Link between Sol Invictus, Christmas Day is ‘modern myth,’ scholar writes in Vatican newspaper
December 30, 2024
» Continue to this story on L'Osservatore Romano (Italian)
CWN Editor's Note: Efforts to ground the celebration of Christmas on December 25 in the pagan Roman cult of the Sol Invictus constitute a “modern myth,” Father Amadeo Ricco, an archeologist on the faculty of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, writes in the Vatican newspaper.
Father Ricco states the myth thus: “the date of Christmas on December 25—that is, when the ancients observed the solstice—was set by Christians very late, after Constantine, to replace the pagan festival of Sol Invictus,” established in 274.
To counter the myth, Father Ricco cites several Christian authors who wrote about the date of Christmas a century or more before Constantine (and well before the Emperor Aurelian established the festival in 274).
“A date between November and January is not even an astronomical reflection, but follows a real and authentic line of tradition: that of the Palestinian Jewish Christians of the mother church of Jerusalem and Bethlehem,” Father Ricco concludes.
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