Many Christians are shocked and outraged when someone tells them Christmas is not Jesus’ birthday bur instead a pagan holiday. After all, we love Christmas and snow and babies and all things oriental and Nordic. And don’t mess with my family traditions! But the truth is, we do not know what time of year Jesus was born, whether it was early Spring, as many bible scholars suggest, or another time of the year. Frankly (as in freely, not the incense associated with the wise men, focus, focus!) it does not matter when Jesus was born only that He was born.
Why December
In the middle of the fourth century the bishop of Jerusalem wrote a letter to the bishop of Rome. In it he said, “I would like for you to ascertain the date of the birth of Christ so that we could establish a date and have a celebration annually.” The bishop of Rome sent word back to the bishop of Jerusalem that Christ was born on December 25. And by the end of the fourth century this had become the accepted custom and since then every December 25 focuses on the birth of Christ.
Now Bible scholars know that there is absolutely no evidence at all that Christ was born on December 25. In fact, there is not only no evidence that He was, but there is some evidence that He was not. Well why then did the bishop of Rome do this? Well, the conclusion is that he did it rather arbitrarily. The bishop was tired of spending his December holiday with family members who, after coming back from long boring services at the temple, drank large quantities of wine and talked about politics or which gladiator team would make it to the superdome in Rome.
Pagan Party
December was the major month of pagan celebrations. Think European countries, cold, lots of snow, short nights, dark and dreary. December was the month of winter solstice with festivals and feasts, Yule logs and lots of beer. What do you do when you have lots of beer and time on your hands- you invent parties. Now, no self-respecting pagan can just take off from plundering Rome, so you have to have a reason to party. If you bring your god to the party, then your boss, or in this case, your tribal leader, cannot get upset with you, when you drink large quantities of alcohol and play beer pong (in this case “beer axe”, usually involving throwing pointy objects at slaves and peasants, whichever one is handy from your last raid). Winter solstice was celebrated throughout Europe for more than a millennia in anticipation of Spring when the ground would thaw and crops planted and the strength of the sun returned and the clouds rolled back so you could go raiding again. And so December became a time of high, boisterous, pagan revelry. Such activities, for example, are found in pagan histories in December with rituals including feasting, adorning the homes with evergreens, hanging trinkets on trees, lighting candles, involving mistletoe, exchanging gifts, and general merry making which included, again large quantities of beer and wine, leading to drunkenness and having to explain to your wife why you are missing your pants and your horse is stuck somewhere in a peat bog.
The Church and Christmas
Now that is why the bishop chose December. And he focused on the 25th because that seemed to be the high point of these festivities. And his thought was to transform the wild winter revelries of the pagans with the life- changing message of the Gospel. The bishop did, what Christianity has attempted to do throughout its history with each culture it has encountered- to transform the culture with the gospel message. The thought was to impose the celebration of the birth of Christ on the pagan celebrations and sanctify them all. It was a nice thought. But it was doomed to fail. Because what happened was the pagan partying went on and the church was unable to make them conform to the sanctification of the true Christian celebration. Each culture just accommodated Christian themes into their December celebrations. And so what you have now is a strange weird marriage of the pagan and the Christian that we call Christmas.
For Example
Let me give you some example. To the Romans the month of December was important because it marked what is known as the Festival of the Saturnalia. Saturn was the god of agriculture and they were then holding this great feast and partying with lots of wine and all kinds of things that will get you on the naughty list. Everything was done in honor of Saturn so that he might begin to bring the spring, so that crops might be grown. One of the common customs among the Romans at Saturnalia was giving gifts to one another and as far as we can tell that is where the idea of present came from. They also were big on evergreens, which they would hang all over their houses, and that apparently is where the wreath, at least initially, came from.
Enter the Celts
North of the Romans was the barbaric northlands. The Northland people had a great celebration during December known as Yule. And in the Yule season and the Yule celebration they honored the gods Odin and Thor. If you’re from Minnesota you understand that. Those are the people who originated in those lands. And it involved festivals, music, drinking and a hot dish. To the east and Persia at the time of December, they worshipped Mithra, the god of light. In England, to the west, the Druids, who were involved in strange priestly worship of trees and nature powers, were gathering sacred mistletoe for their sacrifices, which they made in the month of December. Sacrifices were geared toward friendship and peace. They would march out in the area of the oak groves, where the mistletoe grew, led by their priests in their long white robes chanting. The priests would ascend into the trees with golden sickles and they would cut down the mistletoe. And when all of the mistletoe had been gathered and passed around the people then there would be the sacrifice of two white oxen and the mistletoe were then to be taken back into the homes and they were to be hung in the homes and anytime anybody came under the mistletoe he was to immediately embrace anyone else under there, it was an effort to reconcile people whether they liked it or not, just like today. The Nativity or creche was popularized by St. Francis of Assissi in the thirteenth century in order to bring the message of the Christ child to an illiterate population through the medium of symbols. Three hundred years later Luther picked up the idea of a Christmas tree and brought a tree into his house and put candles on it to symbolize the sparkling stars and the sky over the forest. The trees and trinkets hanging on them had been part of the festivals of the pagans for centuries.
Leave it to the Dutch
Holland got into the act by giving us their favorite saint, St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas was a white bearded bishop of Asia Minor who was such a popular fellow that when he died it was believed that he came back every December 8. And St. Nicholas would come back every December 8 and he would ride through the streets on a white horse and all the little Dutch kids would put their wooden shoes out on the porch and as he came along he would put goodies in the shoes of the good kids and where there were bad children he would leave a switch, for obvious reasons. And the Dutch called St. Nicholas Sinterklaas, we translate it in English as Santa Claus.
Caroling started in the fourteenth century along with jesters, musicians and mummers who went around with funny masks singing at the stoops of peoples’ homes:
Here we stand before your door,
As we stood the year before;
Give us whiskey; give us gin,
Open the door and let us in.
Or give us something nice and hot
Like a steaming hot bowl of pepper pot.*
Even today they still have a mummers parade in Philadelphia. Ever wonder where stockings came from? St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, whatever, was going through his act one year of putting things in the shoes and I guess he got pretty good at that so he started flipping things into the chimneys. And in one home, anyway, some folks had hung their stockings underneath the fireplace to dry them out over night and the stuff he was flipping in was landing in the stockings and that’s where we got stockings. Oranges were added in the last century through a conspiracy between Florida orange growers, school fundraisers, and the Illuminati (satire people, satire, put down the candy canes and walk away, nobody gets hurt!).
Christmas cards began in 1946. The cards were printed in London by a very enterprising man named Sir Henry Cole who was the owner of an art shop and saw it as a way to make a lot of money. And all the first Christmas cards printed for him were printings of drinking scenes.
Don’t Miss It
Do you get the picture of what Christmas has become. What a mess, frankly, Christmas is. No wonder so many people miss the best part of Christmas. With all the paraphernalia and the trappings around it, the simplicity of the birth of Christ is literally drowned in a sea of rituals and traditions.
Some say we should not celebrate Christmas and there have been several attempts to outlaw this holiday, without success. People will always to find ways to celebrate December 25th and it is up to us as God’s people to redeem this holiday and not become distracted or caught up in the distractions that can rob us why this is such an important holiday. The early celebrations of winter solstice were because those who faced the cold of winter hated the darkness and feared what winter stood for- the end of life. Behind the parties and large quantities of beer and wine, was a desperate need for hope. The festivities were a distraction for lives that were often bleak and hopeless. Christmas today is the same. People want hope. Christmas was transformed from a pagan festival to a Christian holiday centered in hope. Michael Card wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs. In it are the following lyrics:
For all those who live in the shadow of death
A glorious light has dawned
For all those who stumble in the darkness
Behold your light has come
Immanuel our God is with us
And if God is with us who could stand against us
Our God is with us
Immanuel
It is based on the Bible verse in Matthew 4:16, “those stumbling in darkness have seen a great light.” As followers of Christ we are called to be salt and light in a world that, more often than not, misses the whole meaning of Christmas. So don’t be offended when someone questions the origin of Christmas. And please don’t be offensive when someone says, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Keep your Christmas traditions close to your heart with a thankfulness that they have been redeemed and transformed because of the Christ child changing our world. In the midst of large quantities of beer and wine and lights and gifts we don’t need, remember the child who came to save us from eternal darkness and give us hope. Now, where did I park my horse?
*Welch, Jr., Charles E. (October–Dec 1966). “”Oh, Dem Golden Slippers”: The Philadelphia Mummers Parade”. Journal of American Folklore. The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 314. 79 (314): 523–536.