Christmas: The Untold Story
Christmas is one of the world’s most popular holidays, yet it has a strange and convoluted past—one hinted at in such puzzling symbols as decorated trees, holly wreaths and mistletoe.
P
eople the world over celebrate Christmas. But did you know Christmas and many of its popular customs are nowhere set forth in the Bible? Historians tell us the Christmas celebration came from questionable origins. William Walsh summarizes the holiday’s origins and practices in his book The Story of Santa Klaus: “We remember that the Christmas festival . . . is a gradual evolution from times that long antedated the Christian period . . . It was overlaid upon heathen festivals, and many of its observances are only adaptations of pagan to Christian ceremonial” (1970, p. 58). How could pagan practices become part of a major church celebration? What were these “heathen festivals” that lent themselves to Christmas customs over the centuries?
Marc Dufresne/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Christmas customs’ ancient origins During the second century B.C., the Greeks practiced rites to honor their god Dionysus (also called Bacchus). The Latin name for this celebration was Bacchanalia. Because of the drunken sex parties associated with this festival, the Roman Senate suppressed its observance in 186 B.C. Suppressing a holiday was unusual for the Romans since they later became a melting pot of many types of gods and worship. Just as the Romans assimilated culture, art and customs from the peoples absorbed into their empire,
by Scott Ashley
winter solstice as December 25” (Tom they likewise adopted those peoples’ Flynn, The Trouble With Christmas, religious practices. 1993, p. 42). In addition to the Bacchanalia, the On the heels of the Saturnalia, the Romans celebrated another holiday, Romans marked December 25 with the Saturnalia, held “in honor of Saturn, the god of time, [which] began a celebration of the Bruma, referring on December 17th and continued for to the solstice. The term is thought to have been contracted from the seven days. These also often ended in Latin brevissima, meaning briefest riot and disorder. Hence the words Bacchanalia and Saturnalia acquired an or shortest, denoting the shortest day of the year. (The start of the month evil reputation in later times” (p. 65). The reason for the Saturnalia’s dis- of festivities leading up to this was repute is revealing. In pagan mytholo- eventually designated the Brumalia.) Why was this period significant? gy Saturn was an “ancient agricultural
History shows how nonbiblical observances came to be forcibly promoted while the biblical feast days were systematically rejected. “The time of the winter solstice has god-king who ate his own children always been an important season in presumably to avoid regicide [being the mythology of all peoples. The sun, murdered while king]. And Saturn was parallel with a Carthaginian Baal, the giver of life, is at its lowest ebb. It whose brazen horned effigy contained is [the] shortest daylight of the year . . . At the low point of the solstice, the a furnace into which children were people must help the gods through sacrificially fed” (William Sansom, . . . religious ceremonies. The sun A Book of Christmas, 1968, p. 44). begins to return in triumph. The days Winter-solstice celebrations lengthen and, though winter remains, spring is once again conceivable. For Both of these ancient holidays were observed around the winter solstice— all people, it is a time of great festivity” (Gerard and Patricia Del Re, The the day of the year with the shortest period of daylight. “From the Romans Christmas Almanac, 1979, p. 15). The early Christians had no knowlalso came another Christmas fundamental: the date, December 25. When edge of Christmas as we know it. the Julian calendar was proclaimed in Over the following centuries, new, 46 C.E. [A.D.], it set into law a practice nonbiblical observances such as Christmas and Easter were gradually that was already common: dating the B Tm a g a z i n e . o r g
•
November-December 2023
11
