The first recorded celebration of Christmas as a specific feast day for Jesus’ birth dates to December 25 in the year 336 CE, in Rome.

Quick Scoop

  • The earliest surviving record that explicitly mentions Christmas being celebrated on December 25 is from a Roman document compiled in 354 CE, noting that in the year 336 “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea” on that date.
  • This does not mean Christians had never celebrated Jesus’ birth before, only that this is the first time historians can clearly see a dated Christmas feast in surviving records.
  • By the mid‑4th century, December 25 as Christmas was gaining ground in the Western Roman Empire, helped by imperial support under Constantine and later church endorsement.

Was Jesus actually born then?

  • No one knows the exact historical date of Jesus’ birth; early Christians did not agree on a single day, and some communities focused more on Easter than on marking his birthday.
  • The choice of December 25 was influenced by theological calculations (linking conception to March 25) and likely by its overlap with popular winter festivals like the Roman solstice celebrations.

How the festival spread

  • After the 4th century, Christmas on December 25 gradually spread out from Rome to other parts of the Roman Empire and beyond, becoming a central Christian festival over the following centuries.
  • Eastern Christian traditions sometimes kept or developed different dates or emphases (for example, focusing on Epiphany on January 6), but December 25 became dominant in Western Christianity.

TL;DR: The “first Christmas” that historians can firmly date is December 25, 336 CE in Rome, but the exact day of Jesus’ birth is unknown, and the festival evolved gradually from earlier Christian and Roman traditions.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.