Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas
My guest today is Dr Philipp Nothaft. Philipp is a Fellow of All Souls Oxford and a historian specializing in astronomy, astrology and calendars in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. He’s also the author of a key paper on the question of why Christmas falls on December 25th, which is our main topic today. It’s often claimed in pop history that Christians stole a pagan feast day and made it into Christmas, and this is a version of a thesis scholars developed in the late nineteenth century. But Philipp and several other recent scholars have bolstered an alternative theory that seems to fit the evidence better, as he’ll discuss with me today.
Further Reading
Steven Hijmans, “Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas”, Mouseion, Series III, Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 377-98 and his monograph Sol: Image and Meaning of the Sun in Roman Art and Religion Vol. 1 (Brill, 2022).
Thomas C. Schmidt, “Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ ‘Canon’ and ‘Chronicon’” Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 69, No. 5 (2015), pp. 542-563.
Philipp Nothaft, “Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the ‘Calculation … Theory'” Questions Liturgiques, 94 (2013), pp. 247-65.
8 thoughts on “Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas”
Fantastic interview. Very helpful information. Thanks for your work!
Hey I have a question fantastic interview but what’s your opinion on the book The birth of the Messiah did I read it is it good in scholarly
Thank you both for this great interview!
Since Christianity started as a Jewish sect, couldn’t Hanukkah be a more obvious inspiration for Christmas than some Pagan feasts?
Hanukkah is on december 25th (in the Jewish calendar) and has traditions like lighting candles and giving gifts, even though I’m not sure how old these traditions actually are, maybe the inspiration went the other way around.
The early Christians weren’t necessarily trying to attract Jews once Paul made it for gentiles also. If anything; they found more fertile ground for converts among the gentiles, who weren’t likely to be as well informed on the messianic prophesies that Jesus failed to meet and Judean politics. So I would think it more likely that Christmas was aligned with existing pagan midwinter festivities that with Hannunkah.
The gospels are defending Jesus from the perspective of the Jewish traditions, and they were written after Paul. The fading out of the jewish roots were most likely more slowly.
And as Dr. Nothaft said, the Christmas date already existed quite early, I think he mentioned Julius Africanus (160-240 CE).
Not to mention that the idea that the date of the inception and the date of the death of a prophet has to be on the same day is a Jewish belief.
Also I have to ask: Have you even watched the interview? And if yes: Don’t you agree with Dr. Nothaft?
Also, Channuka is *not* on December 25th, but begins on the 25th of Kislew. The Jewish months fluctuate, because they’re governed by the moon whose cycle is shorter than the (usually) 30 or 31 days of a Gregorian month. Therefore the 25th Kislew moves backwards by about 10 days each year.
I doesn’t rotate through the whole year, though (as the Islamic months do), because the Jewish calendar adds a leap month roughly every third year, in order to keep the months in line with the seasons.
All in all this means that Chanukka (almost) always begins in December, but the date varies wildly. Last month it was celebrated from December 8th through 15th (note that there was no overlap with Christmas *at all*), next season will be from December 26th, 2024 through January 2nd, and in 2025 it will be from December 15th through 22nd (again, no overlap with Christmas).
I know, and that’s why I explicitly said: “in the Jewish calendar”.
The exact differences between the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian (which didn’t exist back then) are completely irrelevant for the question.