Introduction
A story is told of Warren, the brother of the well-known writer C. S. Lewis. He was travelling on a bus when they passed a church which had a Christmas crib in front. He overheard a woman exclaim, “Oh Lor’! They bring religion into everything. Look—they’re even dragging it into Christmas now!”
For the majority of our Western population Christmas is little more than a secular holiday. No doubt some look forward to the partying and the excuse for a booze-up. Likewise for others it is little different to any other day in the year. As someone declared, “So why’s Christmas just like a normal day in the office? You do all the work and that fat bloke in the suit gets all the credit.” Some would relate to the Austrian lass of sixteen who wrote, as reported in a leaflet of the European Christian Mission:
Christmas always brings fear to my heart. For a few minutes we watched the lighted candles on the tree. We open our presents, we have a holiday and better things to eat. We live peaceably together. But afterwards the days are no different than they were before. The already dirty snow lies banked up on either side of the road. There just remains a great emptiness.
One sophisticated magazine published the following greeting to its readers:
From most of us to some of you, then, a very very alienated Christmas, a disenchanted New Year; some degree, if you insist, of peace on earth; and whatever you may find to your advantage in good will toward men.
Others can appreciate a time of celebration, even if they are unsure of what it is they are celebrating. If they think Christianity has something to do with it, though not usually church attenders, they may well attend a service or a carol singing event. After all, for those who watch television, there does not seem to be much in the world to celebrate. The emphasis given by Christians to the birth of Jesus may have its appeal to many, even though they interpret Christmas in basically secular terms. There is, after all, something special about babies. The emphasis on children always has its appeal. We were all young once and the world’s great thinkers often had lowly origins.
I suspect that the majority of Westerners who know something of history would acknowledge the religious origins of traditions associated with Christmas, whether Christian or pagan. Pagan religions of the Northern Hemisphere held the celebrations of their gods as the cold and darkness of winter began to be replaced by the warmth and light of spring and the sun reached its turning point. For the Romans, it was the feast of Saturnalia (not surprisingly described by historians as “an orgy”) that began on December 17 and lasted up to seven days. The worshippers of Mithras celebrated the birthday of their god on December 25, the date then accepted as the winter solstice. Sometime around A.D. 336 the church in Rome capitalised on these pagan festivals and made the occasion an opportunity to celebrate the coming of Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness (Malachi 4:2). A third-century theologian said it well: “We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of Him who made it.” None would claim that Jesus was actually born on this date, as we don’t have enough information to know that.
However, not everything is clear here. The Roman Emperor Aurelian passed an edict in A.D. 274 establishing the festival of Natalis Solis Invicti (Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun) while dedicating a temple. Notable church fathers Tertullian and Augustine were convinced that Christmas preceded this pagan holiday. Alvin J. Schmidt, in his scholarly work Under the Influence, states that in northern Africa, Christians were already celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 in A.D. 243, thirty years before Aurelian’s edict. If this is true, it wasn’t Christianity that Christianised a pagan festival, but a pagan emperor attempting to paganise a Christian festival that predated it by thirty years. Alfred Edersheim, one of the foremost scholars on ancient Jewish culture and sacred writings, says, “There is no adequate reason for questioning the historical accuracy of this date.”
There is also the interesting suggestion that the early Christians may have taken the Jewish Festival of Lights, or Hannukah, the essential elements of which have many similarities to those we celebrate at Christmas, and adapted it to the celebration of the birth of Christ. This would be similar to the ways they took the Jewish festivals of Passover, First Fruits and Pentecost to celebrate significant events from the life of Jesus. Hanukkah last for eight days, beginning on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev (Novermber-December), so it usually falls in December. This feast is mentioned in John 10:22 , in a passage where Jesus’ relationship with God is discussed. It could be that, from the very beginning, the Church has celebrated the coming of Jesus into the world during December.
