The Book of Intercalation: On the Christian Calendar

I have already explained in the previous chapter the method of the nations who calculate according to the moon, namely, the Ishmaelites, as well as the method of those who count exclusively according to the sun—the Persians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and those who follow them—and their disagreement about the number of days in the solar year. All those in the wicked kingdom of Edom [Christendom], who count from the time of the Hanged One [Jesus], determine the dates of most of their affairs according to the reigns of their kings, in the Greek solar calendar. However, to fix their fast days and some of their holidays, they must take into consideration the lunar cycle along with the solar, because they have the pretense of following the Jewish custom in these calculations. They reckon their holidays from the year in which they believe that the one who led them astray was born. According to them, he was born in the year 3761 of the creation [1 CE] on the twenty-fifth day of the month of December, which was the Sabbath, the ninth day of the month of Tevet, in the eighteenth year of the 198th Metonic cycle according to our calculations. If what they say is true, that was an appropriate day for that miscreant [i.e., Jesus] to be born. (However, one should not believe what they say about the birth of the Hanged One, that they know that his date of birth is the twenty-fifth of December, because this does not appear in the Gospels, nor in the writings of the Offender’s disciples, which they hold to be authoritative.)

However, this day, the twenty-fifth of December, was a day of debauchery for the ancient peoples, who were idol worshipers. The ancient Chaldeans called it the birth of the year and others called it the birth of the sun because at this time, on this day, the sun appears at the beginning of the constellation Capricorn. The days begin to lengthen, and the nights get shorter, and the vegetation in the ground and the grass and the seeds begin to gain strength to come out of the earth and grow and bloom. They ascribed to it the birth of time and called it the birth and the renewal of the year and the birth of the sun. When the Offender’s disciples came to lead these nations astray and convert them to their false belief, they adopted the policy of celebrating this day, already regarded as a special day, and said that it had been observed all along as a day of great debauchery only because the Degenerate One was destined to be born on that day. They changed the day of debauchery for the worshipers of false gods to a day of debauchery for the worshipers of graven images and degenerates and turned from one type of impurity to another and from one sin to another. If you ask the knowledgeable among their priests, you will find that they do not know the day of his birth, other than from this line of reasoning.