Christmas is late this year.

Christmas is late this year; it always is.

Not that we know the date of Jesus’ birth. In fact, in his culture and era people did not celebrate birthdays at all — that belongs to a far more individualistic age. Instead, life was shaped by shared, communal festivals: Passover, Weeks (Shavuot), and Tabernacles (Sukkot), which gave rhythm and meaning to faith and everyday life.

Luke, in his Gospel, offers us something more intriguing than a calendar entry. He weaves the birth of Jesus into the story of John the Baptist, six months earlier. Following Luke’s clues — Zechariah’s late-May temple service in the division of Abijah, Elizabeth’s pregnancy, and Mary’s visit — many scholars conclude that Jesus was born not in midwinter but in early autumn. September, rather than December.

So why December — and why the 25th?

It is not to Jerusalem we must look, but to Rome; and not to the time of Jesus, but to events two centuries later. In AD 274, Emperor Aurelian inaugurated the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti — the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The Romans had long honoured sun gods — Sol, Apollo, Mithras — but now, under this empire-wide title, the sun was formally celebrated on 25 December.

But why that date? It marked the symbolic renewal of the sun’s strength after the winter solstice — the moment when darkness stopped advancing and the light began, slowly but surely, to return.

And that is why Christmas is such a special season for us, especially at our latitude: a defence against a kind of communal Seasonal Affective Disorder. Yes, it gets dark at three o’clock — but hey, we can go shopping, enjoying the Christmas lights of Ormskirk.

If there is one word that conveys the cold and darkness of winter, it is bleak. Christina Rossetti captures the essence of midwinter perfectly in her lovely carol:

In the bleak midwinter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter

Long ago.

No wonder C. S. Lewis describes Narnia under the White Witch’s rule as a place where “it is winter always, but never Christmas.” It is a world frozen in cold and darkness, without hope, joy, or renewal. Winter by itself is bleak; winter without Christmas is unbearable, because nothing ever turns the corner.

So Christmas, as a midwinter festival, is in origin pagan. However, when the Roman Empire became officially Christian in AD 380 — following the conversion of Emperor Constantine in AD 312 — the Church chose to take over Dies Natalis Solis Invicti as the birthday of Jesus.

The date served as a powerful theological counter-claim in a shared cultural language. Rome said: the sun conquers darkness. The Gospel proclaimed something deeper: Jesus is the true Light of the world, who defeats the powers of darkness not by force, but through his cruel death on a Roman cross.

Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary, regularly warned Christians not to confuse Christ with the sun: “Let us not celebrate this day because of the sun, but because of him who made the sun.”

Light comes because God enters the darkness — not as a blazing sun-god, but as a child, born into vulnerability, poverty, and danger. The Romans said the sun was unconquered. Christians said something far more unsettling: the darkness is not overcome by force, but by love.

All this, of course, lay far in the future when the angels appeared to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. Yet their anthem is already a direct challenge to empire.

Caesar Augustus was worshipped as saviour of the world. Imperial propaganda described him as sōtēr (saviour) because he was believed to have brought peace and order — pax Romana — after civil war. He also styled himself Divi Filius, son of the divine one.

The angels use the same language — Saviour, Messiah, Lord, peace on earth — and then undermine it completely. This saviour is not born in a palace but laid in a manger; this peace is not enforced by legions but given as a gift. In the shadow of empire, the angels declare that God’s true glory is revealed not in domination, but in vulnerability.

Augustus was hailed as saviour and son of a god. Luke dares to say that the true Saviour and Son of God lies in a feeding trough.

So in six days’ time we celebrate the birth of the Jesus who proclaims: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

And yet the question remains: Why 25th December?

A solar year is about 365¼ days, which means the solstice can fall on 20, 21, or 22 December, depending on leap years and long-term calendar drift. Even so, 25 December is still — at the very least — three days late. And the ancients knew their astronomy.

Why?

No one, it seems, knows!  But we do know this: without Christmas, winter would be endless. With Christmas, even the longest night is shot through with promise. The light does not dazzle or dominate; it comes quietly, wrapped in cloth, laid in a manger.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:5)

Merry Christmas!