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This picture and the answer at Why is Christmas on December 25th? seems to explain the biblical basis of the date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D11jAEKgB2o, the topmost answers however on https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/46227/how-did-christianity-replace-roman-paganism-and-other-ancient-religions and Is Christmas not a christian festival speak of adoption of Saturnalia and absorption of Paganism and also how the celebration of Christmas was probably a combination of "probably a combination of pagan solstice holidays, early Catholic church assignment of saints days, and the desire of northern Germanic tribes (for whom winter was much more arduous) to have a celebration for home and hearth."

Could December 25 as the birthday of Jesus have come from Pagan influences? even talks about how there is no biblical basis for the birthday of Christ to be set on 25th December. This also seems to go against the information in the picture.

So is there a basis for Christmas on 25th December just being a rebranding of a Pagan tradition given that there is a biblical basis for it? Or was the biblical scriptures interpreted only much later to cater as reasoning to the 25th December date?

  • We can't really judge the quality of the other question by the answers that it got. Logically, any answer to the title of your question could fall under "why is Christmas on December 25th" I think it's reasonable to ask a more nuanced question, but you'll have to focus the question a bit more. You've got a sort of either-or sort of question at the bottom and there's no reason both of those questions couldn't be answered with "no" and the answers will be identical to the question I tagged as a duplicate. – Peter Turner Nov 08 '21 at 20:09
  • Advice: make sure they're not duplicates and ask those questions individually – Peter Turner Nov 08 '21 at 20:10
  • Visit the (only) post linked in your last two paragraphs, and expand the main comment section, then read the/my last comment on it. –  Nov 08 '21 at 21:28

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The answer to the title question is no, it was not. Tim O'Neill is an atheist historian devoted to debunking poor historical takes that turn into atheist memes. This is one of them. You can read his blog entry here discussing why this common meme is fake.

Some highlights

[W]e get the same claims repeated endlessly, with the usual level of historical research put into them that we would expect for this low level journalistic chore; i.e. pretty much none. It would not be too hard for these poor journalists to work out that most of the claims about pagan origins of Christmas and its customs are nonsense – after all, there are excellent resources available on the internet which do this in some detail. But journalists assigned to this kind of task are not likely to go against the grain and debunk the standard pieces of this type and most of their readers do not like debunkings anyway. So each “pagan Christmas” article echoes the previous ones, like an endless succession of ghosts of Christmas past.

Spencer Alexander McDaniel’s Tales of Times Forgotten blog has a very detailed analysis on the subject which shows that, in fact, most elements of Christmas claimed as “pagan” actually are not

He goes on to list a number of relevant articles from the Tales of Times Forgotten blog

On the non-paganess of Christmas: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/08/just-how-pagan-is-christmas-really/

On Saturnalia specifically: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/18/how-was-saturnalia-celebrated-in-ancient-rome/

Ultimately, your infographic is correct. We celebrate the annunciation on March 25th, and 9 months later is December 25th. Whether or not the annunciation actually took place on March 25th is irrelevant (and sometimes contested), as the date of Christmas is derived from the date of the annunciation, not any days of pagan importance.

About the author for the History for Atheists website, which is a great resource that should be bookmarked by any Christian apologists.

jaredad7
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