in celebration of Holmes' 172nd birthday, here are some (kinda, maybe, well-known) fun facts about his birth date!
‼️ i am not entirely sure how factual my sources are, so take everything you read with a grain of salt. also, these are just fun facts, not a reason to start fights.
the old guy doesn't actually have a canonical birthday! there's no mention of his birth date anywhere in the books. the widely-accepted birthday, January 6, was just, essentially, a headcanon.
early enthusiast Christian Morley (founder of Baker Street Irregulars fanclub, i think) proposed the whole January 6, 1854 thing. the year 1854 comes from "His Last Bow," where Holmes is described to be "a man about 60 years of age" in 1914 (around the start of the great war), although scholars and analysts believe that at that year, he was still around his mid to late fifties. Morley said in his article in the January 6, 1933 issue of The Saturday Review of Literature:
I have not looked up the date, but if, as an astrologer has suggested, Sherlock Holmes was most likely born in January, some observance is due. Therefore, if the matter has never been settled, I nominate January 6th (the date of this issue of the Saturday Review) as his birthday…
the date January 6 was linked by Morley to Holmes quoting Shakespeare's Twelfth Night twice, thus leading to the assumption that he was quoting it because the twelfth night of Christmas was also his birthday: January 6!
In The Sign of the Four, Holmes quips, "All is well that ends well" from Act IV, Scene 4. In "The Empty House," Holmes says, "'Journeys end in lovers meetings,' as the old play says," from Act II, Scene 3. (Monty, 2025)
there's this thing i read wherein it said that another reason why January 6 being Holmes' birthday is to be believed is because, in the beginning of "Valley of Fear", Holmes was shown to be grumpy and cranky on the morning of January 7th. another early enthusiast (can't remember his name for the life of me) believed that it could've been because he was hungover from his birthday celebration the night before. this one cracked me up
another believed origin of the whole January 6 thing was that "according to "From Holmes to Sherlock" by Matthias Boström, a large scale American Sherlock Holmes society wanted an excuse to celebrate and drink once the prohibition had ended, so they simply chose the first Friday or Saturday (can’t remember which off the top of my head) after the prohibition repeal and declared that his birthday so they all had an excuse to go out drinking." (quoted from reddit)
HOWEVER, i also read an article that said that the old guy's birthday isn't January 6; it was actually January 5. the article highlighted the whole twelfth night of Christmas thing, and how Morley counted wrong. it also got DEEP into Holmes' Christianity. it seemed that Morley didn't include the actual day of Christmas while counting, so he started with the 26th and ended with the 6th for Holmes' birth date. but, the the article argued that...
Twelfth Night, also known as Epiphany Eve [...] marks the coming of the Epiphany, a Christian feast day that marks the visit of the magi, Jesus' baptism, and the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. [...] But, depending on which tradition you belonged to — Western Christianity or Eastern Orthodoxy — the date of Twelfth Night was either January 5th or 6th, depending on when the counting began on Christmas Day or the day after. Except, why would you count the twelve days of Christmas and not include, you know, the Actual Day Of Christmas? [...] And since Holmes is from the western arm of Christianity, he and his family would have celebrated — or at least sung — the twelve days of Christmas starting on December 25th.
another believed birth date for the old guy is November 21, the real publication date of "A Study in Scarlet" — the first time the "Beeton's Christmas Annual" (which contained ASIS) was advertised in the year 1887, thus the true date in which Holmes was brought to life. Boström (2016) discussed this with great detail.
The first thing to do is to check what the foremost experts on the subject have said about it, in this case A Bibliography of A. Conan Doyle by Richard Lancelyn Green and John Michael Gibson. They mention that the Annual was issued in November 1887. [...] To get even closer to an exact publication date we must check the British newspapers for November 1887, searching for advertisements. And the very first one we find is in the Standard, November 21. It states that the Beeton's Christmas Annual is "Just Ready, in Picture Covers. One Shilling." [...] Remember: these were the days before Amazon's pre-order system was in place; Ward, Lock, and Co. wouldn't have advertised if the publication wasn't for sale yet. [...] November 21 was a Monday, and no advertising for the Beeton's Christmas Annual can be found in the Standard during the previous week. In 1886 we find an advertisement for the Annual as early as Wednesday, November 17. And in 1885 on Monday, November 16. We can therefore be sure that the 1887 Beeton's Christmas Annual wasn't published on December 1, or on any other December date. It was definitely issued in November— most likely on November 21.
the last headcanonned birth date for Holmes i found was May 22, which was his creator, Sir Doyle's, birthday!
man, our detective sure got a lot of birthdays. i loved reading about the little details about the books. anyway, presumably happy birthday to Mr. Holmes!
Oooo wow what an honour to be the receiver of such fun facts!! Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day (week?) to make such a thorough post about Sherlock's Birthday!! This was all super interesting :) I think I knew some of these from reading Wikipedia, but WOOT lots I didn't know <3
