CHRISTMAS is celebrated on December 25, and while a sacred religious holiday at heart, it is also a world-wide cultural and commercial phenomenon.
In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday and Christmas was not celebrated. It wasn’t until Pope Julius, the bishop of Rome between AD 337 to AD 352, set December 25 as the official birthdate of Jesus.
Keeping in mind that in Europe, late December is the deepest point of winter, one explanation of the origin of the date is that December 25 was the Christianizing of the ‘Day of the birth of the unconquered sun’, a popular holiday in the Roman Empire that celebrated the winter solstice as a symbol of the resurgence of the sun, the casting away of winter and the heralding of the rebirth of spring and summer.
The symbology here can have several layers. Not least of which is that it’s at the darkest point that a hero is most needed. The lights on the Christmas tree likewise symbolise the triumph of light out of darkness.
After December 25 had become widely accepted as the date of Jesus’ birth, Christian writers frequently made the connection between the ‘rebirth of the sun’ and the ‘birth of the Son’.
While the origins of the December 25 date can be vague, it’s not exactly worth splitting hairs over. In Australia we celebrate the ‘Queen’s birthday’ on a day that is not the Queen’s birthday. It doesn’t mean the Queen doesn’t exist.
And not all Christians celebrate Christmas on December 25, either. Orthodox Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7, for example. They go by a different calendar.
Other Christmas traditions such as the tree chopped down, dragged indoors and decorated, the gift giving and the feasting and drinking all have distinctively non-Christian origins. Christmas really is a hotch-potch of traditions and cultures old and new. And that’s before we even get onto who on Earth Santa is.
