The short answer
Most historians place Jesus’ birth between about 6 and 4 BC, shortly before King Herod died. The Bible gives no date, month or season. The first clear record of December 25 comes from Rome in the 300s, and scholars still debate why it was chosen.
What does the Bible say about when Jesus was born?
Only two Gospels describe the birth, and neither gives a date. Both tie it to rulers instead. Matthew says Jesus was born in Bethlehem while Herod was king of Judea (Matthew 2:1). Luke links the birth to a census ordered by the emperor Augustus, taken while Quirinius governed Syria (Luke 2:1–2).
Luke adds a clue from later on. John the Baptist began preaching in the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius, about AD 28 or 29, and Jesus was about thirty when he began his own work (Luke 3:1, Luke 3:23).
What year was Jesus born?
Put the clues together and most historians land between 6 and 4 BC.
| Clue | Where | What it points to |
|---|---|---|
| Herod the Great was still alive | Matthew 2:1–19 | Herod died in 4 BC by most reckonings, so the birth came before that |
| Herod ordered the killing of boys two and under | Matthew 2:16 | Jesus may have been up to two by then, which points to about 6 to 4 BC |
| A census while Quirinius governed Syria | Luke 2:1–2 | The historian Josephus dates a census under Quirinius to AD 6, a puzzle scholars still debate |
| Jesus was about thirty in about AD 28 or 29 | Luke 3:1, Luke 3:23 | A birth a few years before AD 1 fits |
Why not the year 1? Our way of numbering years from Jesus’ birth was worked out around AD 525 by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, and his count was a few years off. It also has no year zero: 1 BC is followed by AD 1.
Was Jesus born in winter?
The Bible doesn’t say. The clue people point to most is that shepherds were out in the fields at night (Luke 2:8). Some argue that rules out winter, when nights in the hills around Bethlehem are cold and wet. Others answer that flocks near the town were kept outside for much of the year, so the detail can’t settle it.
Others try to work it out from the week Zechariah, John the Baptist’s father, served in the temple (Luke 1:5–24). That depends on guesses about the priests’ calendar, so it doesn’t settle it either. The honest answer is that nobody knows the season.
Why is Christmas on December 25?
The first Christians don’t seem to have celebrated Jesus’ birthday at all. Around AD 240, the scholar Origen pointed out that the only people in Scripture who kept birthdays were Pharaoh and Herod. Pharaoh’s is in Genesis: “On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants” (Genesis 40:20). Around AD 200, Clement of Alexandria mentioned Christians in Egypt who had worked out dates in April and May.
The earliest certain record of December 25 is a Roman calendar made in AD 354, which reflects practice in Rome by 336. There are two main explanations, and scholars still argue over them.
- A Christian answer to a Roman festival. Rome celebrated the birthday of the Unconquered Sun on December 25, a festival listed in that same calendar, and Saturnalia began on December 17. Christians may have picked the day to celebrate Jesus as the true light.
- A date worked out from Easter. Some early Christians believed Jesus was conceived on the same date he died, which they placed on March 25. Nine months later is December 25. Christians in the East who dated his death to April 6 arrived at January 6 the same way.
Either way, the feast itself was Christian from the start: it celebrated Jesus’ birth.
Why some Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7
Churches that follow older calendars, including the Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Coptic and Ethiopian churches, celebrate on what is January 7 on the calendar most of the world uses. The Armenian Church keeps January 6, the old Eastern date for both Jesus’ birth and his baptism.
Is Christmas a pagan holiday?
Christmas began as a Christian feast of Jesus’ birth. Some of its customs, such as evergreens, Yule logs and midwinter feasting, have roots in older European winter traditions, and Christians differ on whether that matters. The Puritans thought it did: England’s Parliament banned Christmas in 1647, and the Massachusetts colony fined anyone caught celebrating it from 1659 to 1681.
Jeremiah 10 is sometimes read as a ban on Christmas trees: “For the customs of the peoples are vanity; for one cuts a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman with the ax. They deck it with silver and with gold.” (Jeremiah 10:3–4). Read on, though, and the tree turns out to be a carved idol that has to be carried because it “can’t move” (Jeremiah 10:5). The passage is about worshiping idols, which is a long way from decorating a tree.
For Christians who keep Christmas and those who don’t, Paul’s advice about holy days still applies: “He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord” (Romans 14:6).
Where was Jesus born?
In Bethlehem, a small town about six miles south of Jerusalem, as both Matthew and Luke say (Matthew 2:1, Luke 2:4–7). It was King David’s hometown, and the prophet Micah had named it centuries earlier: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me who is to be ruler in Israel” (Micah 5:2). The Church of the Nativity, first built in the 330s, stands over the cave that tradition marks as the place.
Common questions
Was Jesus born on December 25?
Probably not, and nobody knows. The Bible gives no date, and December 25 was chosen centuries later. Christians celebrate the birth on that day without claiming it’s the real birthday.
How can Jesus have been born in 4 BC?
Because the calendar was set later, and set slightly wrong. When Dionysius Exiguus counted back to Jesus’ birth around AD 525, he placed it a few years too late. The Gospels’ clues, above all the death of Herod, point earlier.
Did the wise men visit on the night Jesus was born?
Probably not. Matthew says they found the child in a house (Matthew 2:11), and Herod’s order to kill boys up to two years old suggests some time had passed. Nativity scenes put the shepherds and the wise men together, but the Gospels don’t.
Is it wrong to celebrate Christmas?
Most Christians see nothing wrong with it, and most churches celebrate it. A few groups don’t, out of conscience. Romans 14:5 leaves room for both: “Let each man be fully assured in his own mind.”