Early texts claim Jesus was conceived on the same date of his death

Christmas celebrates the anniversary of God's birth as the man Jesus

The major holiday originated in the Christian doctrine of God's incarnation in first-century Roman Judea. Though it was not celebrated for several hundred years after Jesus' death, it took on greater importance as the church spread, culminating in a global holiday season today.

The season celebrates Jesus' birth and anticipates the Second Coming of Christ

The Christian Bible’s New Testament features four gospels, or lives of Jesus, each of which describes the birth of Jesus in different ways (or does not mention it). Historians, both secular and religious, have sought to contextualize the biblical accounts with empirical evidence.

Advent originally had almost nothing to do with the Christmas story

Early Advent wasn’t about celebrating Jesus’s birth. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the season focused almost entirely on preparing for Christ’s Second Coming and “final judgment.” Advent’s connection to the Nativity only emerged centuries later.

Theologians describe how Jesus likely aligned his death with the Passover

Jon Collins and Tim Mackie trace how the Last Supper, the temple confrontation, and the crucifixion each map onto the story of the Exodus, making Easter the culmination of a cosmic liberation narrative begun in Egypt.

The idea of resurrection was not common at the time of Jesus' death

NT Wright, a leading New Testament scholar, argues that first-century Jews held a wide spectrum of beliefs about the afterlife. This included that the early Christian claim of one individual rising bodily from the dead, ahead of the general resurrection, was without precedent in Judaism or the wider Greco-Roman world.

Martin Luther is often cited as the first to decorate the Christmas tree—though the practice began decades earlier

Luther lore claims he may have been the first to link tree decorations to Jesus, as he used candles to symbolize the Nativity star. However, German bakers had adorned evergreens with apples and sweets as early as 1419 for Christmas Eve displays.

The earliest depiction of Jesus' crucifixion

The Alexamenos Graffito is widely considered the oldest surviving image of the crucifixion. It was scratched into a plaster wall near Rome's Palatine Hill, probably around 200 CE. It is not devotional art—it shows a donkey-headed figure on a cross alongside the Greek inscription "Alexamenos worships his god," apparently drawn by a student mocking a classmate's Christian faith. No devotional depiction of the crucifixion would be made until the sixth century.

Why Easter's date changes, making it a 'moveable feast'

Unlike Christmas, Easter has no fixed date: It falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21, a formula set by the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to form a standard across Christianity. The result is a window of 35 possible dates, from March 22 to April 25.

The claims that Jesus was buried in the Shroud of Turin, preserved since 1578

The 14-foot linen cloth bears a faint image of a crucified man and is the most scientifically studied relic in history. The core dispute hasn't moved much: 1988 radiocarbon dating placed it in the 13th-14th century, while defenders argue the sample was contaminated by medieval repairs. No one disputes that scientists can't explain how the image was formed, which acts like a photographic negative and has no trace of paint or dye.

The history of the New Year's misunderstanding in England

In the mid-18th century, the legal system in England operated under the understanding that the New Year began March 25. However, the widespread custom remained a Jan. 1 celebration as the public had been practicing for years. Read along to discover the practical issues this discrepancy caused and how the English legal system ended up yielding to public belief.

The ancient Greeks and Romans viewed comets and meteors as divine omens

Both considered the appearance of a comet or its fragments as a precursor to significant events, such as the birth of a notable figure or the death of a ruler. One observed in 44 BCE was believed to be a sign of the deification of Julius Caesar after his assassination.

The earliest Advent was a Lent-like fast beginning Nov. 11

In 490, Bishop Perpetuus of Tours ordered Christians to fast three days a week from St. Martin’s Day (Nov. 11) until Christmas. This 40-day season—called St. Martin’s Lent—is one of the earliest documented forms of Advent.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Due date is calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period—not when sex occurred

The standard counting system considers a woman pregnant from the first day of her last menstrual period, which means someone may technically—for the purposes of measurement—have become pregnant even before she had sex. This standard starting point is used because it reliably marks when the body began preparing for pregnancy—even though it's typically two weeks before conception. On average, most women are pregnant for 280 days from the last menstrual period.

Documented proof of Shakespeare’s life

Birth in 1564 in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon; marriage to Anne Hathaway in 1582; and the appearance of his first born (1583) and first printed play (1594): If you’ve ever doubted the Bard’s existence, here are his life’s milestones backed by historical documents.

Mardi Gras blends pagan celebrations with Christian traditions

The holiday has its roots in pagan celebrations, like ancient Rome's Saturnalian and Lupercalian festivals, which celebrated spring and fertility. Rather than abandoning these traditions, Catholic leaders in Rome incorporated their spirit into a celebration that would expel citizens' debauchery in preparation for the sacrifices they'd endure during the Lenten season. Around the world, this holiday season is called Carnival, though the New Orleans version is usually called Mardi Gras.

Alexander Hamilton's birth year is still disputed

Although Hamilton claimed a 1757 birth, records, newspaper accounts, and later biographers suggest his actual birth year was 1755, leaving historians unsure of his true age when he arrived in America.

Valentine's Day's namesake is unclear

Valentine, which means "powerful" or "worthy," was a popular name in the Roman Empire. Considering that, it's no surprise that there's more than one St. Valentine. In fact, three different men named Valentine were martyred on February 14, and none of them, despite some unproven legends, were ever associated with love or romance.

Caesar's true betrayer wasn't Brutus but Decimus, a conspirator history forgot

It was Decimus—not Brutus—who was closest to Caesar, dined with him the night before his murder, and talked him out of skipping the Senate meeting on the Ides of March when Caesar grew suspicious. This article argues that in his play named after the Roman dictator, Shakespeare immortalized the wrong man. Decimus was captured and executed within two years; Brutus and Cassius took slightly longer to meet their ends.

The Aztecs synced their solar calendar with a complex 260-day ritual cycle

Researchers have uncovered how the Aztecs aligned their agricultural solar calendar with a symbolic 260-day ritual calendar, utilizing celestial tracking and monuments. Evidence from ruins and writings explains why their new year corresponded to February 23 on the Gregorian calendar.

Child mortality rates since ancient Rome

One of the great achievements of modern humanity has been the sea change in child mortality rates—the chance that a newborn eventually lives past puberty. For thousands of years, children had a 50% chance of not entering adulthood. About 300 years...

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother

Dalí's parents found the miracle of his birth nine months after his brother died to be profound, telling him he was his brother's reincarnation. Dalí carried this belief into his adult life and often cited its deep influence on him, including his preoccupation with death and mortality.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

The most common birthdays

Nine of the top 10 most common birthdays fall in September, with Sept. 9 being the most common. However, August is the most common birth month, followed by July and December. On the flip side, the least common birthdays are around major holidays, with Christmas Day being the rarest—probably due to doctors scheduling fewer inductions and C-sections on those days. Find out more birthday surprises here.

Ancient Rome had an early version of macaroni and cheese

Called placenta (with a hard "c"), the holiday dish consisted of sheets of rolled-out dough layered with cheese. It is the first recipe documenting the combination of the two elements. While there is debate about whether the dough can be called pasta because it's not boiled, many scholars view the dish as a proto-lasagna.

The history of ectogenesis and artificial wombs

While the science of artificial wombs is new, the idea goes back to a 1923 Heretics Society of the University of Cambridge lecture where an English biologist was one of the first people to propose an egg could be fertilized outside the womb. This...

Test your knowledge of famous death days

Of the thousands of celebrities whose name you know, how many can you remember the year they died? This simple game tests your knowledge of celebrity death days. An exact match gets you 1,000 points, and if you select within 15 years of the right year you get some points. Go see how much you remember here.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Meet the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence—most of whom didn't put pen to paper until August 2, 1776—and see their original signatures.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.