English Heritage has admitted it got it mistaken 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 doesn’t state when Christ was born, there was a belief amongst 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 no less than to 204 AD and is evidenced within the work of Hippolytus of Rome.
English Heritage took a distinct view nonetheless, posting on X, “Why can we have fun Christmas on 25 December? It was celebrated by the Romans because the birth of the sun god, Sol Invictus. After the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, it was become 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 in any respect on 25 December dates back to the late third 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 mistaken and deleted the posts”, reports The Telegraph.
While historians have taken to X to debunk English Heritage’s claims, with Dominion creator Tom Holland simply tweeting, “Please make it stop”, others see a more nefarious agenda at play.
Commenting on the debacle, Catholic creator 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.
