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Church year
Learn why Christmas is celebrated on December 25.
The word Christmas is derived from the Old English
Cristes maesse, “Christ’s mass.” There is no certain tradition of the date of Christ’s birth. Christian chronographers of the 3rd century believed that the creation of the world took place at the spring equinox, then reckoned as March 25. Hence, the new creation in the Incarnation (i.e., the conception) and death of Christ must therefore have occurred on the same day, with his birth following nine months later at the winter solstice, December 25. The oldest extant notice of a feast of Christ’s Nativity occurs in a Roman almanac (the Chronographer of 354, or Philocalian Calendar), which indicates that the festival was observed by the church in Rome by the year 336.