English Heritage has admitted it got it wrong when it shared false claims that the date of Christmas is derived from a pagan Roman festival in honour of a sun god.
While the Bible does not state when Christ was born, there was a belief among early Christians that Jesus was conceived on 25 March and that, consequently by counting nine months from that date, he was born on 25 December. This belief dates back at least to 204 AD and is evidenced in the work of Hippolytus of Rome.
English Heritage took a different view however, posting on X, “Why do we celebrate Christmas on 25 December? It was celebrated by the Romans as the birth of the sun god, Sol Invictus. After the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, it was changed into a Christian holy day, and parts of the winter festivals were brought together.”
Unfortunately for English Heritage the earliest evidence that the Sol Invictus festival was celebrated in any form at all on 25 December dates back to the late 3rd century, nearly 100 years after Christians began marking the birth of Christ on that day.
English Heritage compounded their mistake by tweeting that Christianity “became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 CE”. In fact, this happened in 380 AD.
Both tweets were subsequently deleted and an English Heritage spokesman said, “We quickly realised we got this wrong and deleted the posts”, reports The Telegraph.
While historians have taken to X to debunk English Heritage’s claims, with Dominion author Tom Holland simply tweeting, “Please make it stop”, others see a more nefarious agenda at play.
Commenting on the debacle, Catholic author Gavin Ashenden said English Heritage's "job is to preserve national memory".
"And the national memory it curates is entirely Christian. Christianity built the culture that English Heritage exists to preserve: cathedrals, calendars, moral grammar, laws, language, customs, festivals, and music," he said.
