I love to have epiphanies about something new and exciting that I had never realized before. Or to look at something in a new and different way that gives it greater meaning. Thinking ahead to Christmas, let me tell you about one of the discoveries that I recently found.
I have heard many times before that Jesus was probably not born on December 25th. This makes sense that shepherds would have probably not had their sheep in the field in the winter, and that it would have most likely been after the harvest when people were available to travel for the census. I often figured that Mary and Joseph visited Bethlehem maybe in the fall.
Henry M. Morris, in Christmas: Pagan or Christian? writes, “Perhaps the most probable date, though no one really knows, is about September 29. This was the first day of the great Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, when thousands of pilgrims from all over Israel would go up to Jerusalem to dwell in small “tabernacles” or booths, commemorating their wilderness wanderings and anticipating the coming kingdom when God Himself would “tabernacle” with men (note Revelation 21:3).”
This backs up my thoughts about the date. He said something else though in this piece that caught my attention. He said, “It is at least very interesting that, if one counts back 280 days (the normal period of human gestation) from September 29, he arrives at the previous December 25. And then he realizes that the great miracle of Christ’s Incarnation was not His birth, which was a normal human birth in every respect, but rather the miraculous conception, when the Holy Spirit placed that “holy thing” in the womb of the Virgin Mary! (Luke 1:35.) It was on that great day that the eternal Son, the second person of the divine Trinity, left the courts of heaven and “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7)
I love this! By celebrating a winter Christmas, we are still celebrating when Christ came to earth. It gives me an even greater desire to celebrate! Christmas itself already means so much. Now it means that much more. I can’t wait to celebrate! Maybe I will even start a new tradition of leaving a few of my mangers out until the end of September.
-Amy