I wish I could remember where I saw it, but I remember reading somewhere, that January 1st was the date that Jesus was circumcised, which would mean that he was born on the 25th. Cool Story, Bro…
January 1st is the traditional date of the Circumcision, just as January 6th is the traditional date of the Epiphany. Note that the Eastern Church generally puts more emphasis on Epiphany, anyway.
According to Wikipedia, the date of Christmas may be based on nothing more than coming nine months after the Annunciation. There is an old tradition putting that event on 10 Nisan, which can coincide with March 25.
Look, nobody who was present at the birth of Jesus (Mary, Joseph, shepards, wise men, cattle, sheep, innkeeper, midwive, whoever) kept a diary or blog. The story of his birth ws fictionalized to correspond with the predicted events in the Old Testament.
I was born on April 18th. How about that? 
My star sign is the Ram.
Fictionalized? You mean like how Ben Franklin flew a kite in that thunderstorm with the key tied to the string? Or like how an apple actually fell on Issac Newton’s head while he sat under an apple tree, just prior to his discovery of gravity?
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Xmas or any holidays or birthdays.
Fictionalized more like people go through Nostradamus’s writings and make the event fit the prediction.
Much worse than that. They took (or made up) verses that were not Messianic, made them predictions, and then made up events to fit them.
The birth narratives of Matthew and Luke contradict the Hebrew Bible, secular history, common sense, and even each other. Most notably, Matthew says that when Herod learned that a candidate for Messiah was born, he immediately plotted to kill him, sending the Magi to identify him, and sending soldiers to massacre all the male infants of Bethlehem when the Magi failed to return. (Makes no sense, since Herod was sure to die long before an infant from a poor family could possibly rival him, and he had no love for his heirs, executing three of them). This allegedly has Joseph fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod shortly after Jesus was born, and remaining there until Herod died, which may have been several years. Matthew also says that even after Herod died, Joseph was warned by God to stay out of Judea while Archelaus reigned, which was another ten years.
Luke says that six weeks after Jesus was born, he was publicly presented in the Temple in Jerusalem, right under Herod’s nose, and was proclaimed the Messiah by various holy denizens of the Temple. If Herod was as paranoid about rivals as Matthew claims, this could not possibly have escaped his attention. But Luke says the family then went home to Nazareth, completely unmolested, and returned to Jerusalem (in Judea) every year after that for Passover.
Complete, and bad, fiction.
But the point is- Jesus was a real person (even Cecil sez so), so he had to have a real birthday. Despite the fact that the calculations appear to be based upon mystic numbers and backdating from other events, Dec 25th is as good a day as any others. Since it wasn’t any bigger deal bad then than the day He was circumcised, there’s no reason to suspect anything other than sincerity of which date they picked.
Altho Brocks does make some points (the dating does seem to be rather off, at least) it’s also a documented fact that Herod was a complete rat bastard, certainly capable of ordering the death of a handful of kids in a tiny village (he ordered the deaths of his own family with ease). Even during medieval times, various kings “got rid of” many young “pretenders” to their throne, even if the kid was no real threat- any rallying point for dissidents is dangerous. So I could see Herod the Psychopath saying “Hey these crazy goyim astrologers say some “Messiah” was born in Bethlehem. Never heard of it- it’s got what, 100 people? Fuck, send the guards to kills any recent boy babes just in case. Too many damn peasants anyway. “
You are welcome to believe that Herod would do that, and that it would go unmentioned by everyone else — not just by Josephus and Roman records that detailed much smaller crimes of Herod, but even the other Gospel writers.
But I defy you to reconcile that with Luke’s story of Jesus being publicly proclaimed the Messiah right in the Temple six weeks after he was born, and the family re-visiting Jerusalem every year, without a hint of trouble from either Herod or Archelaus.
You know, we really don’t have many Roman records. For centuries, even the reality of Pontius Pilate was doubted, there wasn’t any solid archeological evidence of him found until 1961. Pilate stone - Wikipedia
He is mentioned in Josephus, and very briefly by Tactitus. So, the fact that the actions of Herod, who really wasn’t very important to the Romans, aren’t covered is hardly a surprise.
So, they went to the Temple- so? He was then Jesus of Nazareth, aka Jesua ben Joseph, a very common name. Herod didn’t know his name, just His approximate age and a birthplace of Bethlehem, not Nazareth. Besides Herod thought he was dead.
But the actions of Herod are covered, in some detail. We have all kinds of stories about him and his crimes from non-Biblical sources. But his alleged greatest crime of all is known only to Matthew, and nobody else, not even Luke.
Luke gives his own detailed biography of Jesus, covering the exact same period, and doesn’t even mention it. This would be like someone writing a biography of Lincoln, with special emphasis on the 1860’s, and not mentioning the Civil War. It simply defies belief.
They didn’t just go to the Temple. They went to the Temple, publicly presented Jesus, and had him hailed by the holiest people in the Temple as the Messiah. Again, it is absolutely impossible that this would not have been reported to Herod by his informants.
No, he wasn’t. He had never been to Nazareth. He was six weeks old, and had been in Bethlehem until being taken to Jerusalem.
Suppose all that is true. Now Herod knows that another newborn baby from Bethlehem has just been proclaimed the Messiah by the Temple saints. He didn’t need to perpetrate a mass slaughter this time, he just needed to kill one child who had been identified right there in Jerusalem, and whose family would be traveling alone back to Nazareth. Do you think he would not have acted?
And you have yet to answer how Joseph can simultaneously stay out of Judea for well over ten years, and yet visit Jerusalem every year.
I never said there weren’t discrepencies. Look, Geo Washington was very real. He died only about 200 years ago. But there are still scads of myths about him in only that short time. Now it’s true there’s a little confusion over his birthday due to calendars, but there’s no reason to suppose he was never born or that dudes made up his birthday to match some weird political goal.
Greatest Crime? Maybe 20 kids, perhaps as few as a half-dozen? Hardly a blip. Herod had that many innocents killed before breakfast.
Jones notes that the term “surroundings” is a specific term referring to the rural areas around the village of Bethlehem. It does not refer to any other nearby towns or villages. At the time Bethlehem was a small village and it and its surrounding area would have had a very small population.[4] Albright and Mann estimate the village would have had only some 300 people at the time,[5] Raymond E. Brown estimates it was around a thousand.[6] For all these figures, the number of children killed would have been less than twenty.[7] This number clashes with the traditional view of thousands of deaths, but it helps explain why the massacre was not mentioned by any historians such as Josephus. The killing of all the infants in a small village would have been only one of many massacres Herod is recorded to have carried out in his later years.[8] At the same time Brown notes that the double word all shows that the author of Matthew is trying to portray a large massacre.[9]
wiki;
R. T. France argues for plausibility on the grounds that “the murder of a few infants in a small village [is] not on a scale to match the more spectacular assassinations recorded by Josephus”. [16] Paul L. Maier argues that sceptics have tended to “regard opinion as fact, and have largely avoided a careful historical search into the parameters of the problem”. After analysing the arguments against the historicity of the infant massacre Maier concludes they all “have very serious flaws”.[17] Maier follows Jerry Knoblet[18] in arguing for historicity based on the “identical personality profiles that emerge of Herod” in both Matthew and Josephus;[19]
And it is covered in two other sources, altho they date after Matthew:
*The story’s first appearance in any source other than Matthew is in the 2nd-century apocryphal Protoevangelium of James of c.150 AD, which excludes the Flight into Egypt and switches the attention of the story to the infant John the Baptist:
"And when Herod knew that he had been mocked by the Magi, in a rage he sent murderers, saying to them: Slay the children from two years old and under. And Mary, having heard that the children were being killed, was afraid, and took the infant and swaddled Him, and put Him into an ox-stall…
The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded four centuries later by Macrobius (c. 395-423), who writes in his Saturnalia:
“When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered to kill, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod’s pig, than his son.”[21]
*
So-doubtful maybe, but certainly possible, especially given what we know about Herod.
(Most of which is covered by Josephus, not other Roman historians, take a look at Herods wiki page, almost every ancient cite is from Josephus, not “Roman records”- of which we have few)
The Jewish ritual circumcision, the Brit Milah, is performed on an eight day old baby boy; even if it is Shabbat.
First I counted on one hand, then on two, and I can’t make January 1 minus eight days come out to December 25.
Aha! But, if you count December 25 as 1 (and not December 26, which would instead be 2), as the Romans and the Jews did, I think you’ll find it works perfectly.
This is my go-to article on Christmas.
It touches on (and refutes) the influence of Mithraism and Sol Invictus.
Great cite!