Recently O’Reilly’s staged a tirade about the war on “his” Christmas when he had Silverman on his show. Many Christian conservatives often decry non-Christian calls for a more secular approach to “the holidays” and claim that their Christian values are under attack. Often they cite the Christmas Tree as one of the objects under scrutiny. This made me look into the History of Christmas.
Christians like to claim that there is something special about December 25th, the date of birth of Jesus Christ. What do you think these other gods or deities all have in common?
– Horus – Egypt (3000 B.C.)
– Attis – Greece (1200 B.C.)
– Dionysus – Greece (500 B.C.)
– Mithra – Persia (1200 B.C.)
– Jesus – Israel (0 B.C)
Every one of them was born on December 25th. Religions definitely like to pick December 25th as the birthdate for their deities, and did so more than 3,000 years before Christ.
Some years ago I wrote a post about the movie Zeitgeist (get ready for conspiracy theory) that gave more information about the significance of December 25th in many ancient religions.
To avoid persecution during the Roman pagan festival, Early Christians decked their homes with Saturnalia holly to avoid persecution during the Roman pagan festival.
The early church did not celebrate the birth of Christ in December until about 125 to 136AD when they declared that Church services should be held during this time to celebrate “The Nativity of our Lord and Saviour.” Nobody knew for sure in which month Christ was born. Nativity was often held in September, which was during the Jewish Feast of Trumpets. For more than 300 years, people observed the birth of Jesus on various dates.
In the year 274AD, solstice fell on 25th December. The Roman Emperor Aurelian proclaimed the date as the festival of the birth of the invincible sun. In 320 AD, Pope Julius I specified the December 25th as the official date of the birth of Jesus Christ.
Many centuries went by. In 1648, Oliver Cromwell even banned Christmas festivities.
The publishing of Washington Irving’s book The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall accelerated the popularity of Christmas. In 1834, Britain’s Queen Victoria brought her German husband, Prince Albert, into Windsor Castle, introducing the tradition of the Christmas tree and carols that were held in Europe to the British Empire.
A week before Christmas in 1834, Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol (in which he wrote that Scrooge required Cratchit to work, and that the US Congress met on Christmas Day). It was so popular that governments and churches could not ignore Christmas celebrations. In the United States, Alabama became the first state in 1836 to declare Christmas a legal holiday. Oklahoma was the last state in 1907. Eventually countries all over the world started to recognize Christmas as the day for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. So Christmas was not really celebrated all that much until very recently in history.
The customs of the people are worthless, they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel, they adore it with silver and gold, they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter.
— Jeremiah 10-3,4
Some biblical analysts interpret this passage to be about Christmas Trees. Others argue against the notion.
European pagans were superstitious and believed that green trees had special protective powers. Tree worship was a common feature of religion among the Teutonic and Scandinavian people. It survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the devil and of setting up a tree for the birds.
The use of the Christmas Tree began only in the 17th century in Strasbourg, France and from there it spread to Germany, Britain and then to the U.S. German settlers brought the Christmas Tree custom to the American colonies in the 17th century.
The origins of the Christmas Tree are uncertain. It is clearly associated with the celebration of the Christmas holidays, so there has been some amount of debate as to whether it should be considered a secular or a religious custom. It’s not hard to argue either way.
Neither the Bible nor Jesus and his companions (as far as we can see) say anything about the celebration of Christmas which currently involves fanfare, commercialization, and extravagant spending. For many people it appears to be devoid of any spiritual relevance.
Leave a Reply