An Interesting History of Christmas

by W.J. Bethancourt III
© copyright 1997 W.J. Bethancourt III
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LUKE 2:8-11 There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, and keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said to them: fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people; for unto you has been born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord
First of all, we need to establish from the beginning that December 25th is in all probability not the date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.
The year of the Christian Nativity must be ascertained by historical and chronological research, since there is no certain and harmonious tradition on the subject. The "Anno Domini" dating system, which was introduced by the Roman abbot Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century, and came into general use two years later, during the reign of Charlemagne, puts the Nativity Dec. 25, 754 Anno Urbis, that is, after the founding of the city of Rome. Nearly all chronologers agree that this is wrong by at least four years. Christ was born 750 AU (or 4 BCE) if not earlier.
According to Matthew 2:1 (comp. Luke 1:5, 26), Christ was born "in the days of King Herod" I, "the Great," who died, according to Josephus, at Jericho, 750 AU, just before Passover. This date has been verified by the astronomical calculation of the eclipse of the moon, which took place March 13, 750 AU, a few days before Herod's death.
Allowing two months or more for the events between the birth of Christ and the murder of the Innocents by Herod, the Nativity must be put back at least to February or January, 750 AU (or 4 BCE), if not earlier.
( note to Millinialists: the real year 2000 has therefore come and gone ...... )
So why do we celebrate it on December 25th?
December 25th occurs about the time of the Winter Solistice, the shortest day of the year. The shortening days were taken as a sign that the Sun was getting weaker. After the Solistice, the days begin to get longer ...... and pagan peoples thought that was an indication that the Sun was getting stronger.
Thus, the Winter Solistice became the "birthday" of several gods: Attis, Frey, Thor, Dionysus, Osiris, Adonis, Mithra, Tammuz, Cernunnos and so forth. It is a "solar holiday," marking the time that the sun becomes apparently stronger day by day.
Mithra, by the way, was born on December 25, of a virgin. His birth was witnessed by shepherds and magicians [magi]. Mithra raised the dead and healed the sick and cast out demons. He returned to heaven at the spring equinox and before doing so had a last supper with his 12 disciples (representing the 12 signs of the zodiac), eating mizd, a piece of bread marked with a cross (an almost universal symbol of the sun). Any of that sound familiar?
We also have a Jewish festival near that date: Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights (another solar reference) which occurs on the 25th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev, approximately in December by the Roman calendar, and the Zoroastrian Yalda, the celebration of the victory of good over evil.
The Christian holiday was not always celebrated on December 25th, however.
For the first three hundred years of the current era, there was no festivity of the birth of Jesus. Some churches celebrated Jesus' birthday in the spring time and some celebrated it on January 6 (Epiphany).
Early in the fourth century, the Roman church decreed that December 25 would henceforth be recognized as the birthday of Christ. The Eastern churches refused to accept Christmas until 375 C.E., and the churches in Jerusalem rejected the December 25 date until the seventh century.
There are still some Eastern Rite churches that continue to celebrate the Epiphany date.
The Pilgrims outlawed Christmas. They also refused to use the 1611 King James Bible!
The Winter Solistice was the season of a major celebration of fertility in ancient Rome called "Saturnalia," starting on December 17th. This honoured the "good old days" when the god Saturn ruled a supposed "Golden Age", and there were no masters and no slaves, and everything was easy. Thus, it became a reversal-holiday, when the masters served the slaves, and a slave was chosen to temporarily rule the household. The Romans were civilized enough to not kill him afterwards, as seems to be the custom with such holidays in more primitive cultures.
They also exchanged presents, were allowed to gamble in public, and in general had a good time. It was the greatest holiday of the year.
It should come as no surprise then that the Christian Church co-opted this seasonal holiday, celebrated by the city that ruled the world -and- celebrated by Christianity's major competitor (Mithraism). It was simply a very astute political move.
St. John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople at the end of the fourth century wrote: "On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this (December 25th), the Birthday of the Invincible One (Mithras); but who is so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disk, but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness."
This custom of the "Feast of Fools" was continued in medieval Western Europe, with a "Lord of Misrule," mummers doing traditional plays, feasting with a boar's head, games, dancing and other such merriment. This could last for more than just Christmas Day, going on until at least Epiphany (January 6th) in many cases ..... these are our "Twelve Days of Christmas."
Christmas even started out controversially in North America. Reverend Rel Davis writes:
The festival of Christmas has always been a controversial one in Christianity. The Puritans banned Christmas altogether and during the Cromwellian period in England, anyone celebrating Christmas was jailed for heresy. Probably the most hated of all Puritan laws was the one abolishing Christmas and probably led to popular acceptance of royalty (nb: the Restoration) -- at least the King allowed the masses to celebrate Yule!
In America, Christmas was generally outlawed until the end of the last century. In Boston, up to 1870, anyone missing work on Christmas Day would be fired. Factory owners customarily required employees to come to work at 5 a.m. on Christmas -- to insure they wouldn't have time to go to church that day. And any student who failed to go to school on December 25 would be expelled. Only the arrival of large numbers of Irish and northern European immigrants brought acceptance of Christmas in this country.
Christmas did not even begin to be a legal holiday anywhere in the United States until very late in the nineteenth century CE, with Alabama being the first state to make it so.
Now let's look at some Christmas customs:
The name "Yule" is not derived from Chaldaean, as some would have you believe, but rather from the Old Norse "Jol" or "Jul" thru Anglo-Saxon "Geol" to Middle English "Yule." It means "Winter Solistice," or "Christmas." It is found in the Germanic languages, but not in the Romance languages like French, Spanish and Italian, who have names for Christmas that mean closer to "The Birthday" than anything else. There is, of course, no connection linguistically between Chaldaean and the Germanic languages .... or with the Romance languages either, for that matter.
I have also heard some folks thundering against the use of the abbreviation "Xmas" as being "against Jesus." Frankly, nothing could be more absurd. This usage derives from a common medieval abbreviation for "Christ" using a Cross rather than the name. This was most common in signatures, and thus you would see a signature of "Xtoph" rather than "Kristoph." It is simply an abbreviation, and nothing more.
The name "Christmas" derives, of course, from Middle English "Cristes mæsse" or "Christ's Mass," that is, the Roman church's standard ritual celebration. This alone, being Roman Catholic, seems to render it suspect in the minds of many hard-core Protestants .... though they seem to forget that at the time Middle English was spoken, the Roman Catholic Church was pretty much the only game in town.
The night before, Christmas Eve, was called "Modranect" or "Modranecht" by the Germanic pagan peoples (this seems to be Old English / Anglo-Saxon, and apparently means "Mother's Night"). This is obviously in honor of the Mother Goddess who bore the solar Child of Promise.
The Magi, or the Three Wise Men: The "Magi" were, in antiquity, priests of Zoroastrianism ..... and reputed to be expert Magi-cians (see the derivation of the word there?) and astrologers. Mithraism is associated with Zoroastrianism much like Christianity stems from Judaism. The "Three Kings" bits are a later interpolation, and there may very well be a "Triple God" aspect slipping in here from folk-memory, too.
The Star of Bethlehem? Well, this page might give us some leads. It may have been a planetary conjunction noticed by the magician-astrologers. That theory at least explains why there are no other accounts of a miraculous star in historical records of the time.
I have heard several remarks over the years about how much the Wiccans must like Christmas, because they can buy so many nicely made pentagrams then. Not to worry, though, because as shown in the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and in Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur" the pentagram is very much a Christian symbol too.
The Yule Log is pretty obvious. Sympathetic magic, with its rule of "As in Heaven, so on Earth" (a re-stating of the more usual wording of 'As above, so below") means that to have a blazing fire on earth would encourage the sun to grow stronger. Therefore, the Winter Solistice is a "fire festival," with bonfires and Yule logs being lit to "help" the sun grow stronger between then and Midsummer. It also served a more practical purpose of warming up the home during a cold night in which many people stayed awake for much longer than they usually did.
Mistletoe is an old Celtic symbol of regeneration and eternal life. The Romans valued it as a symbol of peace and this eventually led to its usage as one of the common symbols of Christmas. Kissing under mistletoe was a Roman custom, due to its' being regarded as a symbol of fertility.
We also find the mistletoe figuring in the Norse story of Balder, and in medieval legend as the wood from which the Cross was made .... which legend was probably derived from the Balder story, as it was a twig of mistletoe that killed him.
It was considered a protection against evil, the devil, and witchcraft ..... and, when laid on the altar of a church (as done as late as the 18th Century CE at York cathedral in England) signified a sort of general amnesty.
Many primitive societies, such as the Ainu of Japan and the Wallas of West Africa also regarded the mistletoe with veneration.
During the "Druid craze" (an interest in alleged "Druidic customs," mostly entirely spurious) of the 18th and early 19th Century CE the Church began to distrust mistletoe as a "pagan" plant and banned it from the churches. This is curious in view of the old legends that the plant was the wood used for the Cross, the "sanctae crucius lignum," called the "l'herbe de la croix" in France. Supposedly it was once a strong tree, but it's use for the Cross degraded it.
It became fashionable in England to have your very own mini-Stonehenge in your garden, and one fellow with more money than sense even hired a white-bearded man to play the part of a Druid priest and come out of a fake cave occasionally and gibber at the wealthy man's guests.
All of this spurious Druidism is connected with the "British Israelite" sort of thing so popular then, when British antiquaries were trying to connect the Druids of the British Isles with Biblical nations and races, Freemasonry, the "religion of Noah," "Helio-Arkites," and many other fanciful blind-alleys. Some of the more luminous (?) names of this movement were William Stukeley, Edward Williams (who called himself "Iolo Morganwg" and can be viewed as one of the classic British cranks, forging documents right and left to back up his theories), John Williams ab Ithel, Owen Morgan (who called himself "Morgan O. Morgan"), the epic-forger James MacPherson (he wrote the "Ossian" stuff), Edward Davies, Godfrey Higgins and James Bostwick, and others.
With the later serious archaeological digs, all this was shown to be the fabrication that it really was. The Christmas Tree ..... well, this one may shock you. We get our "tannenbaum," or fir tree, from the Germanic peoples, who had the quaint custom of sacrificing nine kinds of every living thing to One-Eyed Woden (OÞin) by hanging them on a tree. (One of OÞin's symbols was a noose, and his horse Sleipnir has eight legs symbolizing four pallbearers! He was a Death God in addition to being a God of Poets and the All-Father)
Interestingly enough, in the much beloved Christmas time story of "The Nutcracker" (Tchaikowski's Nutcracker Suite) the person who brings in the miniature castle with the toys, the nutcracker and so forth is a man named Drosselmeier who has ... one eye.
We should be glad of the civilizing effects of Christianity here in the substitution of ornaments and lights for sacrifices!
The old pagan use of the tree was revived by Martin Luther, without the Old Norse style decorations, and brought to America by the Hessian mercenaries in the service of George III of England during the American Revolution. It appeared in Great Britain in the 1840's when Prince Albert, the German-born consort of Queen Victoria, set one up in the Palace.
At the time, the medieval form of the holiday was dying out in England, and the introduction of the tree by the Crown seems to have sparked a revival of interest in Christmas, but now the customs changed radically, becoming more Germanic.
Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" was also a major influence, as was Clarke Moore's poem, "The Night Before Christmas" (see below).
Thus, most of the traditions and customs of the English-speaking world that center around the Christmas tree tend to date from Victorian times, due to the influence of Victorian English customs and mores.
It is interesting to read Isaiah 55:13 --
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off"
and to see it referenced to Luke 2:12 --
"And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger."
The fir tree (our pine) is taken as a sign of the Child of Promise, and the Promise He gave us.
The New Chain-Reference Bible, KJV, B.B. Kirkbride Bible Co. Indianapolis 1964
Christmas cards are fairly recent. The practice of sending Christmas greeting cards to friends was initiated by Sir Henry Cole of England in 1843, with the first card being designed by J.C.Horsley. It was commercially oriented from the first - 1000 copies were sold in London.
And now we get to Santa Claus. Poor Santa! He is getting all kinds of flack from the more rabid Grinch types out there, because he may have had his origins in a combination of pagan gods and Christian history.
From the Germanic traditions we merge OÞin and Thor:
Every Yule, the good god Thor would visit every home with an altar to him (i.e., every home with a fireplace!) and bring gifts to children, who would put out their sabots (wooden shoes) the night before. Good children would receive gifts of fruit, candy and pieces of coal to burn in the fireplace.
-Rev. Rel Davis
In Northern Germany, Santa Claus is said to ride a white horse, much like OÞin did, though Santa's horse has the usual number of legs.
From the Christian traditions we get St. Nicholas, one of the saints on whom we have no hard evidence whether he really lived or not.
Nicholas was supposedly born in the city of Parara, to wealthy parents who died when he was a child. On reaching adulthood, he became a priest and gave all his possessions to the poor, especially to orphans. He made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land he calmed a storm at sea with his prayers, making him the patron saint of sailors. When he returned he was elected Bishop of Myra. He gave money anonymously for spinsters' dowries. During the Diocletian persecutions he was imprisoned but freed under the Emperor Constantine. His Feast Day is December 5th.
He was also said to bring back the dead from a magic cauldron (an ancient Celtic concept), that he miraculously multiplied a shipment of grain so it could feed his entire diocese for two years, with enough left over for a new crop of grain and that when he died, his bones exuded a huge quantity of holy oil capable of curing any known disease.
His acts of charity, especially towards children, and the gift-bringing of Thor, show us the folk origins of the Santa Claus theme.
Remember also that not all countries that have a "gift-bringer" figure on Christmas call it "Santa Claus." Norway calls him "Julenisse," England calls him "Father Christmas," (and derives him from a background figure in the old Mummer's Plays, only comparatively recently adding the attributes of the American Santa Claus), in Italy and Russia Santa becomes female and is called "Befana" (who rides a broomstick!) and "Kolyada" respectively. In Germany, the "Kristkindl" or "Christ Child" brings the presents. The Dutch call him "Sinter Klaus," or "Klaus of the Cinders" i.e. the man who comes down the chimney. The Three Kings do the gift-giving, on January 6 in Spain, and Knight Rupprecht (another OÞin survival) plays a secondary part in northern Germany.
However, Santa played a very minor part in the American holiday until 1823, when Clarke Moore's poem, "The Night Before Christmas" was published. This single poem, combined with the visual picture popularized by the political cartoonist (of the time) Thomas Nast, pretty much set the tone for what we conceive as "Santa Claus."
His eight reindeer? Well, let's look at the names given them in the aforesaid poem:
Dasher
Dancer
Prancer
Vixen
Comet
Cupid
Donner
Blitzen
"Donner" and "Blitzen?" Those are the German words for "thunder" and "lightening," and the word for "thunder," "donner," is derived from the old Germanic godname "Donar," who we know as "Thor," and the name of Thor's palace in Asgard was "Bilskirnir" which means "lightening!"
Eight reindeer? One for each leg of Odin's horse?
And, of course, with the addition of Rudolph of the famous red nose (unknown until the Gene Autry song came out) we get the Germanic mystical number of nine ...... nine kinds of things ..... in this case, reindeer.
Remember, of course, that these names were arbitrarily given by the author of the poem (and the song) and are not found in any folk traditions that I could unearth. The "nine kinds of things" is coincidence .... unless the authors of the poem and song were members of the Universal Conspiracy Against Everything, which I highly doubt.
There are many other Christmas customs and legends that I can't go into, both for lack of space and because they don't figure into the primary themes of the holiday in the English-speaking world, such as the animals talking on Christmas Eve, and the delightful modern song about the "Little Drummer Boy."
With all this pagan background, you'd think that the celebration would be something other than what it is, wouldn't you? Actually, what we have here is a very good example of taking old legends and mythos and reworking them to fit a new one, and adding the central message of Christmas ..... the birth of the Child of Promise to the world.
You see, symbols mean what your culture has taught you they mean. If when you look at the Cross you think of Jesus of Nazareth and see a symbol of redemption you are interpeting it as a Christian symbol. If you see it as a gallows; as a means of executing criminals against the State, then you are seeing it as an ancient Roman would. There are many other pagan associations with the cross, including the Norse sun-cross and it's usage as a generalized solar symbol. Should we then interpet the Cross as a pagan symbol? Of course not!
Equally, no one sees the symbols of Christmas detailed above as anything other than either symbols of a commercialized, secular holiday or the birth of the Child. The past pagan associations these symbols had are pretty much dead, and the notion of an Eternal Conspiracy to demonize these symbols is prima facie silly. These are symbols and traditions, deeply engraved in the folk conciousness, that have simply taken on a much deeper meaning.

And invariably these attacks on the Christmas holiday get around to an attack on the Roman Catholic Church, since the holiday was established by the Pope .... forgetting that the Roman Church was pretty much the "only game in town" back in 300 CE.
And the constant association I see with a "Babylonian Mystery Religion" that connects Nimrod, Ashtoreth and Tammuz with each other as an "Anti-Holy Family" in ancient Babylon is simply NOT grounded in archaeological fact. I have NEVER seen hard evidence on this issue.
(It is fascinating, in the light of the old saw about how "the gods of the old religion become the devils of the new" to see the gods of the old religion becoming the folk myths of the new.)
The danger is not in the originally pagan symbols, nor in it's establishment by the Bishop of Rome, but in the commercialization and secularization of the holy day; we are losing the real meaning of the holiday to an orgy of spending and politically correct saccharine cuteness. The meaning of Christmas is not found in how many presents we can give or get, nor in how much money we can spend on it, nor in how prettily we can decorate our home, but in the Message of the Child.
Christmas (call it Yule if you want to!) is a holiday and holy day that can be kept by Christian and pagan alike, and one that brings joy to the world indeed.
And if the devil has been trying to "pervert it's symbols thru the ages, giving them pagan meanings," then to view them as such is to fall into Old Scratch's trap, isn't it?
Little Children: Love One Another!
And for all you Grinches out there that think we should outlaw Christmas ..... well, go read this, and this, and think on what is written in I Corinthians 13.... you may have a lot of Faith, and a lot of Hope, but darn little Charity.
Bibliography
The Bible; KJV 1611 (facsimile edition)
Bethancourt, W.J. III: The Medieval Book of Days; (unpublished ms.)
Cavendish, Richard, "Man, Myth and Magic"; (Vols. 4 and 14 et. al.) (New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp. 1970)
Davis, Rel (Rev.): "St. Nick, Old Nick and the Good God Thor"; (Talk made on December 18, 1993)
Durant, Will: Caesar and Christ; Simon and Shuster 1944
Lane, C. Arthur: Illustrated Notes on English Church History; Soc. For Promoting Christian Knowledge 1904
Lehane, Brendan & Time-Life Books: The Enchanted World: The Book of Christmas; (Time-Life Books, Alexandria VA, 1986)
Lyttleton, Margaret and Forman, Werner:The Romans: Their Gods and Their Beliefs; (Orbis Publishing Ltd., London, 1984)
Wedeck, H.E. and Baskin, Wade, "A Dictionary Of Pagan Religions"; (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971)
The Roman Calendar