Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Celebrate Birthdays and Holidays?

A Jehovah's Witness child sits out the classroom birthday party. A Witness family puts up no decorations at Christmas, does not dye Easter eggs, and quietly declines to salute the flag or sing the national anthem. To many people this looks like joylessness or hostility. Witnesses say it is neither: it is faithfulness to the Bible, and they give gifts, hold parties and respect their governments in other ways.

The question touches several historical claims at once: whether the early Christians refused birthdays, whether Christmas was borrowed from a sun festival, whether Easter is named after a goddess, whether a flag salute is worship. Some Witness answers have more ancient support than critics admit, and some have less. This article sets out what Witnesses teach in their own words, weighs the evidence, and explains how the Orthodox Church, with one of the fullest calendars of feasts in Christendom, reads the same Scriptures.

In brief

Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays, Christmas, Easter or a long list of national, religious and folk holidays, and they do not salute flags or sing national anthems. They cite pagan roots, the two ill-fated birthday feasts in Scripture, Jesus' command to commemorate his death, and the worship owed to God alone. They keep one annual observance, the Memorial of Christ's death on Nisan 14. Their forerunners, the Bible Students, celebrated Christmas until the late 1920s. Witnesses are right that birthdays and Christmas were not part of the earliest Christian practice, and Origen made their argument about Pharaoh and Herod. But the origin of 25 December is genuinely disputed, Pascha grew out of the Passover rather than a fertility festival, and by the second century the Church kept both the weekly Lord's Day and a yearly Pascha. The Orthodox Church sees room for feasts that proclaim Christ, while sharing the Witnesses' conviction that worship belongs to God alone.

Thesis: The Witness position is consistent and sincerely held, but its historical case is weaker than it claims, and the ancient Church shows that Christians can refuse idolatry as firmly as the Witnesses do while still keeping feasts.

What Jehovah's Witnesses teach, in their own words

Birthdays

The official article, one of a series of "Frequently Asked Questions" on jw.org, opens: "Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate birthdays because we believe that such celebrations displease God." It concedes that "the Bible does not explicitly forbid celebrating birthdays," and argues from principles.¹ Birthday customs, it says, have pagan roots, citing folklore reference books on horoscopes and on candles "endowed with special magic for granting wishes." It cites the World Book Encyclopedia for the claim that early Christians "considered the celebration of anyone's birth to be a pagan custom." It notes that "the only commemoration that Christians are required to keep involves, not a birth, but a death," quoting Ecclesiastes 7:1: "the day of death is better than the day of birth." And it observes that the only two birthday feasts in Scripture, Pharaoh's (Genesis 40) and Herod's (Mark 6), each ended with an execution.

One sentence matters for fairness: "Jehovah's Witnesses are not preoccupied with the roots of every custom; yet when the Scriptures give such pointed indications, we do not ignore them." The argument is not that anything with a pagan ancestor is forbidden, but that birthdays combine doubtful origins with biblical silence and negative examples.

Christmas and Easter

The Christmas article first insists that Witnesses believe in Jesus as the only Savior. Then it gives its reasons: "Jesus commanded that we commemorate his death, not his birth"; the apostles did not keep Christmas; Jesus' birth date is unknown; and "we believe that Christmas is not approved by God because it is rooted in pagan customs and rites." It closes: "Although we choose not to celebrate Christmas ourselves, we respect each person's right to decide for himself in this matter."² The Easter article affirms the resurrection as "core to the Christian faith," but holds that "the origins of Easter customs, which come from ancient fertility rites, make Easter unacceptable to God."³

Holidays, flags and anthems

A longer article explains the method. Some holidays "clearly violate Bible principles," and Witnesses avoid them. "Regarding other holidays, each Witness makes his or her own choice, striving 'to maintain a clear conscience before God and men.'" Witnesses ask whether a holiday is rooted in other gods, luck or belief in an immortal soul; whether it promotes interfaith worship; whether it exalts a human, an organization or a national symbol; whether it elevates one nation; and whether it is characterized by unrestrained or lewd behavior.⁴ The list includes Halloween, Thanksgiving and Independence Day, and also feasts kept by Orthodox and Catholic Christians: Epiphany, Lent, the Assumption, All Saints' Day, the Ethiopian Meskel feast of the Cross, and the name day, "the feast day of the saint after whom a child is named."

A separate article says Witnesses "respect governments and their national symbols," but "Jehovah's Witnesses likewise feel that saluting the flag amounts to an act of worship, or idolatry, which the Bible prohibits." It adds that they do not "vandalize it, burn it, or otherwise show disrespect for it," and compares their stance to early Christians who refused to sacrifice to the emperor.⁵

How the practice developed

Witnesses do not claim the practice was always in place. Their history God's Kingdom Rules! says: "The Bible Students long acknowledged that Christmas has pagan roots and that Jesus was not born on December 25." Yet Christmas "continued to be celebrated even by members of the Brooklyn Bethel family." After an article in The Golden Age of 14 December 1927 called Christmas pagan, the book says, the headquarters family did not celebrate it that December or afterward, and a 1928 radio talk by Richard H. Barber pressed the case.⁶ {{strong: The Bible Students, the movement from which Jehovah's Witnesses descend, celebrated Christmas into the late 1920s, by their own published account.}}

Other holidays followed. The same chapter lists warnings against Easter (1928), Valentine's Day (1929) and New Year's (1946), and quotes The Golden Age of 6 May 1936: "In the Bible there is no instance of celebrations of birthdays by any of God's people."⁷ Witnesses see these changes as increasing light given through Christ's appointed channel (see the site's article on the Governing Body and the faithful and discreet slave). Outsiders will simply note that the practice came about half a century after the movement began.

The Memorial: the one observance Witnesses keep

The Memorial of Christ's death is held once a year after sundown on Nisan 14, reckoned from the new moon as first visible in Jerusalem. "We continue to observe the Memorial on this date each year, following the practice of early Christians," the official article says. Unleavened bread and red wine are passed, but only those who believe they are among the 144,000 called to rule with Christ in heaven partake. Witnesses stress that "the observance is not a sacrament, or a religious practice that imparts merit such as grace or the forgiveness of sins."⁸ Their 2025 report gives a worldwide Memorial attendance of 20,635,015, with 24,576 partakers.⁹

The appeal to early Christians is not invented. In the second century the churches of Asia Minor held, Eusebius reports, "that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Saviour's passover," while other churches ended the fast on Sunday.¹⁰ (The site's article on the Quartodeciman controversy tells that story.) But those Christians kept the day as a feast of Christ's Pascha for the whole Church, not a rite for a small elect, and, as far as the second-century evidence shows, alongside the weekly Lord's Day Eucharist. See also the site's articles on the 144,000 and the Eucharist as more than a memorial.

What the historical evidence shows

Birthdays in the early Church

Here the Witnesses have a real point. Origen, writing in the third century, made almost exactly their argument. Discussing Herod's feast in his Commentary on Matthew, he recalls an earlier writer's remark on Pharaoh's birthday and concludes that "we, taking this suggestion from him, find in no Scripture that a birthday was kept by a righteous man."¹¹ The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia notes the same view in Origen's homilies on Leviticus and says Christmas "was not among the earliest festivals of the Church."¹² {{strong: Third-century writers such as Origen regarded birthday feasts with suspicion, and there is no evidence that the earliest Christians kept them.}}

But the early Christians did use the word "birthday": they applied it to death. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, written by the church of Smyrna soon after the bishop's death in the mid-second century, says the faithful would gather at his relics "to celebrate the birth-day of his martyrdom."¹³ This fits the Witnesses' reading of Ecclesiastes 7:1, but it also shows the Church keeping annual commemorations of holy people within a few generations of the apostles. That is the root of the Orthodox calendar of saints.

Where did 25 December come from?

Witnesses say Christmas is "rooted in pagan customs and rites." Many Christians call that a myth. In fact scholars are divided.

The Gospels give no date. Around 200, Clement of Alexandria knew Christians who placed the birth on "the twenty-fifth day of Pachon" (20 May) and others who preferred April.¹⁴ By the fourth century the West kept 25 December and much of the East 6 January. The earliest certain evidence for 25 December is a Roman almanac compiled in 354, whose list of martyrs' days begins with Christ's birth in Bethlehem on that date; the same almanac's civil calendar marks 25 December "Natalis Invicti," the birthday of the Unconquered Sun.¹² A passage in Hippolytus's commentary on Daniel would push the date back to about 205, but its authenticity is disputed.

The older "history of religions" theory holds that the Church set the feast against the sun's festival. The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia says the solar feast "has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date." So does an Orthodox catechism. Fr Thomas Hopko's The Orthodox Faith, published by the Orthodox Church in America, says the Nativity was placed on 25 December "in order to offset the pagan festival of the Invincible Sun," and that "it was established by the Church quite consciously as an attempt to defeat the false religion of the heathens." On this view the Church did not adopt the sun cult but confronted it, as the Christmas troparion does: "those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness."¹⁵

The "calculation" theory, developed by Louis Duchesne and Thomas Talley, holds that Christians dated Christ's conception to the day of his death, 25 March, and counted nine months forward. Augustine knew the tradition: "He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered ... But He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th."¹⁶ Andrew McGowan, who favors this theory, notes that no ancient Christian writer says the date was chosen to match a pagan feast, yet concludes, "We cannot be entirely sure."¹⁷ Steven Hijmans and Hans Förster have since challenged both theories, and C. P. E. Nothaft's review calls for an approach that "retains the aspect of inter-religious influence" while taking early Christian chronology seriously.¹⁸ {{debated: Whether 25 December was set against the feast of the Unconquered Sun, calculated from the date of Christ's death, or both, remains an open question among historians.}}

Two points stand either way. Bishops did fight lingering sun-worship among their own people: Pope Leo the Great, in a Christmas sermon, rebuked Christians who bowed to the rising sun on the steps of St Peter's, saying "we must abstain even from the appearance of this observance."¹⁹ And the Church never claimed to know the historical date; it celebrates the event. The site's article on claims that Christianity copied pagan religions covers the wider question.

Easter or Pascha?

Here the Witness case is weaker. Most languages call the feast a form of Pascha, from the Hebrew for Passover. Bede, writing in the eighth century, said the English month Eosturmonath was "once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre," and that its name passed to the Paschal season.²⁰ Bede is the only ancient writer who mentions that goddess. The feast itself is far older than the English name. Paul writes, "For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, NKJV), and the second-century disputes Eusebius records were about when to keep Pascha, not whether. {{strong: The Christian Pascha developed from the Passover and the Resurrection, and was kept in the second century, centuries before the English name "Easter" is attested.}} Folk customs such as eggs, whose history this article has not traced, are not the substance of the feast.

The flag and the emperor

The Witnesses' comparison with the martyrs has real force. Told to "swear by the fortune of Caesar," Polycarp refused and went to the fire. Yet in the same exchange he said, "we are taught to give all due honour (which entails no injury upon ourselves) to the powers and authorities which are ordained of God."¹³ His line ran between honor and worship.

The Witness refusal also made American legal history. In Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) the Supreme Court upheld a compulsory school flag salute against Witness children expelled for refusing it. On 14 June 1943, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, it reversed itself. Justice Jackson wrote: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."²¹ {{very-strong: In Barnette (1943) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools may not compel students to salute the flag, overruling Gobitis (1940).}} Every Christian tradition benefits from that protection of conscience.

The Orthodox view of the calendar

The Orthodox Church does not require anyone to celebrate a birthday. Its view of feasts rests on something deeper: time has been redeemed by Christ and can be sanctified. The Church's firm teaching is that worship belongs to God alone, and that the Lord's Day and Pascha are the heart of Christian life. The OCA catechism says "the real liturgical center of the annual cycle of Orthodox worship is the feast of the Resurrection of Christ"; every Sunday is dedicated to the Resurrection, and even fixed feasts such as Christmas "take their liturgical form and inspiration from the Paschal feast."¹⁵ At Pascha the Church sings, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." Far from honoring Christ's birth in place of his death, the Orthodox year turns on the Cross and Resurrection. (See the site's guide to the Orthodox Church calendar.)

By common tradition, the Church usually keeps a saint's feast on the day of his or her death, the heavenly birthday, as Smyrna did for Polycarp. In many Orthodox cultures the name day, the feast of one's patron saint, has mattered more than the birthday; one Orthodox parish explains that "it is also very traditional to celebrate a person's Name's Day rather than their birthday."²² The saints calendar belongs to that rhythm. Customs vary by country and family, and many Orthodox Christians also celebrate birthdays; that is custom, not doctrine.

From Scripture, the Orthodox read Paul as leaving such questions to conscience within the Church: "One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord" (Romans 14:5-6, NKJV). Tertullian, a severe critic of Christians who joined pagan festivals, still told them they had better feasts of their own: "you have a festive day every eighth day."²³ The early Church answered the Saturnalia not by abolishing feasting but by feasting on the Lord's Day and through the fifty days of Pentecost.

On civil life, the Church prays at every Divine Liturgy: "For our country, the president, and all those in public service, let us pray to the Lord."²⁴ It does not treat civic honor as worship. The Church has no single rule about flags or anthems, and Orthodox in different countries judge particular customs differently; what it forbids is giving any state the worship due to God.

The strongest objections, and replies

Objection 1: The customs have pagan roots, and God rejects mixed worship

This is the Witnesses' central argument, and the Orthodox share its premise that God alone is worshiped (Exodus 20:4-5). The disagreement is whether origin fixes meaning. A feast that sings "Christ is born, glorify Him" is not the worship of the sun, even if its date was chosen in rivalry with a solar feast. Witnesses partly accept this, since they are "not preoccupied with the roots of every custom." The question is which customs still carry their old meaning, and the Fathers judged that case by case, as Leo did with sun-bowing, rather than by abolishing feasts.

Objection 2: Jesus commanded that we commemorate his death, not his birth

He did command the remembrance of his death (Luke 22:19), but a command to do one thing is not a ban on everything else. The angel announced Christ's birth as "good tidings of great joy which will be to all people" (Luke 2:10, NKJV), and said of John the Baptist, "many will rejoice at his birth" (Luke 1:14, NKJV). Jesus went to the Temple at "the Feast of Dedication" (John 10:22, NKJV), which the Law of Moses never commanded, and Purim was a feast the Jews "established and imposed ... upon themselves" (Esther 9:27, NKJV). Scripture shows God's people keeping uncommanded feasts without condemnation.

Objection 3: The only birthday feasts in the Bible end in executions

True, and Origen drew the same lesson. But what the stories condemn is the cruelty of kings, not the anniversary. Biblical silence shows that birthdays were not a religious duty for Israel or the apostles; it cannot show that a family's thanksgiving for a child's life displeases God.

Objection 4: Saluting a flag is an act of worship

Where a ceremony truly demands religious devotion to the state, the Orthodox agree it must be refused, as the martyrs refused incense to the emperor. But following Polycarp and Romans 13:7 ("honor to whom honor"), they distinguish worship from the honor due to authorities, and most do not regard a salute as worship. The Witnesses' willingness to suffer for conscience deserves respect, and in America it protected everyone's.

Objection 5: Lent, Epiphany and saints' days are human traditions

The Orthodox reply that they are traditions, but not merely human ones. The Church that kept Pascha in the second century and honored its martyrs on their heavenly birthdays is the same Church that recognized the New Testament. To accept the books while rejecting the worshiping life in which they were read is, from an Orthodox standpoint, to keep half of what was handed down. The site's article Are Jehovah's Witnesses Christian? explores that larger difference.

What we can say confidently

• Witnesses abstain from birthdays, Christmas, Easter, many national and religious holidays and flag salutes, for reasons set out clearly in their own publications, and say they respect others' right to celebrate.
• The Bible Students celebrated Christmas until the late 1920s; the present practice is a twentieth-century development.
• Origen regarded birthday feasts with suspicion, and there is no evidence that the earliest Christians kept birthdays or Christmas.
• By the second century Christians kept Pascha and the annual "birthdays" of martyrs.
• The earliest certain evidence for 25 December as Christ's birthday is the Roman almanac of 354.
• Barnette (1943) protected students' right not to salute the flag.

What remains disputed

• Why 25 December was chosen: rivalry with the Unconquered Sun, calculation from the Passion, or both.
• Whether the Hippolytus reference to 25 December is genuine.
• Whether Bede's goddess Eostre existed, since he is the only ancient writer to mention her.
• Whether particular civic ceremonies amount to worship; Christians of good faith judge differently.
• How far the folklore claims about birthday candles and horoscopes, drawn by the Witness article from modern reference books we have not checked, reflect ancient practice.

Conclusion

Jehovah's Witnesses abstain because they want their worship to be pure, and in this they echo a real strand of the early Church: Origen's wariness of birthday feasts, Polycarp's refusal to swear by Caesar, Tertullian's dismay at Christians joining the Saturnalia. The Orthodox Church honors that instinct.

But the same Church that refused the emperor's incense gathered every Lord's Day to break bread, kept the Christian Passover each spring, and celebrated the heavenly birthdays of its martyrs. It did not answer paganism by emptying the calendar; it filled the calendar with Christ. Their Witness neighbors deserve respect for their conscience, and a gentle invitation to see that feasting and faithfulness were never meant to be enemies.

Notes

1. "Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Celebrate Birthdays?", Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah's Witnesses, article 39, jw.org / Watchtower Online Library, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/502015120 (accessed 16 October 2026). ↩
2. "Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Celebrate Christmas?", Frequently Asked Questions, article 18, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/502013149. The article quotes the New Catholic Encyclopedia that the Nativity feast "was instituted no earlier than 243"; we have not checked that quotation in the encyclopedia itself. ↩
3. "Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Celebrate Easter?", Frequently Asked Questions, article 19, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/502013150. ↩
4. "Why Don't Jehovah's Witnesses Celebrate Certain Holidays?", Frequently Asked Questions, article 59, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/502019300. The article notes that its list is not complete. ↩
5. "Why Do Jehovah's Witnesses Respectfully Abstain From Participating in Nationalistic Ceremonies?", Frequently Asked Questions, article 64, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/pc/r1/lp-e/1200029911/1/0. The article quotes Carlton J. H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism, 107-108, and Daniel P. Mannix, The Way of the Gladiator, 212. ↩
6. God's Kingdom Rules! (Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania), chapter 10, "The King Refines His People Spiritually," paragraphs 8-10 and the box "Christmas, Its Origin and Purpose," https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/pc/r1/lp-e/1200029711/107/0. The quotation from The Golden Age is given there, not checked in the original issue. ↩
7. God's Kingdom Rules!, chapter 10, box "Exposing Other Holidays and Celebrations" (same page as note 6). ↩
8. "Why Do Jehovah's Witnesses Observe the Lord's Supper Differently From the Way Other Religions Do?", Frequently Asked Questions, article 45, https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/pc/r1/lp-e/1200030276/32/0. ↩
9. "2025 Grand Totals," 2025 Service Year Report of Jehovah's Witnesses Worldwide, https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/2025-Service-Year-Report-of-Jehovahs-Witnesses-Worldwide/2025-Grand-Totals/ (accessed 16 October 2026). The 2024 report gave 21,119,442 attending and 23,212 partakers (https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1102024816). ↩
10. Eusebius, Church History 5.23.1; see also 5.24 (the letter of Polycrates of Ephesus), trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm. ↩
11. Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10.22, trans. John Patrick, ANF vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101610.htm. ↩
12. C. C. Martindale, "Christmas," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm, sections "Early celebration," "Rome" and "Natalis Invicti." The encyclopedia cites Origen's eighth homily on Leviticus (In Lev. Hom. 8, PG 12:495; we have not opened the homily itself) and discusses the disputed Hippolytus passage. ↩
13. Martyrdom of Polycarp 18.3, trans. J. B. Lightfoot (adapted text), https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp-lightfoot.html; chapters 9-10, trans. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm. ↩
14. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.21, trans. William Wilson, ANF vol. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/02101.htm; the month conversions follow McGowan (note 17). ↩
15. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship (New York: Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America), "The Church Year": "Nativity of Christ," "Church Year" and "Easter Sunday: The Holy Pascha," https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-church-year. ↩
16. Augustine, On the Trinity 4.5.9, trans. Arthur West Haddan, NPNF1 vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130104.htm. ↩
17. Andrew McGowan, "How December 25 Became Christmas," Bible Review, December 2002; republished in Bible History Daily, https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/how-december-25-became-christmas/. ↩
18. Steven Hijmans, "Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas," Mouseion 47, ser. 3, vol. 3 (2003): 377-398, doi:10.1353/mou.2003.0038 (not opened; summarized from Nothaft); C. P. E. Nothaft, "The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research," Church History 81, no. 4 (2012): 903-911, doi:10.1017/S0009640712001941 (abstract). ↩
19. Leo the Great, Sermon 27 (On the Feast of the Nativity, VII), 4, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, NPNF2 vol. 12, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/360327.htm. ↩
20. Bede, The Reckoning of Time 15, trans. Faith Wallis, Translated Texts for Historians 29 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999); Latin text and Wallis's translation (with a small correction) as reproduced at https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2024/06/13/eostre-in-a-manuscript-of-bedes-de-ratione-temporum-in-berlin/. ↩
21. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), decided 14 June 1943, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/319/624; Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), decided 3 June 1940, https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/310/586. ↩
22. "What is a 'name's day?'", Archangel Michael Orthodox Church (Orthodox Church in America), Broadview Heights, Ohio, https://stmichaelscleveland.org/qna/what-is-a-names-day/. The writer describes the custom in his own family's cultural setting. ↩
23. Tertullian, On Idolatry 14, trans. S. Thelwall, ANF vol. 3, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0302.htm. ↩
24. The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Great Litany, English text as used in Serbian Orthodox parishes, https://atlantaserbs.com/learnmore/library/DIVINE-LITURGY-ST-JOHN-CHRYSOSTOM.html. Wording varies slightly between translations. ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982. Checked at biblegateway.com.
• Martyrdom of Polycarp. Translated by J. B. Lightfoot (as adapted at earlychristianwritings.com); and by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.
• Clement of Alexandria. Stromata. Translated by William Wilson. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.
• Tertullian. On Idolatry. Translated by S. Thelwall. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885.
• Origen. Commentary on Matthew. Translated by John Patrick. Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896.
• Eusebius. Church History. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 1. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890.
• Augustine. On the Trinity. Translated by Arthur West Haddan. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 3. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.
• Leo the Great. Sermons. Translated by Charles Lett Feltoe. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1895.
• Bede. The Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione). Translated by Faith Wallis. Translated Texts for Historians 29. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999. Chapter 15 checked in a reproduction of the Latin and Wallis's English (roger-pearse.com).
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), and Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940).

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith. Vol. 2, Worship. New York: Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America. Online at oca.org.
• The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. English text, Serbian Orthodox usage (atlantaserbs.com).
• Archangel Michael Orthodox Church, Broadview Heights, Ohio. "What is a 'name's day?'" Parish questions and answers.

Other scholarship

• Martindale, C. C. "Christmas." In The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton, 1908.
• McGowan, Andrew. "How December 25 Became Christmas." Bible Review, December 2002.
• Hijmans, Steven. "Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas." Mouseion 47, ser. 3, vol. 3 (2003): 377-398.
• Nothaft, C. P. E. "The Origins of the Christmas Date: Some Recent Trends in Historical Research." Church History 81, no. 4 (2012): 903-911.

Sources from the tradition being discussed (Jehovah's Witnesses)

• Frequently Asked Questions About Jehovah's Witnesses, articles 18 (Christmas), 19 (Easter), 39 (Birthdays), 45 (Lord's Supper), 59 (Certain Holidays) and 64 (Nationalistic Ceremonies). Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, jw.org and wol.jw.org.
• God's Kingdom Rules! Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania. Chapter 10.
• 2025 Service Year Report of Jehovah's Witnesses Worldwide (and the 2024 report). Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania.