Many people think that Christmas is a holiday that Christians stole from the pagans. They think that Christians copied the already present pagan holiday of the winter solstice and arbitrarily modified it to celebrate Christ’s birth. Though this type of adaptation is the case with many holidays that the Roman Catholic Church made up, (e.g. Halloween) it is not what happened with Christmas.
The origin of Christmas is related to the controversy in the 2nd Century Church over what day to celebrate Easter on. They knew in general that Jesus died during Passover, but they weren’t sure which week it was and whether to celebrate it always on a Sunday or not. It was also confusing because of the difference between the Jewish, Greek, and Roman calendars. They eventually decided in A.D. 325 on what we have today with the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the first day of spring. But before that, Christians were celebrating Jesus’ death and resurrection in late March and early April anyway.
To determine a date for celebrating the birth of Christ, early Christians borrowed from the Jewish idea that great people die on the same day that they are either born or conceived. As early as the 2nd century, some Christians were celebrating the birth of Jesus around the time of his death in March or April. This date got narrowed down to March 25 and switched to celebrating Jesus’ conception, which became the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel first appeared to Mary. Going a full term of nine months later from March 25, and we get December 25. (Note that early Christians and ancient Jews believed that life begins at conception.)
In ancient Rome, there were no pagan winter solstice celebrations that the Christians could be accused of copying until the year 274, when Emperor Aurelius started “The Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to celebrate the lengthening of days. Aurelius had been trying throughout his short reign to revive paganism, and this looks from the ancient documents like an attempt to overshadow a date that Christians were already celebrating something on. Thus we see that the pagans were copying the Christians, not the other way round.
There were Yule festivals in the Northern European tribes during the winter solstice, but they were not an influence on the Christians who were mostly in the Roman Empire at this time. When the Roman Empire did fall and Christians went out evangelizing in Northern Europe, they found the barbaric tribes burning Yule logs in the midst of the coldest, darkest time of year. Then the missionaries replaced the pagan Yule festivals with the Christian Christmas, and shared the light of Christ in the darkest time of the year.
We need to remember the true origin of Christmas in Christ’s birth and what it did for us. God the Son came to earth, took on a human nature, lived in a low condition, was put under the law, underwent the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death on the cross (Shorter Catechism Q. 27). Let us be thankful to Him in this season of rejoicing.
Hat tip: WORLD magazine, AiG.
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