Christmas is a much-loved holiday celebrated by billions of people around the world. In the United States alone, the Pew Research Center It is reported that Almost 96% of the population celebrates Christmas, including 8 in 10 non-Christians such as atheists, agnostics and people of no faith.
However, Christmas is also a uniquely Christian holiday. Its central message is about a personal God taking humanity upon himself and stepping into the world to rescue sinful humans who could never save themselves. The Christian message is inescapable.
Imagine a modern church trying to hold a harvest festival on November 8th instead of celebrating Halloween. That won't work.
I believe that the love of Christmas and hatred of Christianity is one of the reasons why atheists keep repeating the claim that Christmas is a pagan transposition of a Roman holiday. Two of the most popular pagan holidays are Saturnalia, which honors the Roman god Saturn, or Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the “birthday of the unconquered sun.” Both celebrations were held in late December, making them more akin to Christmas.
The claim that Christmas has pagan roots is not new.
New England Puritans valued work over celebration. I taught you that. increase mother That's what I preached “The early Christians who first observed the birth of Christ on December 25th did not do so thinking that “Christ was born in that month,'' but rather because the pagan Saturnalia was kept in Rome at the time. “Christians were willing to transform those pagan holidays.” '”
However, if we delve into the actual history, a completely different picture emerges.
There are two ways to approach this question. One is to find out how December 25th came to be associated with the Nativity, or how the early church called the day of Christ's birth. Another is to look at festivals like Saturnalia and Sol Invictus. Let's explore both.
Unraveling the history of Christmas
Much of the thrust of the “pagan Christmas” argument revolves around the idea that Christianized Rome was trying to convert a populace unwilling to let go of its festive traditions, similar to the church's custom of celebrating harvest festivals in place of Halloween. Based on.
However, scholars like TC Schmidt of Yale University have discovered that the December 25th mark appeared much earlier in Christian history.
In translating Hippolytus' Commentary on Daniel, written just after 200 AD, Schmitt I am making a note of Five of the seven manuscripts include December 25th as the date of Jesus' birth, and one indicates the 25th day of either December or March. Clement of Alexandria, a contemporary offer March 25th is marked as the date of the Incarnation, or conception of Jesus, in his Stromata.
Both works advocate the idea that Jesus' death would have occurred on the same day as his conception.
Christmas and Easter are linked
Why December 25th?
As Thomas Tully elucidates in his book The Origins of the Liturgical Year, early Church members believed that the date of Jesus' death reflected either his birth or his conception.
Augustine wrote about this: I'm sayingFor it is believed that Jesus was conceived on March 25th, and on that day He also suffered. Therefore, the womb in which the Virgin was conceived and in which no human being was born corresponds to the new tomb in which he was buried. However, according to tradition, he was born on December 25th. ”
St. John Chrysostom goes further and points out that the announcement of Mary's conception by the angel Gabriel occurred while Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the Baptist (Luke 1:26). Chrysostom claims that the conception of John the Baptist occurred in the fall, since Zechariah's service was on the Day of Atonement. Adding another six months places Jesus' conception in the spring, or March 25th.
We don't know if this calculation is accurate, but it shows how much the early church connected events. The idea of randomly picking a pagan date instead seems pretty far-fetched.
The problem is: If Christians were aware of the birth of Christ by the beginning of the 3rd century AD, is it reasonable to think that this was a 4th century AD invention to induce the Roman populace to Christianity? ?
Although Christianity was growing in power during Clement's time, it was never able to escape from the shadow of persecution. Also, at that time they did not adopt many pagan customs. So why do we believe they would do so for this day?
Roman era and Saturnalia
So what about Rome's year-end Saturnalia celebration?
When researching this holiday, one of the main sources is Macrobius, a Roman who lived in the 5th century. His Saturnalia details the origin story of this celebration and its customs.
TC Schmidt highlights This passage from the Saturnalia (Book 1, Chapter 10) indicates the date of the celebration.
Our ancestors limited the Saturnalia to one day, the 14th day before the Calens of January, but after Gaius Caesar added two days in December, the days on which the festival was held were It's day 16 of January before the Karens. [January 1]As a result, the festival came to be seen as lasting multiple days, as the exact dates were not generally known, some observing Caesar's addition to the calendar, and others following older usage. I did.
But in fact, some ancient people believed that Saturnalia lasted seven days…
[But] Therefore, from everything that has been said so far, we can deduce that Saturnalia lasted only one day and was held only on the 14th day before the Karens in January. It was only on this day that a noisy feast was held in the temple of Saturn and cries of “Io Saturnalia” were heard. But now, during the festival of Saturnalia, this day is assigned to the festival of Opalia, although originally this day was commonly assigned to Saturn and Opus.
In other words, Saturnalia was a three-day festival that began 16 days before January 1st.
Their December is 31 days long, like ours, and Saturnalia is December 17th, too early to be mistaken for December 25th. However, Macrobius points out that after these three days another festival, Sigillaria, was celebrated. In his article, Schmidt provides a translation of chapter 10 in its entirety, as dates are referenced throughout.
Then he said, conclusion:
Macrobius does a great job of summarizing the authority that was available to him, but I think most of it is lost. His conclusion is very clear. Saturnalia was originally one day, occurring before the 14th day of the January of the Calendars, but when Caesar changed the calendar, it was extended to three days and began on the 16th. Later, the new Sigillaria festival extended the celebration days. This means that depending on how you count, the festival ended on the 10th or 9th day before the Karens in January. Of course, none of these dates fall eight days before the January Karens, which is December 25th.
date doesn't match
Remember, Macrobius was writing in the 5th century AD. John Chrysostom's Christmas Sermon It has been preached on December 25th for a century. However, the dates do not match.
If Christmas were created to replace Saturnalia, Christians would have chosen December 17th. On top of that, the references I mentioned for the December 25th date date back to 200 AD, and have the very real problem of Saturnalia being the origin of Christmas. Christmas date.
Imagine a modern church trying to hold a harvest festival on November 8th instead of celebrating Halloween. That won't work. People could celebrate one and then attend the other. In such cases, the concept of substitution has no effect at all.
Another possibility is suggested when discussing Christmas borrowed from pagan Rome. It's Sol Invictus, or the winter solstice. You can also read about why that proposal failed here.
I hope this little study helps you understand that sometimes historical coincidences don't always matter. Our assumptions can sometimes be very wrong.
You can celebrate the coming of Jesus with confidence knowing that this is a very Christian holiday. And I would like to wish you a very merry and blessed Christmas.
This article is adapted from the following posts: originally appeared in Worldview News Substack.
