Just as repeatedly because the approach of Christmas means a rise within the variety of advertisements for perfume on television, so also it signifies that anti-Christian sceptics will proclaim that Christmas was originally a pagan mid-winter festival which Christians appropriated for their very own nefarious purposes after they became the dominant religious force within the Roman empire from the fourth century AD onwards.
There are two problems with this claim.
The first is solely logical. Whatever religious festivals non-Christians may or may not have celebrated within the Roman Empire, one thing we might be absolutely certain about is that they didn’t have a good time Christmas. The clue is within the name. The word Christmas means the liturgical celebration (‘mass’) held to mark the birth of Christ. Non-Christians didn’t have such celebration for the straightforward reason that they were non-Christians.
The second is that there isn’t a early evidence that the early Christians selected to have a good time the birth of Christ on what we call 25 December with a view to displace a pagan midwinter festival.
As Andrew McGowan puts it in his recent article ‘How December 25 became Christmas’: “Despite its popularity today, this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. It shouldn’t be present in any ancient Christian writings, for one thing. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth: The church father Ambrose (c. 339–397), for instance, described Christ because the true sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. But early Christian writers never hint at any recent calendrical engineering; they clearly don’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they see the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had chosen Jesus over the false pagan gods.”
He goes on, “It’s not until the twelfth century that we discover the primary suggestion that Jesus’ birth celebration was deliberately set on the time of pagan feasts. A marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi states that in precedent days the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 in order that it fell on the identical date because the pagan Sol Invictus holiday. In the 18th and nineteenth centuries, Bible scholars spurred on by the brand new study of comparative religions latched on to this concept. They claimed that since the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their very own purposes, claiming it because the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly.”
In fact, the most probably explanation for the Christian celebration of the birth of Christ on 25 December from the second century onwards is that this was the date when Jesus was actually born. As the Roman Catholic author William Saunders notes, the priestly class of Abijah to which Zechariah belonged (Luke 1:5) “would have been on duty through the second week of the Jewish month Tishri, the week of the Day of Atonement or in our calendar, between Sept. 22 and 30”.
“While on duty, the Archangel Gabriel informed Zechariah that he and Elizabeth would have a son (Lk 1:5-24). Thereupon, they conceived John, who after presumably 40 weeks within the womb would have been born at the tip of June. For this reason, we have a good time the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on June 24,” he writes.
“St. Luke also recorded how the Archangel Gabriel told Mary that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John (Lk 1:36), which implies the Annunciation occurred March 25, as we have a good time. Nine months from March 25, or six months from June 24, renders the birth of Christ at Dec. 25, our Christmas.”
Christmas was subsequently not originally a pagan mid-winter festival. From its inception it has all the time been a Christan celebration of the birth of Christ, going down on the day on which the biblical evidence says that he was born.
However, even though it was not originally a pagan-midwinter festival, it may be argued that in the fashionable secular Western world it has increasingly turn into so. Indeed, it may be argued, as CS Lewis does, that there at the moment are two concurrent festivals, the non-Christian festival of ‘Xmas’ and the Christian feast of Christmas.
Lewis makes this point in his 1954 essay ‘Xmas and Christmas: A lost chapter from Herodotus.’ As its title indicates, this essay is alleged to be a lost chapter from the works of the Ancient Greek historian and geographer Herodotus, who’s well-known for his accounts of non-Greek nations.
The essay starts by describing the undeniable fact that off the coast of Northwest Europe there lies the island of Niatirb (try reversing the order the letters) and that, ‘in the midst of winter when fogs and rains most abound,’ the inhabitants of this island “have an ideal festival which they call Exmas, and for 50 days they prepare for it in the style I shall describe”.
He writes, “First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to every of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with an image, which of their speech known as an Exmas-card.”
It then goes on to say that the Niatirbians also send gifts to at least one one other “things like no man ever bought for himself”.
“For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all types of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, they’ve been unable to sell all year long they now sell as an Exmas gift … But when the day of the festival comes, then a lot of the residents, being exhausted with the Rush, lie in bed till noon. But within the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper, they turn into intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they’re very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and reckoning how much they’ve spent on gifts and on the wine.”
Sound familiar? However, the essay adds that a couple of Niatirbians have a separate festival “called Crissmas, which is on the identical day as Exmas” on which they do “the other to nearly all of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast”.
A priest explains that Crissmas and the Crissmas Rush “distract the minds even of the few from sacred things”.
“And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas ; but in Exmas there isn’t a merriment left.”
Finally the essay observes: “But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the identical, shouldn’t be credible. For first, the images that are stamped on the Christmas cards don’t have anything to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Christmas. And secondly, probably the most a part of the Niaturbians, not believing the faith of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and cards and take part in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But shouldn’t be likely that men, even being barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they don’t imagine in.”
Lewis’ essay is clearly a piece of satire within the tradition of earlier English satirists equivalent to Jonathan Swift. However, it makes two serious points that are specified by the extracts just quoted. The first is that, although they occur at the identical time, the celebrations of Exmas and Christmas are actually two distinct things. Secondly, the existence of Exmas distracts even the minds of the faithful from the contemplation of sacred things.
These points by Lewis are, if anything, much more relevant today than they were back in 1954 and what they point to is the theological reality that Exmas has turn into a festival marked by idolatry.
The first commandment of the Ten Commandments is ‘You shall haven’t any other gods before me’ (Exodus 20:3). As Martin Luther observes in relation to this commandment: ‘That …upon which you set your heart and put your trust is correctly your god.’ For most individuals who have a good time Exmas the gods they’ve their hearts upon are material possessions, relationships with family and friends, and the copious consumption of food and drinks, and the explanation they set their hearts upon these items is because they trust that they’ll give them the happiness which they desire.
However, like all idols, all material things worshipped as gods, the gods of Christmas will ultimately fail to deliver. As Augustine famously puts it at the beginning of his Confessions, God has made us for himself and our hearts can be restless until they find their rest in him. The gods of Exmas cannot provide us with that rest, that true happiness, on this life, or give us everlasting life within the age to come back.
Only the God of Christmas, the God whose birth as a human being took place on 25 December, may give us the true happiness we seek on this life and everlasting life within the age to come back. That is why it’s so essential that Christians don’t let Exmas distract their minds from the celebration of Christmas and why they need to seek to remind their non-Christian neighbours in regards to the importance of Christmas, even within the midst of the Exmas celebrations.
