Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?

Tis the season for an ongoing debate about whether Christmas is really a pagan holiday. You may be familiar with the arguments: Christians decided to celebrate the birth of Christ at the same time as pagans were celebrating one of their own festivals to pick off pagans and move them into the Christian camp. Furthermore, many Christmas traditions are allegedly pagan in origin.

Two very different types of people make this argument. One type are non-Christians who want to cast Christianity as a predatory religion. The other type are Christians who are criticizing the way that other Christians practice their faith.

The origins of Christmas are mysterious. Two gospels tell us the story of the birth of Jesus, but there are no New Testament passages that describe early Christians celebrating his birthday. Nor does the New Testament give us a date for the birth of Jesus. So why do we celebrate Christmas, and why do we celebrate on December 25?

There are good reasons to think that Christmas has less to do with paganism and more to do with Christians’ own issues. Some early Christians crunched the data and concluded that Jesus had been crucified on March 25. (Good Friday is another event in Jesus’s life for which the gospels supply no date.) Now, March 25 happened to be the first day of spring on the old Roman calendar. Many Jews and Christians assumed that God had begun to create the world on the first day of spring. From there, Christians concluded that the first day of the new creation, when the Son of God was conceived in Mary’s womb, must have been on March 25 also, because that would be fitting. Add nine months to March 25, and you get December 25!

The pagan holiday Sol Invictus, which commemorated the Roman sun god, originally fell on December 1, but Emperor Aurelian moved the date to the 25th in the 270s AD. One historian has argued that, rather than Christians using Christmas to erase a pagan celebration, the pagans may have moved one of their festivals to compete with an increasingly popular Christian holiday.

What about our Christmas customs? Decorating Christmas trees was an invention of Protestant Christians in central Europe. Pagans gave gifts during another December festival, Saturnalia, but the modern custom of maxing out our credit cards in December has more to do with modern advertising than ancient paganism. Burning a yule log may have originated among the pre-Christian peoples of northern Europe, but it would be surprising that after converting, northern Europeans would give up a tradition centered on light and heat in the coldest and darkest time of the year. There is a long and convoluted path from St. Nicholas, a 4th century bishop who allegedly smacked a heretic in the face, to the Santa Claus of today. Along the way, those who imagined ol’ St. Nick may have been inspired by tales of an old Germanic god’s appearance, but most of the path runs through Christian territory.

A better question than “Is Christmas pagan?” is, “What makes a religious practice Christian?” Two things, in my opinion. Are you doing it for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and are you also doing justice and showing compassion for your fellow human beings? If so, then light a yule log, either in your fire place or on YouTube, with a clear conscience!