Roman times nobody had yet thought of “AD” dates at all. The “BC” numbering with its botch is the product of Archbishop Ussher, whose Biblical chronology started with the Creation in October of 4004 BC.
We can declare the millennium to have started anytime we like. I don’t care for the no-zero botch, so instead of calling the year before 1 AD “1 BC” I retroactively name it “0 AD”, and the year before that I do not call “2 BC” but rather “-1 AD”. Why not? Nobody used either naming scheme at the time!
Sigh… look, it isn’t just you. Every yera, around December, I see newspaper and magazine articles saying (ARE YOU READY FOR THIS??? IT WILL BOW YOUR MIND!!!), “Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th!”
And we Christians are supposed to react… how? By questioning everything we’ve ever hedl dear?
We KNOW Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th! ANY Catholic clergyman would gladly have TOLD you that nobody knows exactly when Jesus was born! The Gospel writers either didn’t know the date or didn’t think it was important.
But it doesn’t matter- you can be sure this same shocking expose will be publihed again next December.
Incidentally, while it’s quite POSSIBLE that early Church fathers chose December 25th as the date of Christmas because it was already a popular pagan holiday, that view is in hot dispute among historians. There are many who argue the reverse- that the pagan emperor Aurelian tried to MAKE Sol Invictus a big feast day to stand in opposition to the increasingly popular Christian holiday.
I wonder if the poster of this topic is still with us or even reading the answers?
Anyway, the question is quite easily answered.
1: 25th December is in the Hebrew/Jewish month of Kislev. Kislev is a cold time in Israel back then and now. Cold rains and winds are the least you can expect. Shepherds would never camp out with the sheep in the month of Kislev. The animals would be kept inside.
2: Just use Google. Just Google Christmas and you will find out all about the old Syrian, Germanic, Scandinavian and Roman “parties” around that date. You will read about winter solstice, Sol Invictus, Yule, Saturnalia, Odin and so on. It’s not a secret, this is sooo public.
3: The date was picked around the 4th century AD. By the Roman Catholic Church. That should say enough. They have always had a habit of “pimping” or rebranding parts of other religions to win people over. Anything to fill the seats. Same thing in South America and Africa up to this day.
Significantly, most historians and Bible scholars reject December 25 as Jesus’ date of birth. No doubt you will find such information in an encyclopedia to which you have access. *Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia *states: “There is general agreement that Jesus was not born on December 25.”
4: Hebrews/Jews **NEVER celebrated birthdays! ** Search the entire bible and you will only find two birthdays mentioned; Pharaoh in Joseph’s time and Herod in Jesus’ time. On both occasions somebody got killed. No biblical worshiper or early Christian ever celebrated birthdays. After the Roman empire hijacked the faith Christians slowly became completely ignorant of their own faith. That’s why the question of this topic keeps being asked.
5: The Hebrew God explicitly forbids astrology and idolatry in both Old and New Testament, forbids looking to the stars and celestial bodies or natural phenomena for signs.
Why would that God signal astrologers (magi) from the East?
Why would that same God signal men that don’t worship him but do what he forbids?
Why would he lead them to the enemy, King Herod instead of straight to the child only to warn them after on not to go back to Herod? And afterward warn Joseph to flee to Egypt with the baby because of Herod wanting to kill the child?
The “star” or sign in the sky had nothing to do with God but with the enemy. And of course it was nothing natural like a supernova or comet which we could date back. Stars don’t go to one spot, hang over a palace, then continue to another house and hang over that. Think about it. Scientifically it does not make sense, religiously it also doesn’t make sense.
(noticed how most “Christmas stars” are 5-pointed and upside-down these days?)
5: We shouldn’t care about the birth date of Christ. His followers never cared, that’s why they didn’t write it down! Neither did anyone write down Moses’ or Abraham’s date of birth. Is there even a single date of birth written in the entire bible?
6: Hebrews/Jews did commemorate the day a beloved one died. They valued the work and good deeds one had done in life. No surprise then that the date Jesus died was noted: 14th Nisan. In 2013 the 14th of Nisan is on Tuesday March 26th after sunset. (Hebrew/Jewish days end and start with sunset)
7 Jesus did ask his disciples to keep commemorating his death. Luke22:19
**More the point:
**
Not in winter
The registration. Shortly before Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus issued a decree ordering ““all the inhabited earth to be registered.”” Everyone had to register in ““his own city,”” which might have required a journey of a week or more. (Luke 2:1-3) To comply with the order, Mary, despite being heavy with child, accompanied her husband, Joseph, on the journey of some 90 miles [150 km] from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Now think about it. Does it seem likely that Augustus—a ruler who rarely interfered with local government—would require a people who were already inclined to revolt to make such a long trip in winter?
The sheep. Shepherds were ““living out of doors and keeping watches in the night over their flocks.”” (Luke 2:8) The book Daily Life in the Time of Jesus notes that flocks lived in the open air from ““the week before the Passover [late March]”” through mid-November. It then adds: ““They passed the winter under cover; and from this alone it may be seen that the traditional date for Christmas, in the winter, is unlikely to be right, since the Gospel says that the shepherds were in the fields.””
In early fall
We can estimate when Jesus was born by counting backward from his death on Passover, Nisan 14 in the spring of the year 33 C.E. (John 19:14-16) Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his three-and-a-half-year ministry, so he was born in the early fall of 2 B.C.E.—Luke 3:23.
Greetings,
Ruben
PS The way a Christian should respond to the "shocking"news is run out of any church that supports this fake celebration. Run, yes flee for your life out of any organization that is not truly following Christ. If God is all about truth and honesty how can anyone or anything that is false or untrue have anything to do with him? The truth is out there if you you’re willing to look and ask questions. Use your mind, escape while you can.
Warning: you might have to actually read the bible yourself. (the horror!)
No. If you have a year 0 AD then you have a year 0 BC. You have both or none. You can’t have one without the other.
What is so confusing about not having a year zero? There is no century zero either. There is no day zero of the month.
Do you also propose we renumber the days of the month and the centuries so they have a zero?
You can count years (centuries, etc) which have passed since a given moment in time using cardinal numbers and then you have a zero during the time when the amount of time transpired does not amount to a full integer. It is one way of counting which is more suited to fractions.
But you can count using ordinal numbers and say a few days after a baby is born that the baby is in the first year of its life. It has not completed a full year but he is in the first year. You can see there is no zero. So in old times they used this system and it caused them no problem because they were used to it. The first century started with year 1 (not year zero) and ended with year 100. The first year started with day 1 (not day zero) and ended with day 365. The first day started with the first hour (not hour zero) and ended with the 24th hour. The first hour started with the first minute (not minute zero) and ended with the 60th minute. Etc.
Not so strange if you think that the days of the month start at 1 and not zero, the months of the year also start at 1 etc.
It seems to confuse people much more when you start numbering at zero. Say “we got 8 bits , 0 through 7, and people go ‘huh’”?
Follow that star!
XKCD nailing it as usual! Three Wise Men
This has been regarded by some as the best explanation, but it may not be the correct explanation.
That may have been the point. The state religions of Rome and Persia were big on astrology. So having astrologers note the birth of Jesus and go to worship him was basically a way of declaring the superiority of Christianity over the established religions.
The calendar was altered while the Roman Empire was still extant:
I can declare myself President of the United States too, but that doesn’t mean I am.
You can listen to Dr Kaufmanis’s Star of Bethlehem lecture here:
I see he retired from the U of M in 1978, so it must have been sometime in the '70s when I attended the lecture.
Yetticus-THANK YOU for the second link! I now know I’m not losing my mind. (at least over this)
Thanks. This gets at the same thing that I was getting at with my earlier link. Yet this explanation doesn’t seem to satisfy many here. I wonder why not?
I’ve always thought the biblical stories of the birth of Jesus were retcons. These go back and fix Jesus of Nazareth to be Jesus of Bethlehem. (to synch with prophecies)
The story of the escape from Herod is just like so many other Heros (Moses, Hercules) who had a brush with death when they were wee lads. It’s a standard part of any mythology.
I used to be a fan of the Fall Festivals theory of Jesus’s birth & still happily celebrated Christmas as THAT would have been the time of the Conception. I have since decided that I’m going to defend an actual Dec 25 Nativity as the support for it is much earlier in the Church than I previously thought.
Why doesn’t the explanation satisfy many? First, it is a rather new discovery of a very old position. Second, many people enjoy bashing “tradition”, Protestants bashing Catholic tradition, skeptics bashing Christian tradition- especially if it can be mixed with actual tenets of faith to bash those also. Heck, even seen the stupid “Jesus Myth” concept gets some respect on the SDMB.