How did Christmas get started?
The answer is not as simple as, “Jesus was born.” Yes, he was, but nobody knows exactly when. So let me restate the question: What are the origins of the Christian festival celebrating the birth of Christ?
This subject has long been a matter of scholarly debate. From time to time, it has become a culturally divisive issue. Back in the 1700s, Puritans banned Christmas because of its “pagan origins.” They argued that the holiday was an effort by fourth-century Christians to co-opt the Roman festival of Saturnalia (“birth of the Sun”) at the winter solstice. Puritans took a dim view of traditions like “hanging the greens,” lighted trees, and giving presents, maintaining that all of them were rooted in pagan solstice festivals, either in ancient Rome or medieval Europe. Were it not for Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and Clement Moore’s “Visit from St. Nicholas,” Puritan influence in England and the United States might have subdued the Christmas holiday for a lot longer.
More recent scholarship casts doubt on the Puritan basis for rejecting Christmas. While the holiday has over time incorporated elements of various European solstice (“Yuletide”) traditions, its relationship to the Roman solstice festival is far from certain.
In A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian established the cult of Sol Invictus, Sun God and patron of Roman soldiers, and declared December 25 as “the birth of the Sun,” evidenced by the lengthening of days after the longest night of the year.
The first recorded “Christ Mass” was celebrated on December 25, 336. Its purpose was theological. At that time, a great controversy raged over the true nature of Christ. Only eleven years earlier, the Council of Nicaea had defined the Christian belief in God as Three in One, and confessed Christ as both the second person of the Trinity and fully human. But many Christians of that time were not Trinitarian. Following the teachings of a popular theologian named Arius, they maintained that Jesus was “divine but created,” and therefore not equal to God. The purpose of the Mass celebrating the birth of Christ was to inculcate Nicene theology. That is, the Word of God that was “in the beginning” was “made flesh” in Christ. He was fully human and fully divine.
But why December 25? Earlier Christians assumed that Jesus was born in the spring, because the gospel of Luke recorded that “the time came for Mary to deliver her child” when “shepherds were abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night.” Shepherds kept night watch only during lambing season – April and May. The selection of December 25 strikes many religious historians as evidence that the church was attempting to Christianize an already existing Roman festival.
This understandable conclusion, however, overlooks one important verifiable fact. The Christian theologian Tertullian, writing around 200, calculated that Jesus was crucified on March 25 (his reckoning of when Passover began in A.D. 33). Jewish tradition of the time held that great men lived whole numbers of years and died on the date they were conceived. On this basis, Tertullian proposed that Jesus was born nine months after March 25.
Tertullian was among the most influential early church theologians. It is therefore plausible that his calculation of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday would have gained acceptance among many Christians. This has led many scholars to argue that when the Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthdate of Sol Invictus, he was hoping to counteract the growing influence of Christians, who were already celebrating the birth of Christ on that same day.
The problem with this theory is the absence of any evidence that Christians were “celebrating” the birth of Christ before the fourth century. There was no theologically compelling reason to do so. In addition, after Christmas became an annual observance, Christian writers regularly associated Jesus’ birth with the winter solstice. For instance, St. Augustine preached a Christmas sermon around the year 400 that included these words: “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.”
So perhaps the simplest explanation is that fourth-century Christians began celebrating the birth of Christ for theological reasons using a date proposed by a respected Christian theologian, but were also eager to make connections with the pagan solstice festival. And why not? If Christ fulfills the longings of humanity, wouldn’t it make sense that non-Christian spiritual traditions would somehow anticipate God’s gift of Christ to the world? Is it not serendipitous that the Christian festival celebrating the birth of the Son of God coincides with other festivals celebrating the “birth of the Sun”? The gospel of John testifies that Jesus was the Light of the World. It also says the “light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” What better time of year to contemplate the meaning of those words than when sunlight is sparse and the nights are long?
The truth is, we do not know, will never know, and don’t really need to know the exact date of Jesus’ birth. That’s not the point of Christmas. We celebrate the birth of Christ because this was how God came to us as one of us. Jesus, God’s Son, was not partly human and partly divine. He was fully both. He did not merely appear to be in the flesh, but was flesh and blood just like all the rest of us. Through Christ, God experienced the human condition, beginning with conception in and birth from the womb of a woman. That truth calls for more than a birthday cake. It invites us to give our lives fully to the One who poured out his life fully for us.
©2017 by J. Mark Lawson
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