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 video has a few dubious sources that have been criticized for their inclusion due to their accuracy or credibility, so I don’t mean to vouch as credible every statement made within. What I found interesting in this documentary was the willingness and eagerness to question long-held subjects that were usually taboo to consider within the walls of one’s average neighborhood church. The likelihood that the source of the Christian holiday of Christmas came from without Christianity seems rather likely — at the very least, it appears that Christianity can’t claim to be untouched by culture.
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.
I was able to speak to the user who left the Reddit comments in my Further Reading section and they sent me the following additional quotes about the subject.
Rudolf Bultmann
The Gospel of John: A Commentary
The source counted this as the first miracle. It is easy to see why it put it at the beginning of its collection; for it is an epiphany miracle. There are no analogies with it in the old tradition of Jesus-stories, and in comparison with them it appears strange and alien to us. There can be no doubt that the story has been taken over from heathen legend and ascribed to Jesus. In fact the motif of the story, the changing of the water into wine, is a typical motif of the Dionysus legend. In the legend this miracle is the miracle of the epiphany of the God, and was therefore dated on the day of the Dionysus Feast, that is on the night of the 5th to 6th of January. This relationship was still understood in the Early Church, which saw the Feast of Christ’s Baptism as his epiphany and celebrated it on the 6th of January. Equally it held that the 6th of January was the date of the marriage at Cana.
Every year on the day of the Dionysus feast the temple springs in Andros and Teos were said to have poured out wine instead of water. In Elis on the eve of the feast Three empty jars were set up in the temple which were then found full of wine on the next morning… In later Christian legend the miracle of the wine is frequently dated on Christmas night or New Year’s night.
Jennifer Larson
Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide
Springs of wine are also found in Ionian contexts. Pliny (HN 2.106, 31.13) says that wine flowed in the sanctuary of Dionysos on the island of Andros for the seven days of the Theodaisia in the winter. Similar wonders are attested for Teos and Naxos, where the miracle was inaugurated when Dionysos and Ariadne met. Based on the little evidence we have, the Theodaisia seems to have been a biennial winter festival, hence mainadic in origin, concerned with the mysteries of the god’s birth and characterized by supernatural signs of his presence.
Noel Robertson
Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults
Orphic Mysteries and Dionysiac Ritual
In the Ionic domain Dionysus’ two festivals, of winter and of spring, are the Lenaia and the Anthesteria. In the Aeolic, etc., domain they are the Theodaisia and the Agriania (vel sim.). It is these two that we are concerned with as the background of the stories…
Some of the actions are linked with festivals in sources already indicated. The first stage, the nursing, is so linked at both Delphi and Haliartus. At Delphi, the Thyiads’ rite of waking the baby goes with their winter revel on Parnassus. At Haliartus, the winter festival Theodaisia is celebrated beside Cissusae, the “Ivy” spring where Dionysus’ nurses cleansed the baby at his birth. At Cyrene too the Theodaisia commemorate the story of Dionysus and his nurses… The women first, in winter, go up to the hills where the vines are exhausted and ravaged and nearly lifeless; they make a show of waking and nursing a new-born child… The nursing, though it was only mimicked by the women, must be depicted in art with an actual baby, and this is always the god Dionysus.
Glen W. Bowersock
A Different God?
Infant Gods and Heroes in Late Antiquity: Dionysos’ First Bath
Many centuries later Macrobius took note of this exceptional worship of Dionysos at Naples as part of its fourfold annual commemoration of the god’s entire lifecycle from birth to old age. The cycle began with the god’s birth on the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. Hence the creation of a Neapolitan Dionysiac cult in the context of Greek culture in Campania, with its explicit renewal each year from the god’s birth and infancy, provides by far the most reasonable context for the introduction of the imagery of the first bath…
The account of Macrobius, whom I have already cited for his testimony on Hellenism in early imperial Naples, emphasizes the annual renewal of the divine lifecycle, beginning with the winter solstice, and he goes out of his way to compare this with the annual rebirth of the infant god in Egypt. Similarly Epiphanius, the bishop of Salamis, like Macrobius another late antique polymath, mentions a ceremony in Egyptian Alexandria for the annual birth of Kore (Demeter), and another for a goddess – probably Allath among the Arabs at Petra…
Both the infant god and the infant hero proclaimed the unending renewal of their divinity every year at the winter solstice, the shortest of all days and therefore the one most full of promise. Several centuries were still to pass before the motif that so distinctively characterizes these two figures was borrowed to illustrate the career of another divine child, whose birth was likewise celebrated annually, Jesus of Nazareth. This proved to be the final stage in the narratives of holy infancy that linked together these iconic figures of polytheism and of Christianity.
Roger Beck
The Religion of the Mithras cult in the Roman Empire
Note especially the meanings which are drawn from the winter solstice as nadir, the southern extreme of the solar orbit, the point at which the debilitated Sun begins to wax again. Small wonder then that the date, the nominal solstice on 25 December, becomes the Sun’s birthday, the ‘Natalis Invicti’, as the Calendar of Filocalus famously notes—to which phrase in Greek the less well-known Calendar of Antiochus appends ‘light increases’. According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.18.10), not only was the Sun’s birthday celebrated at the winter solstice but he was also displayed as a baby on that day: ‘These diVerences in age [in the representations of various gods] relate to the Sun, who is made to appear very small (parvulus) at the winter solstice. In this form the Egyptians bring him forth from the shrine on the set date to appear like a tiny infant (veluti parvus et infans) on the shortest day of the year.’
They said that the influence of culture on this Christian holiday doesn’t stop with just the Greeks, but includes the Egyptians as well.
Amanda-Alice Maravelia and Mosalam A.M. Shaltout
The Great Temples of Thebes and the Sunrise in the Winter Solstice: Applying Modern Archaeoastronomical Techniques to Study the Ancient Egyptian Mansions of Millions of Years
The main axis of the temple is oriented to the SE towards the rising of the Sun during the Winter Solstice, but it can also be considered (looking to the opposite direction) as oriented to the NW, hence towards the setting of the Sun during the Summer Solstice. However, there are at least two more characteristic structures whose orientation azimuth is exactly the same as that of the main axis of the temple and where one can observe even today interesting archaeoastronomical divine “epiphanies” during the sunrise at the Winter Solstice, and these are the festival temple of Tuthmosis III (1479–1425 BC) and the temple of Amun-Rea-who-hears-the-prayers built by Queen Hatshepsut (1473–1458 BC), that have been already studied. The orientation of the most principal temple all over Egypt towards the Winter Solstice is very important and has an extremely interesting metaphysical and cultic significance: its semantics were related to the belief that the solar god would be reborn anew during the Winter Solstice, becoming gradually (as the Spring and the subsequent Summer would approach) more luminous, more warm and more vigorous. Thus, the Winter Solstice towards which the temple was oriented was symbolizing the birthday of the Sun, being simultaneously dedicated to the solar god in his hypostasis as Amun-Ra….
The great temples of Thebes, like those of Luxor, Karnak, and the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at the West side of the Nile, have certain astronomical and topographical orientations. The main axis of the Great Temple at Karnak is perpendicular to the direction of the water-flow of the Nile, but at the same time it had been oriented towards the direction of the sunrise during the Winter Solstice. The temple of Amun at Luxor is so oriented that its main axis has the direction of the local Meridian (N-S), being also parallel to the direction of the water-flow of the Nile, though at the same time it is correlated with the northern polar stars (i.e.: the imperishable stars). Finally, the temple of Hatshepsut in the western bank of Thebes is so oriented that its main axis has the direction of the sunrise at the Winter Solstice, thus every year the Sun illumines the sacrarium on that very day, which actually corresponds to the birthday of the great solar god Re.
Richard H. Wilkinson
The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Ronald Wells has shown that in the predawn sky at winter solstice in predynastic Egypt the Milky Way would have looked remarkably like a stretched out figure with arms and legs touching the horizons in exactly the manner in which the goddess was often later depicted. Furthermore, at the time of the winter solstice the sun would have risen in the area of the goddess’s figure — her pudendum — from which it would be imagined to be born, just nine months earlier, at the spring equinox, the sun would have set in the position of the goddess’ head — suggesting it was being swallowed.
But it gets complicated, and this uncertainty is likely what leads many scholars and theologians to abandon the idea altogether.
Andrew Fear
Mithras
It is perverse not to see some form of link with Mithraism here and not difficult to imagine how the traditional, and correct date of 21 December moved to the Roman date of 25 December when Mithraism arrived in Italy. Some mithraea certainly are orientated to face the sun on that day. An example is the temple at Carrawburgh on Hadrian’s Wall. Many, however, are not. This is not evidence of different practices within the cult, but rather of diferent opportunities. Often it would have been neither practical nor possible to orientate mithraea in this way. Again, just as with the time of initiation that is not to say that they could not have been regarded as being symbolically so orientated. Unfortunately, we have no epigraphic evidence of ceremonies being held on this day nor any evidence of the nature of such ceremonies if they were held. Given the intense privacy of Mithraism, we can be certain that there were no public manifestations of devotion even if a ritual was held in the temple.