Easter fluctuating dates confusion

[Soontobe60]

If Jesus Christ existed, he was supposedly born on 25th December and that date never changes. But he was crucified on Good Friday, which changes every year!
How come we know his birth date but not his death date?
When did the 25th December become known as Christmas Day?
When did the day he died become known as Good Friday and the day he rose Easter Sunday?

All questions my Year 4 children asked in school this week.

I did not know that.
No one has actually answered the question of why Christmas Day is fixed but Easter is not.
Is anyone actually going to enlighten me or am I going to have to Google it....
Edit : I know why Easter is different dates each year.
It's Christmas Day I am curious about.

Passover was and is not a fertility festival, and was centuries old at the time of the crucifixion.

Jesus' and John the Baptist's birth and conception dates were first calculated in 2nd century Egypt, using the probable date that John's father Zacharius would have been serving in the Temple.

In the 3rd century pagan Rome started establishing new cults (Mithras, invented around then for men including soldiers) and moving celebrations, notably Sol Invictus, to December, including December 25th, which suggests the possibility that the new eastern mystery religion, so popular with women and slaves, was beginning to bother the establishment.

Jesus didn't die on Sunday.
"Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies remaining on the cross on the Sabbath... the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away..... So the soldiers broke the legs of the others who had been crucified with him, but Jesus was already dead..."
Friday, emphatically Friday.
On Sunday he rose again - which is the whole point of the story.

This is a thread about religion. Science really won't help anything.

😬😬

There are a LOT more than two non-Biblical accounts of the existence of Jesus: https://coldcasechristianity.com/writings/is-there-any-evidence-for-jesus-outside-the-bible/

Because religion makes up its own rules as it goes along.
Women weren’t acceptable, gay wasn’t acceptable…
obviously these aren’t new or special to modern life but. once the bible condemned then but now it’s ok.
Organised faith is an absolute crock of shit

If you read that pile of slop, you’ll see that it includes non-existent ‘lost’ writings, vague references to eclipses, writings making references to non-specific Jewish rebellions, writers writing about the existence of Christians (which no one is disputing) etc. There are precisely two credible references by non-Christians.

That doesn't answer the question though.
When and why and by whom was it decided that Christmas Day will always be on December 25th?
To be honest I don't really care that much... I am just curious.
It just fascinates me that no one on this thread seems to know 🤔

Easter was decided by the council of nicea to separate Christianity from Judaism, it’s not an exact date at all no one knows the date, the last supper was likely Passover but that’s calculated by the moon also and a month is added on to the calendar every so often, it was calculated a bit differently when Jesus was around but it was in spring as it was always in spring. You’d think that Easter would always fall after Passover as Jesus died after the Passover meal but sometimes Passover is before Easter because of the lunar cycles.

Christmas is a fixed date, it was decided (by someone) upon 25th December, same as they decided on how Easter would be calculated. Some think it’s because there were non Christian/pagan festivals at that time and on that date and it would be easier to convince people to follow Christianity if they could just celebrate another religion on the date they were used to. Others think it’s calculated 9 months after when they think Jesus was conceived. Or a combination of the two.

Ultimately it’s just a series of decisions some people made a very long time after Jesus died and the fact there’s so many different theories means no one knows. We just celebrate these things without too much thought on accuracy and believe what we’re told.

The Christian church decided it, hundreds of years after Jesus’ death

Thank you for answering.

So do we think he didn't actually die on the crucifix and managed to regain strength a few days later? Rather than Die and Resurrect?! I mean, I'm not religious but I kind of want to believe something that is actually plausible

@SerendipityJane ha ha 😆 Which is why I am very happily aetheist...I am quite partial to scientific and rational explanations. The Bible is not a book about the 'truth'. It was a construct (written by men) to control the population. But organised religion of any form can do one....🎡 I happily celebrate the solstices and equinoxes, in my own way.

It would make more sense if he didn’t die, got out of the tomb/cave he was in and the ascension was actually him dying from his injuries 40 days later. There are accounts of him eating food and people being able to touch him in that period so he was fully alive

Yes, this I could get on board with.

The entire Christian faith is based on the belief that Jesus died a physical death on the cross. I mean, you can choose to believe it or not, but there aren't many Christians who think that Jesus had survivable wounds, regained consciousness, rolled a giant stone away from his 'tomb' and walked out! Attempts to rationalise it just reduce him to a 'great philosopher' who somehow survived crucifixion, recovered consciousness, and managed to convince his followers that he had risen from the dead.

It was codified about 300 years after Jesus' death. Up to then the commemoration of his birth on or near 25 December was based on Christian tradition.

Christmas was never the major or central Christian holy day. I think some posters here are bothered by the date of Christmas because they assume (thanks to all the modern hoopla) that it was as big as Easter or bigger, or of equal religious significance. That would be a mistake. Easter is the central and fundamental holy day in Christianity. While a big deal is now made of it, Christmas does not do any of the theological heavy lifting that Easter does.

Christmas Day is determined by the sun as it the day that the sun rises higher in the sky as we head towards spring.

Because the ‘rebirth’ of the sun (son) happens on 25th Dec. For the 3 days before, the sun rises to the same height in the midday but on 25th, the sun goes higher as we move towards spring time. This was observed and incorporated in ancient Egyptian, Indian and Greek religions a long time before Christianity.

That's really interesting.
Thanks 🌞

People had been able to calculate and predict the dates of the solstices and equinoxes (and exciting stuff like solar and lunar eclipses) for millennia - see various megalithic structures including Newgrange (older than the pyramids).

Christmas etc were all dated a bit later than the solstices, not on them.

Egyptian Christians believed in the importance of recognising anniversaries. in the early 2nd century they knew Jesus was born in midwinter and suggested dates between 20th December and 4th January before eventually doing a series of calculations based on these Biblical events:

Zacharius was working in the Temple when he heard that his elderly wife Elizabeth was pregnant

Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was pregnant

Mary set off on a long and difficult journey to visit Elizabeth (her kinswoman) and, after they greeted each other, Elizabeth's baby (John) jumped in the womb.

Knowledge of the likely date of Zacharius' Temple service suggested:

The Angel visited Mary on March 25th (Lady Day)

John was born on 24th June

Jesus was born on 25th December

Those dates were set by the end on the 2nd century. They do not coincide exactly either with the solstices or with any Roman pagan festivals.

Easter does sometimes coincide exactly with Passover, but not always, partly because of (can't remember the exact date) an early medieval western Christian streamlining decision to fix a notional date of the vernal equinox on 21st March.

There was already a pagan sun festival on that day (as well as other sun festivals around that time) so it was likely chosen to replace it to make it easier for the people to switch to Christianity.
As far as I understand (I’m atheist) the bible doesn't refer to any date of birth, rather there are clues which people used to work out when he could have been born.
The date of his death was relevant for this as it was thought that people were conceived and died on the same day therefore as it was decided he died on March 25th, he was also conceived on that date and 9 months after that, December 25th, he was born.
The church formally decided this date in the 300s AD - before that I don’t know what they thought or did.

I would have thought more would have been made about ascension day, surely that is a big thing when he was lifted up and taken to heaven, as big as the resurrection.

Women weren’t acceptable,

Women were very prominent in the Celtic Christian church (the one that had to be suppressed when Augustine "bought Christianity" to Britain)