Best Wishes and Prayer to all Visitors
birth
of Jesus:
The birth of Jesus was announced in Luke 2:11, "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." Moreover, the belief that God
came into the world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity is
considered to be the primary purpose in celebrating Christmas.
Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus to the
Virgin Mary as a fulfillment of the Old Testament's Messianic prophecy. The
Bible contains two accounts which describe the events surrounding Jesus' birth.
Depending on one's perspective, these accounts either differ from each other or
tell two versions of the same story. These biblical accounts are found in the
Gospel of Matthew, and the Gospel of Luke. According to these accounts, Jesus
was born to Mary, assisted by her husband Joseph, in the city of Bethlehem.
According to popular tradition, the birth took place
in a stable, surrounded by farm animals. A manger (that is, a feeding trough)
is mentioned in Luke 2:7, where it states Mary "wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because
there was no room for them in the inn" (KJV); and "She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because
there was no guest room available for them" (NIV).
Shepherds from the fields surrounding Bethlehem were
told of the birth by an angel, and were the
first to see the child. Popular tradition also holds that three kings or wise
men viz. Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar visited the infant Jesus in the
manger, though this does not strictly follow the Biblical account. The Gospel
of Matthew instead describes a visit by an unspecified number of magi, or
astrologers, sometime after Jesus was born while the family was living in a
house (Matthew 2:11), who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the
young child Jesus. The visitors were said to be following a mysterious star,
commonly known as the Star of Bethlehem,
believing it to announce the birth of a king of the Jews.
Celebrations:
In the earliest centuries of Christianity, no
particular day of the year is known to have been associated with the birth of
Jesus. Various dates were speculated: May 20, April 18 or 19, March 25, January
2, November 17 or 20. When celebration on a particular date began, January 6
prevailed at least in the East;] but, except among Armenians (the Armenian
Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church), who continue to celebrate
the birth on January 6.
The New Testament Gospel of Luke may indirectly give
the date as December for the birth of Jesus, with the sixth month of
Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist cited by John Chrysostom(c. 386) as
a date for the Annunciation. In Chronographai, a reference work published in
221, Sextus Julius Africanus suggested that Jesus was conceived on the spring
equinox. The equinox was March 25 on the Roman calendar, so this implied a
birth in December.
Sextus Julius Africanus was the first to identify December 25, later to become the universally accepted
date, as the date Jesus's birth in 221.
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