It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas is here, a time for gathering with family, singing classic songs, and spending a lot of money on gifts. Though it has become a secular celebration, Christmas is officially a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Christianity has been around for a while, and this particular holiday has transformed over the years. Its roots can be found in pagan holidays that are even older than Christianity itself.
The Roman Catholic Church fixed the date of Christmas in the early 4th century. It was set for December 25, the winter solstice in the Roman calendar. We now follow the Gregorian calendar, and though we kept the date, it is now a few days after the solstice.
Prehistoric civilizations were far more aware of seasonal and astronomical changes. This was in part by default, since the absence of light pollution allowed them to observe the sky more clearly, and the absence of anything better to do made sky-watching a popular activity. It was also a necessity; seasonal changes determined the timing of hunting and agricultural activities. The importance of dates such as solstices and equinoxes insured that they were marked, even celebrated, by prehistoric societies. Archaeological evidence of this importance can be found in sites such as Stonehenge. Monuments in the Stonehenge area date back to 8000 BC. Stone monuments aligned to the winter solstice date to 2600 and 2400 BC. At around the same time, structures in Egypt, the island of Malta, and elsewhere were built in alignment with the solstices.
In addition to needing to mark the seasons, there were, and are, cultural reasons for noting the solstices. The winter solstice, as the longest night of the year, has traditionally been a time to gather together, with family or as a community. With the darkness symbolizing that which is dangerous or evil, the longest night is best endured with company. It is a time to celebrate, as from this point the days will steadily lengthen. In prehistoric communities, the winter solstice was also a celebration of convenience, since this was often a time when excess livestock would be slaughtered, so they would not have to be fed through the winter. Despite it being the shortest day, traditionally the deepest, coldest, most difficult months of winter were just beginning. The winter solstice was a time to gather as a community, feast, and make the final preparations for enduring the most difficult winter months. Though the specifics of the celebrations varied across time and geographic location, solstice festivals were an important part of life in the northern hemisphere, especially in temperate zones.
The hugely influential theologian Saint Augustine, on the choice of the solstice, wrote in the late 4th century, “Hence it is that He was born on the day which is the shortest in our earthly reckoning and from which subsequent days begin to increase in length. He, therefore, who bent low and lifted us up chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to increase.” While Saint Augustine and others have provided theological reasons for celebrating Christ’s birth on the solstice, it was also a choice of convenience. Since its inception, Christianity has been evangelical, in that its practitioners have sought to convert others, and to grow the faith. Those Christians sought to convert already had their own beliefs, their own calendar of festivals and observances. When presenting Christianity to potential converts, it was expedient to be able to demonstrate that much of the religious observance was merely an adaptation, a shift in significance of holidays and festivals already a part of their culture. Many Christian holidays align with pagan festivals, and the celebration of these holidays was often a mixture of Christian and pagan practices. In the Roman world of early Christianity, the solstice was celebrated by a relatively new cult as the birth of the sun, called Sol Invictus.
The Christmas of the Middle Ages would be unrecognizable to us today. Perhaps as a result of the blending of Christmas with the Germanic winter holiday Yule, Christmas became a drunken, raucous, carnival-like event. Understandably, for much of the history of Christianity, Christmas was considered to be a worryingly un-Christian celebration. Some felt it was insufficiently biblical, while others deplored the debauchery that had come to symbolize the holiday. Some banned the holiday altogether, such as the Puritans.
It wasn’t until the 1800s that Christmas was transformed from the drunken orgy of things un-Christian, to the family-centered religious celebration we think of as the archetypal Christmas. The transformation was centered in England, and was an intentional effort to transform Christian practice. At the forefront of this movement were authors, led by Charles Dickens. Pulling from Christian tradition, and inventing some aspects, a religious holiday centered around family time, charity, and social reconciliation was invented.
These days, the Charles Dickens interpretation of Christmas is threatened again. While Christmas has not returned to the drunken promiscuity of the Middle Ages, it is increasingly secularized. While some are quite combative in their defense of the “traditional” Christmas, the version invented in the 19th century, there is increasing pressure to recognize other faith’s holiday traditions. Christmas also joins the growing list of holidays that are under siege by capitalism, as Christmas becomes more about gifts than family, religion, or charity. It remains to be seen where this latest evolution of the holiday will take us.