Christmas has always been a weird holiday to me. I was raised to believe that the historical foundations of the holiday were religious in origin and specifically Christian, and that culture around Christianity had whittled down much of its sacred significance and distorted it into a commercialist event. We were the remnant of true Christians in an alien and hostile world; we knew our traditions adhered as closely to original reason for celebrating the holiday. Our process was iterative, requiring regular introspection and adaptation. When I left the family home as a young man, the Christmas tree was banned, as were some songs and any consideration of Santa in the festivities. The story in the Bible of the birth of Jesus had to be read before any gifts could be given, and Mannheim Steamroller, a favorite of Rush Limbaugh, was a required soundtrack to the events.
The critical view of the holiday meant I could never feel comfortable that I was celebrating it the “right” way. I didn’t realize that many people express feelings of wistfulness and disappointment, or that feelings of depression increase during the darkest days of the year. I thought that I was failing to place my mind in the proper worldview that would allow me to feel joy during Christmas, and that those who expressed happiness had corrupted their mind to accept the sinful commercialist traditions that promised only temporary joys. I felt conflicted that I too felt excitement about receiving gifts, for I had been told that the gifts were secondary to the true meaning of Christmas: the birth of Jesus. But we also didn’t believe that event happened in December but rather March or April, further convicting me that we had yet to fully realize the true method of celebrating the holiday.
It is in that lens of skepticism about the day that I share with you the latest that I’ve learned about the origins of Christmas, and I think I might have finally found answers that give me some sense of rest about the day. The data isn’t new: upon investigation I found traces of it in a source I recall having in my family’s library as a child. What is different is that I finally approached Christmas with the same question that has opened so many new ideas to me in the past few years: “What if I’m wrong?”
As I wrote earlier, a skeptical eye was always placed on many elements of the Christmas holiday season in my family home, but one particular element of the tradition was unquestionable: that this was a Christian holiday and its roots were in the celebration of the Christian deity, Jesus. Any evidence of other gods being honored was a later addition, a change to damage the credibility of the true roots of the event. The origins of the day might be lost in time, but we were to remain confident that the day was always about Jesus. Even if evidence was found of the day being celebrated before Christianity was formed, we were to believe that it was merely the recording of the events for other religions that had occurred first; Christian celebrations had preceded all.
This presuppositional approach was never applied to matters outside the Christian faith and could often place me in the uncomfortable position of advocating against existing evidence, but I was a matter of faith, and holding firm to those beliefs being a virtue. But that doesn’t make sense. If things are true, they need not be solely believed but should be able to withstand scrutiny — absolute truth all the more so. Doubting something that is true should only lead one’s investigation to conclude with further proof of its accuracy.
So what if I was wrong about the origin of the holiday?
Gnostic Informant
Bacchic Roots of the Christmas Epiphany | Documentary
This process of questioning the holiday has given me a greater sense of peace than shying away from doubt ever did. Asking questions scared me as a young man for I believed that I risked spiritual damnation in the process. I’m not afraid anymore.
So here’s what I think now. Some people forget that religions evolve. Beliefs deemed foundational to a modern-day religion can be relatively recent and even contradict previous elements of the faith. There is an expectation that one’s favored religion was the primary source for all other religions and that it was the originator of all foundational principles of its modern-day interpretation. The religious world is no different from the non-religious in its mixing of cultural practices and appropriation of tradition, eventually mixing to a point where it becomes difficult or impossible to identify as original. Each religion is not the salt of holiness added to a soup of non-religious culture, but rather one of the many ladles of that soup. New ideas come from old, iterations on an existing culture. Original ideas can come from religion, but it did not come ex nihilo; the idea is borne by a pre-existing culture with ideas and traditions influencing new behaviors.
The source of religious claims have been long-debated across a variety of subjects, either land use as in the current Gaza genocide, claims of primary deities as in the Abrahamic religions’ origin stories, or in the festivities often used to commemorate the birth or death of a primary deity,. Even the the oft-repeated “War on Christmas” seems to have roots in the discussion about the source of the Christmas holiday.
Christmas has many origins seems obvious to be a mix of various cultures and beliefs formed into a new tradition. Some of its modern-day presentation can be tracked to the previous century, or even within my own lifetime. This process is usually mourned as a loss of its authenticity, but this neglects to consider that this process has been continual throughout the centuries, and therefore whatever authentic version one might be recalling would also be deemed as inauthentic by the frustrated celebrator in that earlier period. I didn’t notice this behavior was exhibited within my childhood in the variant of Christmas celebrated in my family home.
Maybe none of this is new to you, reader. As I wrote earlier, this information has been available to me for most of my life and I’ve avoided it in fear. I mentioned a childhood book earlier that contained information about the debate of Christmas’ origins. The book was entitled Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, written in 1989, definitively proving that this is not new information and I probably should’ve considered this sooner. A copy of the book exists in my own library today from which I grabbed this relevant excerpt:
Charles Panati
Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things
Christmas: A.D. 337, Rome
As a holy day and a holiday, Christmas is an amalgam of the traditions from a half-dozen cultures, accumulated over centuries. A turkey dinner and a decorated tree, Christmas cards and Santa Claus, yule logs, mistletoe, bells, and carols originated with different peoples to become integral parts of December 25, a day on which no one is certain Jesus Christ was born.
The idea to celebrate the Nativity on December 25 was first suggested early in the fourth century, the clever conceit of church fathers wishing to eclipse the December 25 festivities of a rival religion that threatened the existence of Christianity.
It is important to note that for two centuries after Christ’s birth, no one knew, and few people cared, exactly when he was born. Birthdays were unimportant; death days counted. Besides, Christ was divine, and his natural birth was deliberately played down. As mentioned earlier, the Church even announced that it was sinful to contemplate observing Christ’s birthday “as though He were a King Pharaoh.”
Several renegade theologians, however, attempted to pinpoint the Nativity and came up with a confusion of dates: January 1, January 6, March 25, and May 20. The latter eventually became a favored date because the Gospel of Luke states that the shepherds who received the announcement of Christ’s birth were watching their sheep by night. Shepherds guarded their flocks day and night only at lambing time, in the spring; in winter, the animals were kept in corrals, unwatched. What finally forced the issue, and compelled the Church to legitimize a December 25 date, was the burgeoning popularity of Christianity’s major rival religion, Mithraism.
On December 25, pagan Romans, still in the majority, celebrated Natalis Solis Invicti, “Birthday of the Invincible Sun God,” Mithras. The cult originated in Persia and rooted itself in the Roman world in the first century B.C. By A.D. 274, Mithraism was so popular with the masses that emperor Aurelian proclaimed it the official state religion. In the early 300s, the cult seriously jeopardized Christianity, and for a time it was unclear which faith would emerge victorious.
Church fathers debated their options.
It was well known that Roman patricians and plebeians alike enjoyed festivals of a protracted nature. The tradition was established as far back as 753 B.c., when King Romulus founded the city of Rome on the Palatine Hill. Not only the Roman observance of Natalis Solis Invicti occasioned December feasts and parades; so, too, did the celebration of the Saturnalia, in honor of Saturn, god of agriculture. The Church needed a December celebration.
Thus, to offer converts an occasion in which to be pridefully celebratory, the Church officially recognized Christ’s birth. And to offer head-on competition to the sun-worshipers’ feast, the Church located the Nativity on December 25. The mode of observance would be characteristically prayerful: a mass; in fact, Christ’s Mass. As one theologian wrote in the 320s: “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it.” Though centuries later social scientists would write of the psychological power of group celebrations-the unification of ranks, the solidification of collective identity, the reinforcement of common objectives — the principle had long been intuitively obvious.
The celebration of Christmas took permanent hold in the Western world in 337, when the Roman emperor Constantine was baptized, uniting for the first time the emperorship and the Church. Christianity became the official state religion. And in A.D. 354, Bishop Liberius of Rome reiterated the importance of celebrating not only Christ’s death but also his birth.
The process of deconstruction has been arduous and slow for me, but it’s also been incredibly rewarding. I don’t know if I fully believe everything stated in the videos or articles I’ve posted, but my anxiety about even considering the evidence is now gone. I feel a bit ashamed that I was so afraid to ask questions of certain things. Why should I have feared investigating things I believed to be true? Did I experience anxiety when I threw a ball in the air, because perhaps today the ball won’t adhere to the principles of gravity? Did I worry that I might pass through the molecules of a wall when I leaned upon it, or do I expect a stable wall to hold my weight every time? And if I did find that the wall was not as strong as I expected and I fall through, would I then believe my soul to be doomed to perdition? When that ball floats in a strong wind, would I have had to anticipate the ground to open beneath me and to swallow me whole as punishment? How silly of me to fear knowledge!
Christmas is a special holiday to me, for it brings light and joy in dark days. Every tradition may not have a sacred root in history, but I don’t think that matters. We make something sacred by bestowing meaning upon it and celebrating its existence. Our traditions are what make the day special. There is nothing in particular about December 25 that marks it as more important than any other day, but people made it important and that’s significant to me. When we celebrate the day we are continuing a tradition that has occurred for millennia, connecting us to our history in ways very few things can.