A Traditional Christmas?

The Christmas season is upon us.  This time of year is full of joyous activities.  At the very idea of some of our Christmas traditions, many Americans feel the happiest they do all year.  A lot of us old folks complain that the important traditions are being pushed aside.

But do those traditions really make sense?

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OK, so where do we start?  How about by asking the question, why do we celebrate Christmas?  Those raised in some variation of Christianity will quickly explain that Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus Christ’s birthday.

Of course, the simple answer is yes, but the correct one is yes AND no. 

You say, “Well, it’s Jesus’s birthday, right?”

Is it?  How do we know?  The bible doesn’t give the exact date he was born but does provide some contextual clues, like the Star of Bethlehem, the shepherds watching their flocks at night, historical references, etc.

Historical references (like the reign of Herod) give us clues as to the year but not the day, so we’ll skip those for now.

How about the star? 

Scholars argued about whether the Star of Bethlehem was a true star, a comet, or an alignment of either the planets Saturn and Jupiter or of Venus and Jupiter, but each used his own preference to come up with a date, all of which were obviously different.  Those who thought it was an alignment of Venus and Jupiter figured the date was June 17, in the year 2 B.C.  The Saturn/Jupiter advocates came up with the month October of 7 B.C.  Fans of the comet idea say the Chinese recorded that in 5 B.C. between March 10 and April 7. 

Theologians suggest that Jesus was born in the spring, based on the bible verse Luke 2:8, which says, “And there were shepherds residing in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks by night.”  That is something they do in spring lambing season, but not winter, which can be bitterly cold with deep snow in that area.

So, we have evidence that Jesus was born in the spring, in the summer, and in the fall, but nothing indicating December.

Then why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25?

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The decision to celebrate Jesus’s birth on that date was made in the fourth century A.D.  Many, if not most, Christians saw birthday celebrations as a pagan ritual, followed, according to the bible, by people like the Pharaoh.  As a result, many Christians were against the idea. 

Yup, against it!

As shown above, it was not chosen because anyone actually thought it was the true date of Jesus’s birth.  Nope.  It had more to do with the sun than the Son.

You see, the last half of December was already considered sacred, not by Christians, but by several pagan religions, which celebrated the winter solstice with some very fun festivals.  The winter solstice (the day with the shortest period of sunlight and longest of darkness) occurs on December 21/22.  Pagan Romans celebrated Saturnalia from December 17 to 24.  The kalends was the first day of the month according to the ancient Roman calendar.  Six days before the kalends would be the ides.  Thus, the ides of December would be the 26th.   

There was a concern that people were embracing the pagan religions because their celebrations were more fun than Christianity’s holidays.  Christians were dedicated to converting pagans to their religion.  In fact, it became the policy of the Catholic Church to “transform” pagan festivals wherever possible instead of making them illegal.  Abolishing them could actually cause pagans to reject the Christian faith.

The Catholic Church wanted to commemorate the birth of Christ, and persuade the followers of pagan religions to forsake them and turn to Christ as the true “Light of the World.”  But, when should they celebrate it?  Close to the big pagan holidays seemed like a good time to compete directly with them.  A-a-a-and December 25 was the only available date between the pagan celebrations of Saturnalia and the ides of December.  Now, how could they draw religious pagans away from their fun celebrations? 

Why, with more fun, of course!

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Among the ways Saturnalia was celebrated was a feast and gift giving.  It was a festival of light leading to the winter solstice, with the abundant presence of candles symbolizing the quest for knowledge and truth.

The Romans celebrated Kalends by decorating their houses with lights and greenery (to honor Strenia – pagan goddess of the new year).  They also exchanged gifts, and later added cakes and honey.  Get it?  Sweets!

A feast, gift giving, lots of lights, greenery, and sweets?  Sound familiar?

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Those are all great things, but even the name Christmas is a tradition.  Where does it come from?  Well, it was added to the Christian calendar as, understandably, The Nativity Feast Day and NOT as Jesus’s birth-DAY.  Accordingly, the official ‘Nativity Mass’ was the first mass of the day, held at 9 a.m.  Nativity Mass became a central fixture in the Christian church calendar, which led to the day becoming known as Christ’s Mass by the 11th century.  Eventually, Christ’s Mass got shortened to the present-day Christmas.

Awesome!  We finally have Christ in the Christmas holiday, or did, at least until those darn atheists started writing Xmas in an attempt to squeeze him out, right?

You know me better than that.  Now you’re probably thinking I’m going to say it was Christians who took Christ out of Christmas, right? 

Well, yes, but no.

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The use of Xmas for Christmas started long before Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the American atheist activist, was even born.  The use of Xmas began way back in the 16th century.  The term “Christ”, originally “Crīst”, comes from the Greek word Khrīstos, which was a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah, which means “anointed”.  Did you get all that?  The Greeks, with their habit of writing things in their own language and alphabet, spelled it, “Χριστός”.  Notice it starts with X?  Yup.  That X is actually the Greek letter chi.  By substituting chi (X) for Christ, and shortening mass to mas, Christians came up with a quicker, simpler, way to write Christmas.

So, yes, it was Christians who took “Christ” out of Christmas, but they did that by substituting “X” for the word Christ.  Since, in this case, “X” actually meant “Christ” they only exchanged one spelling for another.  With our current propensity for converting old spellings for shorter, “text-speak” you could say we are today engaging in the same tradition as those 16th century Christians did.

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Lest you think I’m a Scrooge who will walk around constantly saying, “Bah, humbug!” during the upcoming holiday; I won’t.  I’ll have a great time talking to my family about Christmas and what it means.  We’ll talk about the Nativity if they want.  Annie and I will give them gifts and sweets around the tree in a room festooned with decorations. 

Yup, we plan to have a lot of fun, joy, and revelry.

But I still reserve the right to say, “Humbug?” now and then, just because I want to.

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I’d like to wish a heartfelt merry Christmas to all my readers.  May your days be merry and bright, and all your Christmases be white. 

Gosh I love that song.

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