While we Mormons celebrate Easter today with the rest of the world, we are a little more careful in our celebration of Jesus’ birthday, which is this Saturday, April 6th. Calling April 6th Christ’s birthday might make us seem a little weird. But lest you think it is fringe teaching, I’ll regale you with some quotes, some of them recent.
It appears that the first mention of April 6th being Christs birthday comes from James E. Talmage, of Jesus = Jehovah fame.
We believe April 6th to be the birthday of Jesus Christ as indicated in a revelation of the present dispensation [D&C 20:1] … in which that day is made without qualification the completion of the one thousand eight hundred and thirtieth year since the coming of the Lord in the flesh … We believe that Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea, April 6, B.C. 1
Jesus the Christ page 104
Talmage reference D&C 20:1 as the basis for this idea.
The rise of the Church of Christ in these last days, being one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh, it being regularly organized and established agreeable to the laws of our country, by the will and commandments of God, in the fourth month, and on the sixth day of the month which is called April.
D&C 20:1
For me, this just sounds like fluff added to try and make it sound fancy, but then several prophets have jumped on this and reaffirmed that is in fact Christ’s birthday. In 1975, President Spencer W. Kimball wrote in an Ensign article that “Christ was born on the sixth of April”. Then five years later he said in the April 1980 General Conference
today we not only celebrate the Sesquicentennial of the organization of the Church, but also the greatest event in human history since the birth of Christ on this day 1,980 years ago. Today is Easter Sunday.
1980 General Conference
That same year, Gordon B. Hinckley wrote in an Ensign article where he said
I picture in imagination that April 6 of 1830. The few who believed in Joseph’s mission gathered on that day, which was designated by divine revelation as “being one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the flesh.
Gordon B. Hinckley, “What Hath God Wrought Through His Servant Joseph!” Ensign, May, 1980
The latest reference I can find from a Q15 member is in 2014 by Elder David Bednar.
Today is April 6. We know by revelation that today is the actual and accurate date of the Savior’s birth. April 6 also is the day on which The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized.
David Bednar, April 6th General Conference 2014
If any of you dear readers can find a more recent one, please let me know in the comments.
So this Saturday is April 6th, and also General Conference. It seems ripe for somebody to mention Christ’s birthday. I’m sure there will be plenty of mentions of the anniversary of the founding of the Church, but let’s keep an ear out for the birthday quote.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think April 6th is anything more than James Talmage with an active imagination, or is there real revelation (D&C 20) behind this? Why do you think Mormons don’t play up the special knowledge we have of Christ and April 6th? Is it the weird factor? Are we trying to be more mainstream?
Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay
Wheat & Tares 
When I read the first part of our post, I thought you were going to quote non-Mormon sources who have calculated the birth date and also think it was April 6. Here, we just have a succession of LDS leaders who all just repeat what Joseph Smith said. JS said a lot of things which we now quietly ignore. He taught that no one can see the face of God and live, yet in one version of the first vision he did exactly that. In the D&C he says there is no forgiveness for murder, but in the B of M we have Nephi committing murder and becoming a leader. He taught that “as man is, God once was” and then we have Pres Hinckley stating ” I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it.” Now the position is that getting a planet is speculation, not doctrine. I could go on, but you get the idea.
I don’t know why it would matter when the actual birth day is, and I don’t think anyone really knows. Most scholars aren’t even sure of the actual year and have given a range of 4 – 6 BC. I don’t think the church emphasizes their special knowledge because it’s just another thing that makes them peculiar, which is just another thing they’re trying to distance themselves from.
John Pratt gives us several reasons why the birth of Christ was on April 5, 1 BC
https://johnpratt.com/items/docs/2018/birth_of_christ.html
Do you think Jesus celebrates his birthday according to the Jewish calendar or the Gregorian calendar?
D&C 20:1 does not, and in my opinion, was never intended to establish the “correct” calendar birth date of Jesus. Unfortunately, yet easily forgivably, some sincere members latch on to that notion. Even more unfortunately, and far less forgivably, some dogmatic and pedantic members enforce that notion. Thus, doctrine is created from whole cloth among us.
D&C 20:1 would have been true for any of the 365 days during 1830. That style of writing was used all over the place in common society.
I don’t know the date of Jesus’ birth, and celebrating it on Christmas with the rest of western Christianity is fine with me. I note that eastern Christianity uses a different date than western Christianity. My testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is not based on, and does not include, a “true” calendar date of Jesus’s birth.
Happy Easter!
I have been an active, believing church member all my life. I grew up with the notion that Christ’s actual birthday was April 6th and I think that idea became cemented into church culture because of the quotes from various church leaders listed above. Here is an interesting article from Deseret News that calls into question the idea that April 6th was Christ’s birthday: https://www.deseret.com/2010/12/24/20162745/what-was-the-real-date-of-jesus-birth/
I wonder if the ideas talked about in the article will gain traction with church leaders and in church culture. Though I have my doubts because that would require current or future church leaders to either explicitly or implicitly posit that previous church leaders were incorrect.
At BYU I took a history of Christianity class, taught by a convert to the LDS church. He was excellent. I specifically asked him the question of April 6 birthday and he simply said it’s a Mormon tradition, and that we frankly don’t know the year let alone the day of Christ’s birth.
A spring birthday makes more sense than a winter birthday so April 6 is as good as any.
Establishing a teaching that the birth of Jesus falls on the same date as the organization of the Church (April 6) is the ultimate in virtue signaling. Hey look at us!
Whilst having no knowledge of April 6th or otherwise, I do like the idea of Christ surrendering His life on His birthdate. Seems poetic, and whole.
Sometimes people like to make doctrine where there is no doctrine, and then accuse others of unfaithfulness and unbelief when they don’t follow the man-created doctrine.
The D&C language was just a fancy way of saying “in the year of our Lord xxxx.”
A post a few years back on Reddit gave some examples. It quoted John Whitmer, for example, as having written on 12 June 1831: “It is now June the twelfth, one thousand eight hundred and thirty one years, since the coming of our Lord and Savior in the flesh.” Note that this was not 6 April, even though it was 1831 years since the coming of our Lord and Savior in the flesh. This phrase is a figure of speech. I found the Whitmer quote in the Joseph Smith Papers on-line at John Whitmer, History, 1831–circa 1847, Page 1 (josephsmithpapers.org)
James Talmadge was an apostle with an opinion. Hyrum M Smith was a contemporary apostle with a different opinion. He evidently wrote in a review of Talmadge’s Jesus the Christ: “the organization of the Church in the year 1830 is hardly to be regarded as giving divine authority to the commonly accepted calendar. There are reasons for believing that those who . . . tried to ascertain the correct time” of the Savior’s birth “erred in their calculations, and that the Nativity occurred four years before our era. . . . All that this Revelation means to say is that the Church was organized in the year that is commonly accepted as 1830, a.d.” (also from the Reddit post)
The Reddit post also reads: “President J. Reuben Clark in the 50’s published Our Lord of the Gospels which was later used as a priesthood manual and supported a December birth for Christ. Bruce R. McConkie in 1979 published The Mortal Messiah and supported a December birth for Christ, but admitted that other dates were possible and that the exact date was not known. It appears at least some of the apostles understood that Talmage’s interpretation of D&C 20 was not necessarily authoritative.”
There is a truth here, but it doesn’t matter when Jesus was born. He wasn’t born in April or December, because Jews in Judaea and Galilee didn’t use the Roman calendar. What was April 6 or December 25 to them wouldn’t be the same day for us, if for no other reason than the move from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars (in 1582 in some Catholic countries, but not until 1752 in England). For example, William III of England set sail from the Netherlands on 11 November 1688 (Gregorian calendar) and arrived in England on 5 November 1688 (Julian calendar), so he arrived six days before he left. Was Thomas Jefferson born on 13 April 1743 (Gregorian) or 2 April 1743 (Julian)? Both are correct dates. Encyclopedia (and even Wikipedia) give the 13th, but Thomas Jefferson’s gravestone give the 2nd, because the baby Thomas was born under the Julian calendar, and the British Empire switched to Gregorian when he was 8 or 9 years old.
There is no doctrine here. There is a correct answer, but it matters not one whit for our salvation, so leaders shouldn’t make it an article of our faith. There is a correct answer as to how much time Adam and Eve spent in the Garden after creation and before eating the fruit, but it doesn’t matter. There is a correct answer as to the weight of the stone that killed Goliath, but it doesn’t matter. We shouldn’t base our teachings on facts/opinions that don’t matter.
No, we do not look special when we say that we know the real date of Jesus’ birth, wink wink. We show ourselves silly to be making important things that are utterly unimportant. What matters was that Jesus was born, and died, and rose again; the birth under Herod the Great, and the death and resurrection under Tiberius, with Pontius Pilate as governor in Judaea, Caiaphas holding the high priest’s seat, and Herod Antipas ruling in Galilee and Peraea. The actual dates don’t matter. Even for Easter, which is arguably more important than Christmas, it is a moving holiday: we follow the Catholics and Protestants in celebrating it on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Our Orthodox brethren use a different method, and the date of Easter sometimes differs. Can one say that the other wrong?
@familywomen: “Here, we just have a succession of LDS leaders who all just repeat what Joseph Smith said.”
As you point out, simply repeating Joseph Smith uncritically is a mistake. An even bigger mistake is to assume that everything in our scriptures that appears to have been dictated by Joseph Smith was in fact dictated by him. We don’t have original documents for D&C 20, but I think most scholars consider the “rise of the Church” passage to be a preface by John Whitmer, who was known to use the “x years since the coming of the Lord” formalism in declaring dates.
One interesting thing about Elder Bednar’s specific mention in Apr 2014 GC was that I was in the middle of studying some of Jeff Chadwick’s research on the potential timing of Christ’s birth (His BYU Studies Quarterly article was published in 2010 https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol49/iss4/2/ ). Chadwick narrows it down to Dec. 5 BCE, but he was “careful to deal with statements made by latter-day prophets supporting the April 6, 1 BC, date first proposed by Elder Talmage.”
For me, this issue is a low stakes case study in the core issue of my faith crisis — how does revelation to the church work? Elder Bednar intentionally says that “we know by revelation that [6 Apr] is the actual and accurate date of the Savior’s birth.” I’ve heard a rumor that someone told Elder Bednar after conference that maybe we don’t “KNOW that by revelation” to which he responded “Ooops.” What does it say about the process of [big R] Revelation to the church if an apostle can erroneously declare something “Revelation” that is not “Revelation?”
Bishop Bill, you cracked the code. This could be part of the underlying reason that too many Mormons substitute the church for Christ, or at least willingly position the church as a middle entity between them and Christ.
Please let me know if at the LDS general conference somebody mentions that the Kirtland Temple is this year’s birthday present for Jesus.
This is more evidence of the ‘whackier’ aspects of our Faith. So, General Authorities are claiming that 6 April whenever, from many years ago to the present day is the actual birthdate of JESUS the CHRIST. Really? Well, they can speak for themselves – but I’m certainly not buying it. Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery can’t even remember the date that the Melchezidek Priesthood was restored, if it ever was. Why doesn’t the President admit that we don’t know. Because they can’t because others have opened their mouths on the subject before engaging the brain. It’s more an April Fools joke than anything else in 2024. They should compare notes with the Pope, to see what date he is aware of. Just a bit cheek regarding an absolutely frivilous subject. Like the modern social media practice of some wishing their deceased ancestors happy birthday over social media. Wacky all the way.
Yesterday I saw the Easter bunny riding a motor bike.
I ate hot cross buns at lunch time, and later in the day had my chocolate easter egg about 4 inch diameter.
Both Easter Friday and Monday are public holidays.
Wow. I never realized that that D&C scripture was the source for the April 6 birthday idea…and it obviously does not say that.
I’m not quite sure where this came from, but I grew up with the understanding that Christ was actually born sometime in early spring (not specifically April 6), but an early pope changed Christmas to December to compete with Winter solstice celebrations. Turns out the latter is probably a myth and the former is just a guess.
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like the following phrase is becoming less and less common in church discourse: “we know from modern revelation….” (Insert usually trivial knowledge tidbit “the world” has no clue about here). I’m not talking about the big truth claims. Those are still thrown around a lot with the “modern revelation” label. I mean little stuff that priest quorum advisors used to throw around in the pre-internet days to impress their class and keep their attention – like Kolob, “God’s time and such,” the “real” location of the Garden of Eden, what Paul actually sounded and looked like, according to J.S., the framers of the Constitution are Spirit World Mormons, Bigfoot is actually Cane (of Cane and Abel fame), God speaks “Ahdamic”?, Jesus will hold a big, secret priesthood meeting in Missouri before he shows up for everybody, and so much more…. Come to think of it, there are probably some very good reasons why we don’t hear very much of this stuff, anymore.
I was a missionary in the world of Eastern Orthodoxy, where there was sometimes confusion about dates because the Orthodox have chosen to cling to the Julian calendar, and only in the 20th century did many of the secular governments in those countries switch to the Gregorian calendar. Thus Orthodox Christmas is on January 6, and the Bolshevik “October revolution” happened in November 1917 by our calendars. So, of course, any time we start talking about Jesus being born on a specific date, or really placing any event in the ancient world on a specific day of the calendar, we should be asking which calendar we’re using to track anniversaries. Is it possible Jesus’ birthday is actually on April 19 on our calendars?
Seriously, though, I think this is all overinterpretation of words in scripture. Mormons don’t make that big a deal out of it because (1) the text isn’t actually that explicit–you really do have to reach a little to get to the conclusion that it’s the precise date of Jesus’ birth, and (2) we like celebrating Christmas in December like everyone else.