I noticed that the Immaculate Conception is celebrated in early December. Do Catholics believe that Mary’s pregnancy only lasted 3 weeks?
The Immaculate Conception refers to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, not Jesus.
Jesus’ conception is traced back to the Annunciation, which is celebrated on March 25, nine months before Christmas.
It’s ok DaveRaver among Catholics, we find this to be a common “rookie mistake.” 
blinks Wow, how many pregnancies last exactly nine months? 
Also, which was decided first, when Jesus was born, or when he was concieved? Remember that there is no mention of the dates in the Bible, so the Church had to fudge some numbers somewhere…
I thought the Annunciation was the archangel Gabriel telling Mary she’ll carry Jesus. I don’t think Mary herself was conceived by Immaculate Conception, so how long after Mary was told did the immaculate conception take place?
BobT: The Immaculate Conception of Mary? This is the first I’ve heard that St. Joachim was not her father and that St Ann conceived with divine intervention.
The feasts of the Annunciation and the Immaculate Conception commemorate the same thing. The gospel reading for both feasts (Luke 1:26-38) is the same. I would suggest – in answer to the OP – that the Annunciation commemorates this event about nine months before Christmas, on March 25th, as one would expect in “real time”; while the Immaculate Conception on December 8th allows this event to be remembered again, fittingly, during the season of Advent prior to Christmas.
Christmas itself was chosen to coincide with the Winter Solstice.
December 8 is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is totally a Marian celebration.
“Mary remained with Elizabeth about three months and then returned home.” (Lk 1:56)
After the Archangel Gabriel’s visit, Mary (without Joseph) rushed to her cousin Elizabeth with the news. Elizabeth, who was previously thought to be sterile, was herself the sixth month of pregnancy with the future John the Baptist.
Perhaps Mary returned home when her own pregnancy was clear (shortly before Elizabeth gave birth as indicated by verse 57)?
No further indication of timing is given between this and Chapter 2, where the birth of Jesus is related by Luke.
It is worth noting for this discussion that Luke is the only evangelist who tells the story of the Annunciation. Matthew’s gospel speaks of Mary conceiving through the power of the Holy Spirit (1:18, 1:20) and the appearance of angel to Joseph in a dream (1:20-24) but not to Mary herself. The evangelists Mark and John don’t even write about Jesus’s birth.
You still haven’t heard that. A common, um, misconception, is that the term refers to conception without sex. The idea is that Mary was conceived without original sin, and was thus a worthy vessel to carry divine offspring.
Which might still be considered “divine intervention,” depending on how you define the term.
This isn’t at all what you were asking about, it turns out, but I have sometimes wondered if Jesus might have been born slightly early – it would explain why they hadn’t had time to arrange a better place to stay. Maybe they thought they’d be back home before it was time.
The Catholic Church calendar works out this way:
Annunciation: March 25
Nativity of John the Baptist: June 24
Christmas: December 25
All Luke says is “While they were there the days of her confinement were completed.” (Luke 2:6)
The dates in the calendar are all figured out after the fact.
The doctrine of “Immaculate Conception” refers only to the the conception of Mary. Jesus’s conception is never properly called an “Immaculate Conception.” The idea the Jesus was born without Mary ever having sexual intercourse is known as the doctrine of the virgin birth.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is particular useful in questions such as this. Here’s what it says about the Annunciation. It sounds like both Gabriel telling Mary she’ll carry Jesus and the conception of Jesus occurred at this time. It also acknowledges that the date for this feast was determined solely by subtracting 9 months from Christmas.
I’m sorry I don’t have references for this, perhaps someone can either support or rectify it.
I recall reading that Jesus’s birth would have been in the spring, that being the time for the census/tax issue that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. April sticks in my mind.
Other than that clue, I believe the Bible offers no dates for Jesus’ conception or birth.
As suggested in previous posts here, his birth date was arbitrarily chosen to blend in with pre-existing solstice/year’s end celebrations, and other related dates calculated from that.
The reason that Jesus’s birth is thought to have been in the spring is not because of the census, but because of the mention of shepherds being in the fields watching their flocks at the time. The only time of year shepherds stay continuously with their flocks is the spring, when the lambs are being born.
In fact, there is little or no evidence a census was actually held at the time of Jesus’s birth. For more info see Dex’s Staff Report: What did the census at the time of the birth of Christ accomplish?
I’ve read a few places thay Jesus was born in Sept. on a Holy Day.
Which would’ve made Him be concieved in December…
I had heard Jesus’ actual birth was late September to mid-October.
This is because Elizabeth was six months along when Mary found out she was going to bear Jesus. Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah served in the Temple (which is where he found out he was going to be the father of John the Baptist) at certain times of the year.
If you do the math, you can figure out that Jesus was (probably) born in September.
There is a discussion of the subject here.
Regards,
Shodan
Small hijack.
From Dex’s report:
Not only would it have been chaotic, but it seems to me it would have completely undermined the point of a census. If people were moving around, going to the towns that their ancestors came from, rather than being counted where they were living, government apportionments would have been skewed disastrously. Small villages that had once been large towns would be expected to provide more tax money than was possible and large cities might get off easily. Nobody would know how many people actually lived in any particular area. Doesn’t sound like a good census to me (although it does sound like a real census, unfortunately.
The celebration of Christmas was set on December 25th so that it came just after the Winter Solstice. This was already regarded as a festive time of year in the Levant as it was the time for various pagan fetivals. The god Mithra, for instance, was thought to have been born of a virgin in late December.
Setting Christian holidays so that they coincided with older feasts was a recurrent practice. Hence All Saints Day–and Halloween, the day before it–coinciding with the Celtic observation of Samhain.
As noted abopve, the Immaculate Conception is a title given to Mary, and refers to the sometimes obscure doctrine of Original Sin. The term developed among Roman Catholic theologians in the mid 19th Century. After St. Bernadette told her pastor that she was seeing visions of a beautiful lady, he told her to ask her straight out who she was. The apparition told her to say that she was The Immaculate Conception. The term was not yet in widespread use at the time, and Bernadette claimed to be unfamiliar with what it meant. This was interpreted by some as significant proof that the woman in the visions was in fact Mary.
The Chruch of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints ( the Mormons) hold as one of their revelations that Jesus was actually born on a date in April.
To state it plainly, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception refers to the birth of Mary, by normal biological means, but with a soul “immaculate” of original sin.
The Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, nor does it refer to a virgin birth.