The Truth About Birthdays and Christmas

When you trace the history of Christmas, you’ll notice something strange. The earliest Christians didn’t celebrate Jesus’ birth at all. They remembered His death and resurrection — because that’s what He commanded (Luke 22:19–20). So how did a Roman holiday tied to pagan gods end up being called “Christ’s Mass”? Let’s dig in.

🎂 Birthdays in the Bible

Birthdays weren’t a Biblical tradition. They were pagan through and through, tied to kings, emperors, and false gods. And when the Bible does mention birthdays, the stories are ugly:

• Pharaoh’s Birthday (Genesis 40:20–22): celebration ends with one man restored, the other executed.
• Herod’s Birthday (Matthew 14:6–10; Mark 6:21–28): the party that demanded John the Baptist’s head.

No cakes, no candles, no joy. Just death, pride, and corruption. That’s the company birthdays keep in Scripture.

📖 What Scripture Says

The Word of God makes the contrast clear:

“A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” — Ecclesiastes 7:1

• Job’s sons held birthday banquets, and Job felt he had to offer sacrifices afterward (Job 1:4–5). Why? Because sin crept in.
• Jeremiah 9:23–24 warns against boasting in ourselves. Birthdays put the spotlight right on “me.”
• Jesus taught the only birth worth celebrating is being “born again” (John 3:3).

From beginning to end, the Bible emphasizes death in faith and rebirth in Christ — not fleshly birthdays.

⛪ The Early Church

The first generations of Christians followed this pattern. They celebrated the Lord’s Supper, not the Lord’s birth. In fact, early Church Fathers like Origen openly condemned birthday celebrations as pagan, self-centered, and completely unfit for God’s people.

📜 Origen’s Warning: The Saints Never Celebrated Birthdays

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253 AD) was one of the early church’s greatest thinkers and defenders of Scripture. He didn’t mince words about birthdays. Here’s what he said:

“None of the saints is found to have celebrated a festive day or a great feast on the day of his birth. It is only sinners — like Pharaoh and Herod — who make great rejoicings over the day on which they were born into this world.”
— Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 8:3

“Let the pagan celebrate his birthday; let the Christian celebrate the day of his death.”
— Origen, fragment from Homily on Job

To Origen, this wasn’t about being overly strict — it was about being faithful. The saints rejoiced at the finish line, not the starting gate. Birth was entry into a sinful world; death in Christ was victory and rest. That’s why the early church honored the death days of martyrs, not their birthdays. Those became the true “holy days.”

Origen saw birthday feasts as self-glorification, a mirror for vanity. He would’ve laughed at today’s claim that “I’m just thanking God for my life.” If the attention and gifts all point to you, it’s not gratitude — it’s idolatry dressed up with frosting.

☀️ How Rome Hijacked the Date

So how did December 25th become “Christmas”?

• Saturnalia (Dec 17–23) was a Roman festival for Saturn: feasting, gift-giving, greenery, and chaos.
• Sol Invictus (Dec 25) honored the “Unconquered Sun” after the winter solstice.
• 336 AD: The Roman church slapped “Feast of the Nativity of Christ” onto Dec 25 — rebranding, not revelation.

Instead of purging paganism, they absorbed it, layering Christ’s name on Rome’s calendar. Evergreens, feasts, and gift-giving? Pagan customs carried over, polished with a Christian gloss.

⚖️ Why This Matters

The truth is simple:

• Birthdays = pagan practice, never commanded by God.
• Christmas = church invention, tied to Roman festivals, not the Bible.
• Jesus = Lord of life, remembered in His death and resurrection, not in a day Rome gave to Saturn and the sun god.

If we care about truth, we need to separate what God commanded from what man invented. Light and darkness don’t mix. The early church knew that. We should too.