Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible states

From about passover time in April until autumn, the flocks pastured constantly in the open fields, 
the shepherds lodging there all that time. (From this it seems plain that the period of the year 
usually assigned to our Lord's birth is too late).


Lightfoot's Commentary on the Gospels states

[And there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock, &c.] These are the sheep of the 
wilderness; viz. those which go out to pasture about the time of the Passover, and are fed in the 
fields, and return home upon the first rain.

"Which is the first rain? It begins on the third of the month Marchesvan. The middle rain is on the 
seventh: the last on the seventeenth. So R. Meier: but R. Judah saith, On the seventh, seventeenth, 
and one-and-twentieth."

The spring coming on, they drove their beasts into wildernesses or champaign grounds, where they fed 
them the whole summer, keeping watch over them night and day, that they might not be impaired either 
by thieves or ravenous beasts. They had for this purpose their tower to watch in, or else certain 
small cottages erected for this very end, as we have observed elsewhere. Now in the month 
Marchesvan, which is part of our October and part of November, the winter coming on, they betook 
themselves home again with the flocks and the herds.


Trapp's Complete Commentary states

By night] Hence some gather that our Saviour was not born in the winter, because in winter they 
housed their cattle, and fed them not out doors, Proverbs 27:25.


Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament states

According to this statement, Jesus cannot have been born in December, in the middle of the rainy 
season (Robinson, Pal. II. p. 505 f.), as has been since the fourth century supposed with a 
probable joining on of the festival to the Natales solis invicti (see Gieseler, Kirchengesch. 
I. 2, p. 287 f. ed. 4). Just as little can He have been born on the sixth day of January, which 
in the East was even earlier fixed as the festival of the birth and baptism (still other times 
fixed as the day of birth may be seen in Clement Al. Strom. I. p. 339 f. Sylb.). According to the 
Rabbins, the driving forth of the flocks took place in March, the bringing in of them in November 
(see Lightfoot); and if this is established at least as the usual course, it certainly is not in 
favour of the hypothesis (Wieseler) that Jesus was born in February (750), and necessitates 
precarious accessory assumptions.


Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible states

Bethlehem was a place about which were pastures for sheep, as appears from 1 Samuel 17:15. There 
were shepherds abroad in the night (for so the word signifieth) watching over their flocks; whether 
the phrase signifieth (as some think) successive watches, such as are kept by soldiers, and by the 
priests, I cannot say. This maketh some think, that it is hardly probable that our Saviour was born 
in December in the midst of the winter, that being no time when shepherds use in the night to be 
keeping their flocks in the field. 


Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers states

(8) Shepherds abiding in the field.-The fact has been thought, on the supposition that sheep were 
commonly folded during the winter months, to have a bearing adverse to the common traditional view 
which fixes December 25 as the day of the Nativity. At that season, it has been urged, the weather 
was commonly too inclement for shepherds and sheep to pass the night in the open air, and there was 
too little grass for pasturage. In summer, on the other hand, the grass on the hills is rapidly 
burnt up. The season at which the grass is greenest is that just before the Passover (Mark 6:39; 
John 6:10); and, on the whole, this appears the most probable date. The traditional season, which 
does not appear as such till the fourth century, may have been chosen for quite other 
reasons-possibly to displace the old Saturnalia, which coincided with the winter solstice.


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