Wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate Jesus’ birthday quietly, apart from the typical rush of the holiday season that the world re-defined with Seasons Greetings? There are good reasons to consider reconsidering our traditions.

Most Bible scholars agree that Jesus was not born on December 25. In fact it is generally understood that this date was chosen by church leaders sometime around 400 A.D. so they could celebrate the birth of Christ and still appease the non-believers by coexisting with some of the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. That spirit of appeasement continues today as the words “Seasons Greetings” have replaced “Merry Christmas” in advertisements, verbal greetings, and even our Christmas cards.

Serious biblical scholars have taken clues from Luke 2:8 in which we learn that shepherds were watching their flocks at night. From that verse they have determined that the Christ child was probably born in the spring, the time of year when lambs are born, a most critical time when shepherds closely guarded the sheep to protect the newborn lambs from predators. It is highly unlikely that shepherds would keep their sheep on the hillsides in wintertime.

Bethlehem is only about five and a half miles from Jerusalem. Bethlehem was the place where the very finest sheep were kept, as every year the sacrificial lamb would be selected for the Jewish Passover in Jerusalem.

Christian Jewish Rabbi, Jonathan Cahn, studied the Scriptures and other historical documents from ancient times and discovered numerous valid reasons to believe that Christ was born on Nissan 1, which in 2021 falls on March 14. Like Easter, the date is determined by the Hebrew calendar which is based on the phases of the moon, so on our calendar it doesn’t fall on the same date every year. This year Nissan 1 falls 3 weeks before Easter. Last year it fell on March 26, a Thursday. A simple search of the Internet will give you the date for any given year, but it will always fall within a week or two before Palm Sunday.

Nissan is the first month of the Jewish calendar. The word Nissan means “the beginning.” Nissan 1 corresponds with the date the Israelites first erected the tabernacle under Moses’ leadership. See Exodus 40:1-2. The tabernacle represented God’s presence with the Israelites.

Evidence exists in Vatican records that before the Christians took December 25 to represent Christ’s birthday, the most recognized date was Nissan 1. At the time the new date was chosen, the date Nissan 1 was censored out of most early church writings.

I can only scratch the surface of the information Jonathan Cahn shared in an interview in December 2014 in which he gives much more convincing evidence that Nissan 1 is the true birth of Christ Jesus. I have included the link at the end of this article for your consideration.

I personally look forward to the opportunity to celebrate the birth of Christ without having to live up to or rise above the world’s expectations and demands. I believe a quiet retreat into an otherwise unnoticed day might offer depth of meaning that has been drowned out with packages and the whirlwind of busying traditions. We don’t have to give up those December traditions. After all, the wise men were the first to come bearing gifts, and they didn’t find baby Jesus in a manger. The star guided them to a house. And based on King Herod’s killing of all male children in Bethlehem two years old and younger, Jesus may well have been almost two years old at the time. We can still celebrate giving gifts and remembering the Christ Child any time of the year. But the thought of having another day set apart and away from the eyes of the rest of the world for celebrating the real birthday of Christ Jesus seems very appealing to me.

by Janice D. Green, author of Baby Jesus . . . Messiah! released February 17, 2021.

Double click the link below to watch Jonathan Cahn’s interview about the true date of Christ Jesus’ birth. The link will take you the YouTube video. https://youtu.be/ptlsXtTf6n0