Christmas—December the 25th—is a day which has been set apart by the Christian church on which to celebrate the birth of their Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus, and is considered by the majority of persons to be really the day on which he was born. This is altogether erroneous, as will be seen upon examination of the subject.
There was no uniformity in the period of observing the Nativity among the early Christian churches; some held the festival in the month of May or April, others in January.[359:1]
The year in which he was born is also as uncertain as the month or day. "The year in which it happened," says Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, "has not hitherto been fixed with certainty, notwithstanding the deep and laborious researches of the learned."[359:2]
According to Irenæus (A. D. 190), on the authority of "The Gospel," and "all the elders who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord," Christ Jesus lived to be nearly, if not quite, fifty years of age. If this celebrated Christian father is correct, and who can say he is not, Jesus was born some twenty years before the time which has been assigned as that of his birth.[359:3]
The Rev. Dr. Giles says:
"Concerning the time of Christ's birth there are even greater doubts than about the place; for, though the four Evangelists have noticed several contemporary facts, which would seem to settle this point, yet on comparing these dates with the general history of the period, we meet with serious discrepancies, which involve the subject in the greatest uncertainty."[359:4]
Again he says:
"Not only do we date our time from the exact year in which Christ is said to have been born, but our ecclesiastical calendar has determined with scrupulous minuteness the day and almost the hour at which every particular of Christ's wonderful life is stated to have happened. All this is implicitly believed by millions; yet all these things are among the most uncertain and shadowy that history has recorded. We have no clue to either the day or the time of year, or even the year itself, in which Christ was born."[360:1]
Some Christian writers fix the year 4 B. C., as the time when he was born, others the year 5 B. C., and again others place his time of birth at about 15 B. C. The Rev. Dr. Geikie, speaking of this, in his Life of Christ, says: