The most widely held view of Christmas' origins by historians, explains Sheler, "is that the holiday was an intentional 'Christianization' of Saturnalia and other pagan festivals. In the third and fourth centuries, the church in Rome found itself in fierce competition with popular pagan religions and mystery cults, most of them involving sun worship. From the middle of December through the first of January, Romans would engage in feasts and drunken revelry, paying homage to their gods and marking the winter solstice, when days began to lengthen. In A.D. 274 Emperor Aurelian decreed December 25 ' the solstice on the Julian calendar ' as natalis solis invicti ('birth of the invincible sun'), a festival honoring the sun god Mithras."
The first mention of a Nativity feast shows up for the first time in a Roman document from A.D. 354 which lists December 25 as Jesus' birth date. "In designating December 25 as the date for their Nativity feast, says Penne Restad of the University of Texas, Rome's Christians 'challenged paganism directly'." Restad has written a book, Christmas in America: A History, where she says that had early Christians even known the date of Christ's birth (which they didn't) they wouldn't have been interested in celebrating it. She notes that early Christians "viewed birthday celebrations as heathen." Church father Origen in the third century labeled it a sin to even think of keeping Christ's birthday "as though He were a king pharaoh." But as we know, the appeal of the wild winter celebrations won out. What was most interesting to me was how all that changed in the 1800s. By the 1820s Christmas celebrations were getting out of hand, especially in the rapidly growing cities of an industrializing America. Nissenbaum tells us that in 1828, New York City organized its first professional police force in response to a violent Christmas riot. A type of trick-or-treat was part of the celebration where the poor and "rabble" would demand gifts and drinks of the well-to-do by yelling threats from the streets, pounding on their doors and continuing through the night in a menacing wassailing. A Christmas carol from the early 1800s said, "We've come here to claim our right . . . And if you don't open your door, we will lay you flat upon the floor."
Nissenbaum also states: "A concerned group of New York patricians that included Washington Irving and Clement Clark Moore, author of A Visit From St. Nicholas, began a campaign to bring Christmas off the streets into the family circle. Moore's classic poem provided the new mythology for this Christmas make over."
Moore's St. Nick "far from being the creature of ancient Dutch folklore" was an "invented tradition", says Nissenbaum, "made up with the precise purpose of appearing old fashioned." The poem caught on, gifts to children replaced begging, and Christmas was on the road to being domesticated and commercialized. Nissenbaum says, "What many historians find most fascinating about the reinvention of Christmas is that its commercialization, now so frequently denounced, is what spawned the transformation in the first place." He adds, "To turn Christmas into a purely religious celebration now, might cheer those who want to 'take back Christmas', but such an observance would lack the cultural resonance and impact of a holiday deeply rooted in the marketplace and if Christmas came to that, we probably wouldn't keep it as a society." The difference between Christmas and the biblical festivals is profound. The former's reincarnations are rooted in political/religious power and civil/commercial considerations. The festivals of Yahweh are rooted in the magnalia Dei, the mighty works of God, which memorialize the Divine Plan for all ages. The Festivals of Scripture tell us much about God. The celebration of Christmas tells nothing about God, but a lot about paganism, parties, politics and how to create a successful commercial tradition. |
