Short answer
Nothing about it came from Jesus. The Bible never gives the day Jesus was born, or even the month. The early Church left no record of keeping it. Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria, a Christian teacher, recorded dates in April and May. The first certain record of Christmas on 25 December is from Rome, by the year 336. In 1647 the English Parliament banned Christmas, because the Puritans could not find it in scripture. The tree and Santa Claus came much later. Muslims honour the birth of Jesus with the words God gave him: peace on the day he was born.
Full explanation
The Gospels give no date
Luke and Matthew are the two New Testament Gospels that tell of the birth. Neither gives a day or a month. Luke ties the birth to a census and mentions shepherds out in the fields by night. Matthew places it in the days of Herod. The shepherds are a hint about the season, not a date, and people argue about what they show. What matters is the silence.
“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)”
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”
“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,”
The early Church did not know the day or keep it
Around 200, Clement of Alexandria, a Christian teacher in Egypt, records that some Christians had worked the date out. They placed it in April or May. Rival dates reached by calculation mean nobody knew. About forty years later Origen, a Christian scholar of Alexandria, wrote that no saint in scripture is found holding a feast on his own birthday. The two birthday feasts the Bible describes in full are Pharaoh's and Herod's. No feast of Christ's birth is recorded in his day.
Clement records that some Christians of his day had worked out the day of Jesus' birth. Some placed it on the 25th of the Egyptian month Pachon (in May), others on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi (in April). He does not mention 25 December.
Origen says that no saint in scripture is found holding a feast on his own birthday, and that only sinners rejoice over that kind of birthday. He names Pharaoh in the Old Testament and Herod in the New, who both stained their birthday feasts with human blood.
“And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker among his servants. And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again; and he gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand: But he hanged the chief baker: as Joseph had interpreted to them.”
“But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison.”
25 December first appears in Rome
The first certain record of Christmas on 25 December is in the Chronograph of 354, a Roman book of calendars and lists. The list was drawn up by 336, in the reign of the emperor Constantine. It opens with 25 December: "Christ born in Bethlehem of Judaea".
A book of calendars and lists made in Rome in 354. Its list of the burial days of the martyrs, drawn up by 336, opens with 25 December: "Christ born in Bethlehem of Judaea" (natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae).
- The Gospels
No day, no month
Neither Luke nor Matthew gives a date for the birth.
- About 200
Dates in April and May
Clement of Alexandria records dates some Christians had worked out.
- By 336
25 December in Rome
The first certain record of the date.
- 1647
Banned by Parliament
Puritans found no Christmas in scripture.
- 1823
St Nicholas reshaped
A New York poem gives the figure later called Santa Claus.
- 1848
The tree in Britain
A picture of Queen Victoria's family tree makes it the fashion.
How the Church came to choose the day
Historians do not agree on how the Church came to choose the day. One explanation is calculation. Some early Christians believed that 25 March was the day Jesus was conceived, or the day he died. Count nine months from 25 March and you reach 25 December. On any explanation, the date is not in the Bible. Churches still disagree: the Armenian Apostolic Church keeps the birth of Christ on 6 January.
A study of how the Christian feasts arose. Talley argues that 25 December may have been reached by calculation from a belief that Jesus died on 25 March, rather than simply taken over from the pagan sun feast.
Sets out the explanations for the date, among them that it was calculated from 25 March, believed to be the date of Jesus' conception or death. Notes that the earliest Christians did not celebrate the birth at all.
The tree and Santa Claus
The Christmas tree comes from the German-speaking lands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It became the fashion in Britain after 1848, when the Illustrated London News, a weekly newspaper, printed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert around their tree. Santa Claus grew out of Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop of Myra, in what is now Turkey. New York writers reshaped him in the early 1800s, above all in the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (1823). Neither has anything to do with Jesus.
The Christmas Supplement of the Illustrated London News printed an engraving of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children gathered round a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, with a description of the German custom that Albert had brought to the royal household.
A poem, first printed without a name, describing St. Nicholas as a plump, jolly elf who comes down the chimney on the night before Christmas, in a sleigh drawn by eight reindeer, to fill the children's stockings.
Christians who banned Christmas
The Puritans were strict English Protestants. They held that scripture alone governs the Church. They searched it for Christmas, found nothing, and acted. In 1647 the English Parliament abolished Christmas with Easter and the other holy days, until the monarchy returned in 1660. In Massachusetts a 1659 law fined anyone five shillings for keeping Christmas, until 1681. These were Christians who took the Bible as their only rule.
The English Parliament's ordinance of 8 June 1647 abolished the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun and other holy days, and gave a monthly day of leisure instead. Christmas returned with the monarchy in 1660.
A law of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, passed in May 1659, fined anyone five shillings for observing any such day as Christmas, whether by not working, by feasting or in any other way. It was repealed in 1681.
How the Qur'an honours his birth
Jesus left no command to keep his birthday, and no letter of the New Testament mentions one. The Qur'an honours his birth in another way. It records the words of the infant Jesus. He is a servant of Allah (﷾) and a prophet. Peace is on him the day he was born, the day he dies, and the day he is raised. The blessing on his birth is peace, not a calendar, a tree or a feast.
“He said: "I am indeed a servant of Allah: He hath given me revelation and made me a prophet;”
“"So peace is on me the day I was born, the day that I die, and the day that I shall be raised up to life (again)"!”
Perspectives
Mainstream Christian
Christmas celebrates the real birth of the Son of God. The exact date does not matter; the Church chose a day to remember the event, and the customs are a way of rejoicing.
Luke records the birth of Jesus with shepherds in the fields, and the Church keeps the memory of that event.
Rebuttal
Luke does tell of the birth, and Islam honours it too, with the words of peace the Qur'an records. But Luke gives no date and no command to keep a feast.
Some scholars argue that 25 December was reached by Christian calculation from 25 March.
Rebuttal
Perhaps it was. Either way, men worked out the date, and the Bible does not give it. Clement, around 200, records different dates in April and May.
The Islamic perspective
Jesus never asked for his birthday to be kept, and nothing about Christmas came from him. The Qur'an honours his birth with peace. It records what he said of himself: that he was a servant of God (﷾) and His prophet.
The Gospels give no date for the birth of Jesus.
Early Christian writers did not know the date, and no feast of Christ's birth is recorded in their day.
The first certain record of Christmas on 25 December is from Rome by 336.
However the date was reached, it was chosen by men, and it is not in the Bible.
Some Christians held to scripture alone. They banned Christmas in England and Massachusetts because they could not find it in the Bible.
The Qur'an records Jesus blessing the day of his birth with peace.