Is Christmas A Pagan Holiday?

There is a growing trend among some fundamentalist Christians to boycott Christmas. These folks contend that Christmas symbols like trees, mistletoe, Santa Claus, gift-giving and, most notably, the date we use for Christmas, are nothing but pagan practices. They believe that no real Christian should have anything to do with these things. I’m not going to get into the details of each of these. But I do want to comment on the broad notion that those of us who celebrate Christmas are capitulating to some kind of paganism. I also want to offer some food for thought about why we celebrate Christmas on December 25th.

What Do You Mean By Pagan?

During the first few centuries after Christ, Christianity began taking over the Roman Empire demographically. By the time Constantine allowed Christianity to become the religion of the empire in the 4th century, Christians dominated the population and congregated mostly in cities. But out in the countryside, polytheism was still very common. For that reason, the term “countryman” (Latin: paganus) began to refer to non-Christians. “Pagans” were cults (like-minded groups of people) who believed and practiced religions that worshipped nature. Those kinds of religions focused on birth, death, and rebirth as a call to worship. They venerated the stars, associated their crops with fertility, and thought the local gods controlled the weather. Pagans held festivals and engaged in rituals that involved all these things.

As it applies to Christmas, one of those pagan rituals was a festival called Saturnalia that took place throughout the Roman Empire during the longest night of the year. Think of it as Mardi Gras on steroids. Its purpose was to celebrate the Sun’s climb out of the dark depths of winter. This weeklong festival was centered on the Winter Solstice — the point where the Sun is lowest in the sky — on December 21st. It was a disgusting mix of food, sex, and debauchery that lasted from December 17th to the 25th.

Stealing From Pagans

History shows that as Christians overtook the Empire, they began to replace pagan buildings and altars by building Christian churches in their places. It also seems that they began to start associating festivals like Saturnalia with Christian alternatives. So here’s my question to those who boycott Christmas: What’s wrong with stealing stuff from the pagans?

This may sound flippant but I don’t mean it that way at all. If we co-opt some formerly pagan practices and use them to celebrate our holiday, I don’t see a problem with that. The pagan connections have long since disappeared. All the Christians I know have never even considered the fact that our holiday may have pagan roots. The images, symbols, and practices of Christmas are and always will be, Christian. We associate them with the incarnation of Christ and celebrate that fact in our home. This isn’t a capitulation to paganism. In fact, it wasn’t until recently that I had even heard of these pagan connections.

In 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 Paul exhorts his disciples to “be all things to all men.” It seems to me that using pagan symbols to attract pagans and then redefining their paganism in Christian ways, goes right along with Paul’s thinking. Throughout history, replacing pagan practices in the culture has been a way of redirecting unbelievers from their journey down the wrong path and leading them to the real Truth.

Is December 25th Really A Pagan Holiday?

Besides all that, who says the date for Christmas was chosen to replace a pagan day of worship? Many who denounce the fact that Christians celebrate on December 25th do so because they believe it joins us with the Sun worshippers who give spiritual significance to the Winter Solstice. But the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21st. Christmas is a different day. And the reason for it is significant.

Calculating Christmas

It turns out there are very distinct Christian reasons for selecting December 25th as the date of Christ’s birth. William J. Tighe’s, Calculating Christmas is a fascinating article that chronicles the origin of the date. As a brief summary:

• • There was a common belief in something called the Integral Age of the great Jewish prophets. This idea claimed that all the great prophets were born or conceived on the same day they died.
  • Today, most modern scholars agree that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33. Those are the only two dates during the time we know he lived that the eve of Passover fell on a Friday. This means that the crucifixion occurred either on April 7, 30 AD, or on April 3, 33 AD.
  • In the time of Tertullian, the Western church (for reasons too complicated to get into here) had concluded that he died on Friday, March 25, 29 AD. In keeping with the Integral Age theory, that meant that Christ’s birth or conception would have occurred on the same date. So, if he was conceived on March 25th, he would have been born 9 months later — on December 25!
  • The Eastern Church, for a different set of reasons (and with a different set of calendars), concluded that Good Friday was actually April 6. Using parallel reasoning, the Eastern church began celebrating Christ’s birth on January 6th. They still do so today.

Celebrate Christmas

We will probably never really know the date of Jesus’ birth. In fact, from what I’ve discovered, there may be some doubt as to whether there really is any validity to the Integral Age theory of the Jewish prophets. I certainly don’t see any reason to believe it’s true that prophets were conceived or born on the same date they died.

But that’s not the point.

The important thing is that those who did decide when to celebrate Jesus’ birth didn’t do so because they were cozying up to pagans. The leaders of the early church picked the date because it was their best effort to get it right. It was a carefully calculated, conscientious decision that led to the dates we use today. And it was based on their reverence for Christ.

There is no reason to accept the scorn of those who “boycott” Christmas because they think it’s a pagan holiday. We celebrate Christmas on December 25th because we are commemorating the birth of Christ as a real event in history.

The Son of God became man so that we could become sons of God. And that will always be something to celebrate.

Photo by Gareth Harper on Unsplash