Christmas, at least as we now observe it, did not become a fixture on the church calendar until the early part of the fourth century. The Gospels, the church's primary source for biographical information about its savior, offer “nothing of significance” about either the year or the month of Jesus’ Nativity. We would be wrong, however, to conclude that the first Christians considered the date of Jesus’ birth unimportant or less than factual. For them, the birth of Christ was both a historical and divine event.