Im not religious, but we were taught that the calendar started being tracked when Jesus was born, but if that is the case, why isn’t his birthday the first day of the year?
Im not religious, but we were taught that the calendar started being tracked when Jesus was born, but if that is the case, why isn’t his birthday the first day of the year?
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Well, we don’t exactly know the day Jesus was born. Tradition says it was the 25th of December. If you think about it, it’s just 6 days before New Year, so the difference is really minimum
…the years didn’t start being counted when Jesus was supposedly born. There are history buffs that argue he was actually born around 6 to 4 BC, sooooooo.
Edit: Did some more Googling and the calendar we’re most familiar with is the Gregorian calendar which was commissioned by…. The pope in 1582. In other words, people didn’t start counting BC/AD as it was happening, but rather, years later it was retroactively counted.
Off the top of my head, our calendar is based on the Roman one, which counted from the founding of Rome in 700ish BC. Later Christians moved the start retroactively to a year closeish to jesus approximate birth.
A previous Roman god worshipped by later pagan emperors was called sol invictus, many of his rituals etc were reskinned and adopted by early Christians, Sol invictus followers celebrated his birthday on December 25th and so that festival was co-opted by early christians.
Think Jesus was actually possibly born in like march or something?
If I had a week I couldn’t type up everything wrong with this post so I’m just going to keep it simple.
Humans were recording history long before Christianity existed. They didn’t start “counting the years” when Jesus was born.
Shhhhhh.
Also because it was a whole series of parties around that time, particularly Saturnalia, which you couldn’t cancel.
It would have felt the same as cancelling Christmas, in their eyes.
On a related note, there are often interesting similarities between the patron saints of towns and the patron Greco-Roman gods of those towns originally. The concept of sainthood was very helpful to allow the old religions to be displaced, because it offered polytheism within a monotheistic marketing structure.
I’m just making shit up as I go
The calendar we use is an adjusted version of the Roman one. Only the year was changed and that wasn’t done until some time around 600 AD by a monk called Dionysius Exiguus.
I was raised Catholic and forced to attend 12 years of Catholic school. From what I have read, most believe that Jesus wasn’t actually born in December due to what they know about shepherds tending flocks at that time etc. Most believe that it was moved to coincide with pagan holidays to entice people to Christianity. For example, a Christmas tree isn’t Christian, it’s pagan. It’s part of a pagan winter festival. And the calendar was actually changed more than once. The Mayans had their own calendar, there was the Gregorian and then the Romans. I think that the formation of the Catholic church due to Jesus had such a huge impact on history that his birth was used as a reference but it really isn’t perfectly accurate.
Because they didn’t. AD calendar was invented in 525 by a monk who basically pulled it out of his ass and just changed numbering of the existing Roman calendar. Jesus day of birth has never been specified and it moved several times until it settled on 25 December.
We don’t actually know when Jesus was born. It seems to actually be a few years after 0. Most modern estimates say probably around 3 AD, but there have been experts who estimate as late as 20 AD.
As far as what time of he was born, we don’t know, but there is some evidence that places it sometime between June and October.
Christmas was picked as his birthday because it allowed them to coopt an extremely popular existing holiday called Saturnalia in the Roman tradition. This made it easier to convert people. It was based around the winter solstice which changes dates slightly from year to year, but is generally around Dec 20th.
How it got fixed into December 25th is a bit complicated, but it largely has to do with the fact they wanted to pick a specific day, and then the calendar system changed a couple of times since then.
As to why New Years is not just moved back a couple of days to December 25th, it’s actually the Romans once again. Historically New Years was originally celebrated in March. Julius Caesar moved it to January 1st. It does relate to the same Winter Solstice that Saturnalia is based on, but it was basically supposed to be the end of that festival. It gets kinda complicated again. But one interesting thing is most of the UK and it’s colonies continued to celebrate New Years in March until surprisingly recently. Just around the time of the American Revolution in fact.
The two are unconnected.
We get our calendar from the Romans (they got it from other people, but that is irrelevant for this discussion). At first they had a year consisting of 12 months and 355 days. As we know a solar year has around 365.2422 days. To fix this drift every so often Pontifex Maximus, the head priest of Rome, would add an intecalary month of 27 or 28 days after February.
But since the office of Pontifex Maximus was often held by politicians they would abuse that power for to extend or shorthen the terms of their friends and rivals, leading to the Roman calendar drifting months away from the solar year.
Julius Ceasar, who was at the time Pontifex Maximus, got some Egyptians to reform the Roman calendar. That’s how we got 12 months, 365 days, and a leap year of 366 days every four years. Later Pope Gregory XIII would reform it a bit by removing some leap years so it would be even closer to the solar year.
The Romans counted years by the names of two ruling consuls, with the consular year beginning on January 1st. Which is basically how we got our calendar. During early medieval times there were many different systems of counting years alongside the consular one.
So, why do we count from 1 AD? The answer is Easter tables, basically tables which calculate the date of Easter every year. Early Easter tables calculated Easters starting with the reign of Diocletian. But a Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus didn’t like that system because of Diocletian’s anti-Christian pogroms so in 525 AD he came up with Anno Domini system. We don’t know what methodology he used but he started counting Easters based on his estimation of Jesus’s birth. Anno Domini became the system we count years by, although Jesus was probably born a few years before 1 AD.
Not sure why everybody here is talking about the calender years rather than answering his question.
What i heard as a child was that january first was the day of his circumcision, and the day he got his name. In judaism, circumcision is the ceremony where you enter the jewish pact with god, so it somewhat makes sense to start the year on the day he entered religion/judaism. Circumcision is done when the baby is 8 days old, and someone born on december 25th is 8 days old on january first.
If you want to confirm this you will have to google it yourself.
Because we use the Gregorian Calendar OP. July and August were made by Romans. Julius Caeser and Augustus(?)
Theres no way Jesus was a Capricorn…lol
Christmas is celebrated on Dec 25th because it’s close to the winter solstice, and hanukkah so it was it was easier to convert pagans and jews to Christianity.
Just like how Easter always coincides with passover and the spring equinox.
It’s all made up. They don’t have any idea when he was born. Bonus question. Why is his birthday always on December 25 but his death day is a different day each year? Riddle me that
Because he wasn’t actually a real person, and accounts about him (all religious in nature), give wildly varying birthdates and years.
Calendars keep on changing. From Mayans and Romans on.
Today, we Don’t know what is a bigger PITA DST or Pick a style Calendar.