So I know that not everyone that reads this blog knows the story of Jesus. But I do know you’ve head of him and that he’s the whole thing Christmas is centered around him. Here’s the very short story of Jesus’ birthday, Christmas.

His mom conceived him as a virgin and he was born in a barn with animals watching. A big star in the sky stayed overhead and three wise men came to visit. They brought gifts. It’s called Christmas, because Jesus was called “Christ”, among many other names. Jesus is the center point of Christianity, as he was born to save us from ourselves.

There are a number of items to try and answer with scigence, virgin birth, prophecies, star in the sky, but first let’s talk about December 25th. It’s pretty much accepted that Jesus was not born in December. Depending on who you talk to, it’s probably sometime during the summer. In a bitter twist of irony, Christmas may have been moved to December to compete with other holidays way back when. This is a similar situation that has elevated Hanukah, and Kwanzaa.

The virgin birth is probably one of the most amazing stories in the Bible. How can a child be born to a virgin? Actually it as happened in lesser species, but it’s always a clone of the mother, and female. So that won’t answer it. Some say the Immaculate Conception is a cover-up of Mary (Jesus’ mom) sleeping around before she married her husband, Joseph. It might have been with Joseph (which would have been a big scandal) or with a Roman soldier. Accounts dating back to the 200s claim Jesus made up the story himself, including calling himself God because of his “magical powers”.

Still, it’s possible that virgin was just a mistranslation from language to language. When Matthew, one of the writers of the story of Christmas, references a prophecy of Jesus’ coming, he cites text written in Hebrew which translates to “young woman”. Writing in Greek, this becomes “virgin”. Without consulting a language specialist, I’d guess the words may have been used interchangeably at the time.

Another big event around Jesus’ birth is the star the appeared in the sky over Jesus. This allowed three wise men to come find him and bring presents. Astronomers have tried to explain this and some interesting theories have come about. First of all, the three wise men were Magi. Magi were astrologers. Despite their palm reading, psychic, predictive weird stuff, astrologers back then were as studious of stars as modern astronomers. Something happened in the sky to make them travel the whole way they did. It may not have been very bright, just really cool to them, since during their travels they were asked when this star appeared.

Stargazers in Korea and China during the speculated time of Jesus’ birth recorded a comet that for 70 days appeared not to move. Another idea that bears astrological significance is Jupiter passing into the constellation Leo. Events such as these were said to record the birth of a king (in this case, King of the Jews) and the Magi followed this event to where Jesus was hanging out. Astronomy nerds, and mythology geeks will enjoy reading more about the theories here or looking at a slideshow of one here. Much of what makes this hard to figure out is no one really knows when Jesus was born, so they don’t know what astronomical events to look at.

I didn’t even scratch the surface of this conversation. But a few Google searches will give you more to read, we must move on. Here are a few other Jesus related factoids about Christmas:

• Xmas is surprisingly an appropriate term. The Greek letters Chi and Rho served as symbol for Christ. Chi is written as X.
• We don’t know how many Magi visited Jesus, we just know they brought 3 gifts: gold frankincense, and myrrh.
• Only 2 of the 4 gospels in the Bible tell the story of Christmas, and their stories are not the same and neither of them are first-hand accounts.
• The 4 Sundays leading up to Christmas are considered Advent, not Christmas season.
• Christmas season actually starts December 25 and runs through January 6. January 6th is Epiphany, the day the wise men came to visit Jesus. Some cultures make this the big present day. December 25 – January 5 are what are considered the 12 days of Christmas, Hanukah with their 8 days and Kwanzaa with their 7 can sit down.

Photo: MoToMo

By The Weakonomist

The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics.

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