Jesus and the Calendar

Looking for some Christmas-related reading to satisfy this morning's intellectual curiousity?

Calendars and their History

The ecclesiastical calendars of Christian churches are based on cycles of movable and immovable feasts. Christmas is the principal immovable feast, with its date set at December 25. Easter is the principal movable feast, and dates of most other movable feasts are determined with respect to Easter. However, the movable feasts of the Advent and Epiphany seasons are Sundays reckoned from Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany, respectively.

Jesus Birth Date Riddle

Pinpointing Christ's Birth Date

Most of the information needed to establish when our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ was born in the flesh is contained in the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke the Evangelist. Additional critical information is found in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and in a Roman inscription discovered in 1794, as well as the other sources earlier alluded to. According to St. Luke, the Holy Virgin and Theotokos Mary conceived in the sixth month of the pregnancy of her well-aged cousin Elizabeth (Luke 1:24-26). St. Elizabeth conceived (miraculously, considering her advanced years), immediately after "those days" (Luke 1:22-24), which were climaxed by a vision experienced by the priest Zacharias as he was offering incense before God in the Temple of Solomon while "the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of the incense" (Luke 1:10, AV; NEB reads: "The whole congregation was at prayer outside," and this was during the reign of "Herod, King of udæa" and prior to when Tiberius became Cæsar Augustus [Emperor] of Rome [Luke 1:5; 3:1], and when Quirinius [Cyrenius] was governor of Syria [Luke 2:2]). St. Matthew confirms that the Birth of our Savior took place while Herod the Great was King of Judæa. If St. Vincent of Lerins is correct, that information, together with ecclesiastical tradition, should certainly suffice to determine exactly when Jesus Christ was born.

And of course, there are many many more sites on this topic out there.