I recently heard a historical quote preached in a sermon by from what I assume is a well-intentioned man. The quote was claimed to be from a third century bishop named Cyprian of Carthage:

"Oh, how wonderfully Providence arranged that on the day the sun was born, Christ should be born."

It was then claimed that the date of December 25 was clearly stolen from paganism, and that a Christian in good conscience shouldn’t celebrate on this day. After all, “a third century bishop was actively aligning Sol Invictus’s[1] birth with Jesus’ birth.” Therefore, we must “accept the possibility that early Christians borrowed that date.”

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Every day on social media, we are presented with “facts” and “quotes” and “evidence” designed to shape our thoughts and behavior. Sometimes those “facts,” “quotes,” and “evidence” align with our preconceived ideas (Did you hear, AOC ate a baby), and we accept them without question. Other times they challenge our beliefs—we usually ignore those ones.

But rather than blindly accept or blindly ignore these things, we should instead think critically about these claims.

I am admittedly a lover of Christmas. While I acknowledge that Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25 (though there’s a 0.274% chance He was), I think it’s a good thing for two billion Christians to take over the world every December and proclaim the good news of Jesus.

But when I heard the above quote, my first thought wasn’t “There’s NO WAY that’s true—after all, it challenges my worldview. How could that possibly be right?” I also didn’t think, “Well, that’s unfortunately, let’s make sure we suppress that in our memory, so we don’t feel convicted next December 1.” Instead, I decided to take five minutes to verify the claim.

The first issue I noticed was the timing. December 25 was calculated as the birthdate of Jesus by Hippolytus in 204 AD—a full seventy years before the Birthday of Sol Invictus in 274 AD.[2] So regardless of whether Cyprian really made this statement, the timing didn’t fit.

That bagged the question: Did Cyprian actually make this statement? I looked it up, and Cyprian died in 258 AD—sixteen years before Sol Invictus’ feast day was instituted. How could Cyprian have possibly referenced “the day the sun was born” if that holiday didn’t yet exist? I dug a little deeper, and sure enough, Cyprian never made this quote. Historians have universally agreed that this statement was made by some anonymous writer and then falsely attributed to Cyprian.

After only a few minutes’ research, I had discovered that this quote wasn’t actually made by a third century bishop, that it was supposedly made decades before the Feast of Sol Invictus was invented, and that—even were it a genuine quote—it could only possibly demonstrate that Sol Invictus had borrowed from Christmas, not the other way around.

But now I was on a roll, so I kept on going.

I decided to look up the original quote to understand the full context. The letter was called Computus de Pascha (On the Computing of Passover), attributed to Pseudo-Cyprian. Unfortunately, it has never been fully translated into English—so I had to rely on the original Latin (found here).

In Latin, the text reads,

“O quam praeclara et divina Domini providentia! ut in illo die quo factus est sol, in ipso die nasceretur Christus, V kl. apr. feria IV, Et ideo de ipso merito ad plebem dicebat Malachias propheta: ‘Orietur vobis sol justitiae, et curatio est in pennis ejus.’”

In English,

“Oh, how glorious and divine providence of the Lord! that on that day on which the sun was made, on that very day Christ would be born, 5 kl. Apr. feria IV, And therefore of that merit the prophet Malachi said to the people: ‘The Sun of justice shall arise for you, and healing is in His wings.’”

I immediately noticed a few differences between the quote as presented and the actual translation. First, it doesn’t reference “the day the sun was born,” but rather “that day on which the sun was made.” Even looking at the Latin phrasing, the word describing the inception of the sun is factus, meaning “to create” or “to make.” This is different from the word describing the day Jesus was “born”—nasceretur. This quote isn’t referring to the “birthday” of the sun but the “creation day” of the sun, with the originator of the quote intentionally changing the word.

Next I noticed a jumble of abbreviations and numbers—”5 kl. Apr. feria IV.” This was a calendar date. Pseudo-Cyprian didn’t just say that the creation day of the sun was the same day Christ was born—he gave us the exact date! And what was that date?

“5 kl. Apr. feria IV.” Five days before the Kalends of April, Weekday Four. Wednesday, March 28.

Not only was Pseudo-Cyprian not claiming that Jesus was born on Sol Invictus’ birthday—he was claiming He was born in March, months after December 25!

So if Pseudo-Cyprian thought Jesus was born in March, why did he make the connection to Sol Invictus? He didn’t! As we already mentioned, there was no celebrated birthday to Sol Invictus yet. So what was Pseudo-Cyprian referring to?

Exactly what he told us: the creation of the sun.

Third century Christians believed that Jesus had been crucified on March 25—their estimation of the Passover. Well, they believed that if new life for the Israelites occurred on Passover and if new life for Christians occurred on Passover, then new life for planet earth must’ve also occurred on Passover. So they dated the creation of the universe to Passover—March 25.

And in Genesis 1, we read that the sun was made on the fourth day of creation. So if March 25 was Day 1, March 28 would have been Day 4—the day on which the sun was made. Pseudo-Cyprian then concludes by quoting from the prophet Malachi: “The Sun of justice shall arise for you, and healing is in His wings.”

 Cyprian never claimed any connection between Christmas and Sol Invictus. Cyprian didn’t even author this letter. And the claim was that Jesus was born in the spring, on the same day the sun was created by God.

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This post isn’t about Christmas. Like I said, the date ultimately doesn’t matter. This post is about liars bent on deceiving you.

The originator of this quote knew the truth. He knew it wasn’t talking about Sol Invictus—that’s why he took the liberty to change the word “created” to “born.” He also knew it wasn’t talking about December 25—the original quote was cut off mid-sentence to hide the fact that it was talking about March 28. A deceitful man decided to fabricate a quote, cut out relevant information, and change words to make it sound like a holiday celebrated by billions of Christians was secretly a pagan ritual.

And tons of people fell for it.

The man who sent me the quote probably didn’t know any better. But it aligned with a supposed “truth” he wanted to believe in—namely, that much of Christianity is pagan in origin—and so rather than spend five minutes to fact-check his source, a congregation was taught a convenient lie that reinforced a lie they all wanted to hear.

It’d be easy to point fingers at this congregation for believing their desired lie. But every day I see the same thing on facebook and twitter. People who hate Trump spreading lies to reinforce their hatred of Trump. People who love Trump spreading lies to reinforce their love of Trump. Things that are so obviously not true that anyone with a brain should be able to see through it—but they don’t, they can’t, they won’t.

So next time you see something on the internet, before you retweet it or share it or declare it to an entire church, take a few minutes and verify that it’s true. We are the people of the truth, after all.  

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[1] Sol Invictus was the Roman god of the sun, whose feast day was instituted on December 25 in the year 274 AD.

[2] Additionally, the Birthday of Sol Invictus isn’t actually attested to in history until 354 AD—a full 150 years after Hippolytus’ calculation.