Which of these deities were believed to be born on Christmas?

Question

I got this in my Facebook timeline today and it seems to be viral

Gods born on December 25th:

Happy Birthday Horus (c. 3000 BCE)

Happy Birthday Osiris (c. 3000 BCE)

Happy Birthday Attis of Phrygia (c. 1400 BCE)

Happy Birthday Krishna (c. 1400 BCE)

Happy Birthday Zoroaster (c. 1000 BCE)

Happy Birthday Mithra of Persia (c. 600 BCE)

Happy Birthday Heracles (c. 800 BCE)

Happy Birthday Dionysus (c. 186 BCE)

Happy Birthday Tammuz (c.400 BCE)

Happy Birthday Adonis (c. 200 BCE)

Happy Birthday Hermes (c. 400s BCE)

Happy Birthday Prometheus (Born at the beginning of mankind)

Jesus (if he actually lived) however, was born sometime in June, probably the 16th, according to most scholars, but is celebrated on December 25th because some early church leaders wanted to seize the enthusiasm from crowds gathering on a day holy to many people.

^{BCE = Before Common Era (Sometimes written as CE)}

We have already shown that we don't know when Jesus was born, thus the claim that he was born in June is false. On the other hand, the claim that the Christian celebration of Christmas falls on a pre-existing holiday seems correct.

What about the rest of the image? How many of these deities' birthdays were celebrated at Christmas^†?

^{^† Let's paraphrase the claim as "a bunch of other deities' nativities were celebrated at Christmas, such as these". For this reason:

(a) any deity in the list above whose birthday was believed to be or celebrated around the winter solstice, or Christmas or New Year's eve should count as "close enough"

(b) I'd like to see the overall stats in a single answer (finding one which doesn't fit does not disprove the claim)}

If the last line is also confused. [BCE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era) is "sometimes" (i.e. practically always) written as ***BC***, not *CE*. — Oddthinking, Dec 26 '13 at 22:17
The first couple I checked i.e. Hermes and Dionysus are IMO wrong, in that the stated year of birth is much too late. Do you expect a separate answer per god, or should one answer address every one, or is "disproving" only two of them enough to show that the claim is false? — ChrisW, Dec 26 '13 at 22:27
Does it mean anything to say someone's birthday is on December 25th, 1000 BCE when the concept of December didn't appeared until the Roman calendar, which didn't appear until at least 753 BCE? — Oddthinking, Dec 26 '13 at 22:37
Done. In any case use your best judgement @ChrisW and Oddthinking — Sklivvz, Dec 26 '13 at 22:55
Do you want to ask, instead, whether it's true that Christmas is on December 25 because that's the same date as a previous pagan holiday (as is alleged in the image)? Or if you don't want to ask about Christmas and instead want to ask about pagan holidays, what's the point of your 2nd-last paragraph (from "We have..." to "seems correct.")? — ChrisW, Dec 26 '13 at 23:22
@ChrisW No, I don't want to ask that. I want to ask what the question specifies: How many of these deities' birthdays were celebrated at Christmas? — Sklivvz, Dec 26 '13 at 23:25

score 30 · Accepted Answer · edited May 10 '16 at 12:07

Horus says yes -- he's a sky god
Osiris says no -- July 14
Attis -- I haven't found a birthday; he wasn't a god; http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html alleges that similarities between Christianity and the cult of Attis were due to the latter imitating the former, not the other way around.
Krishna says no - 18 July 3228 BCE
Zoroaster says no -- 6 days after Spring equinox
Mithras says no -- the date is a mystery/secret
Heracles -- I haven't found a birthday, it is a week after his cousins Eurystheus. As stated in Homer's epic of the Illiad
Dionysus says he was worshipped in 13th century BCE, so the "186 BCE" in the OP is wrong; there was a Roman senatorial decree to outlaw the Bacchanalia in 186 BCE (which doesn't mention a birthday).

Without working my way on through to the end of the list, in summary IMO this list is low-grade rubbish, which doesn't stand up to casual fact-checking.

The (alleged) link between Dionysus and Christianity is wine, not birthdays.

People have compared Christianity to various other religions and mythologies. IMO someone has taken this list of "comparable" figures and fabricated the above by saying that "what they have in common is that they were all born on December 25".

For completeness' sake:

Tammuz says yes -- death celebrated at the summer solstice and he lived for 6 months of each year
Adonis suggests possibly -- "Adonis was certainly based in large part on Tammuz"
Hermes says that the year is wrong (too late) again -- because he's described by Homer he dates from at least 700 BCE; no record of his birthdate, but his festival the Hermaia was celebrated in different months in different cities (February in Boetia, November in Crete)
Prometheus -- I found no record of a birth-date; there was a festival in Athens in his honour called the Promethea but I don't know its date

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_calendar#Names_of_the_months says that Greeks celebrated birthdays monthly rather than yearly:

Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around the beginning of each month. These were often the birthdays of gods, the Greeks thinking of birthdays as a monthly rather than a yearly recurrence. Every month days 1-4 and 6-8 were all sacred to particular gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days a year:

Day 1: New Moon
Day 2: Agathos Daimon
Day 3: Athena's Birthday
Day 4: Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite and Eros

Dionysus could have been born in 186 BCE, but not worshiped until the 13th century. — Flimzy, Dec 27 '13 at 08:03
@Flimzy I meant 13th century BCE: i.e. he was already known more than 1000 years before 186 BCE. — ChrisW, Dec 27 '13 at 10:49

Which of these deities were believed to be born on Christmas?

Gods born on December 25th:

1 Answers1