The Human Truth Foundation

The True Meaning of Christmas
Paganism, Sun Worship and Commercialism

http://www.humanreligions.info/christmas.html

By Vexen Crabtree 2008

#christianity #christmas #history #paganism #sun_worship

Christmas is the celebration of the time when the days start to lengthen, which in the Northern Hemisphere, is in the middle of winter. Many religions in history have claimed the winter solstice as a holy day. The "reason of the season" is a combination of different traditions. It includes sun worship and pagan nature religions who have venerated the natural cycle for many thousands of years. Many traditional elements of Christmas pre-date Christianity1. Nowadays it is laid upon by various Christian stories, and Christians even say, quite wrongly, that they invented Christmas. In combination with these religious sources is a heavy dose of commercialism - many "traditions" are in fact invented by commercial companies trying to find nifty ways of selling goods. A sensible and modern refrain is that Christmas is a secular midwinter holiday season; it is important to all families as one of the three holiday seasons in between children's school terms. Christmas is a multicultural festival with a long pagan history, and can be celebrated by anyone.


1. Pagan Religions and Sun Worship

1.1. A General Pagan History of Christmas

Many traditional elements of Christmas pre-date Christianity1.Or in words stated by the New York Times in 1875, when you examine it, "Christmas... recalls a pagan saturnalia rather than a Christian festival" (NY Times, 1875)2. Christmas was pagan before it was adopted (and renamed) by Christians. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 states that "Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts"3 - those authors lived into the 3rd century. The CE article concludes that when later Christians adopted the date of the 25th of December for Jesus' birth, "the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too". Prof. Hutton, a respected and careful primary-sources historian, mentions Christmas in his valuable book on the history of modern Paganism.

Book CoverIt is also absolutely correct that some British folk customs have descended directly from pagan rituals, such [...] the giving of presents and decoration of homes with greenery at midwinter.

"The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" by Ronald Hutton (1999)4

Book CoverMost Christmas customs are, in fact, based on old pagan festivals, the Roman Saturnalia and the Scandinavian and Teutonic Yule. Christians adopted these during the earliest period of Church history. The Church, however, has given this recognition and incorporates it into the Church year without too many misgivings. Only the more radical fundamentalist elements in some churches protest from time to time about this mixing of 'pagan' elements into the religion.

"The Phenomenon Of Religion: A Thematic Approach"
Moojan Momen (1999)5

And Hutton, from an earlier book, agrees:

Book CoverThe habit of a midwinter festivity had come by the dawn of history (and probably very long before) to seem a natural one to the British, and not one to be eradicated by changes of political or religious fashion. [...] It was general custom in pagan Europe to decorate spaces with greenery and flowers for festivals, attested wherever records have survived.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain" by Ronald Hutton (1996)6

1.2. Sun Worship (the Reason for the Season)

#mithraism #zoroastrianism

Sun worship formed the basis of Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, other Roman religions and many other pagan traditions. It is the reason Sun-day is a holy day in many religions, and why major festivals are held at spring and at the Solstices. The real meaning of Christmas is sun worship; a reminder to all life on Earth that we owe everything to the Sun. Sun worship is one of the main pillars of all religion, especially older religions. Sun worshippers and nature religions held major celebrations at the Winter Solstice the victory of the strength of the Sun over the forces of darkness that try to suppress it. Osiris-Dionysus represented and was represented by the sun, as was Jesus, whom the Church father Clement of Alexander calls 'The Sun of Righteousness'7. When old relics and religious symbols (such as Human faces) are given a light backdrop of rays of light or a corolla it means they represent the sun.

Sir James Frazer says, "The largest pagan religious cult which fostered the celebration of December 25 as a holiday . . . was the pagan sun- worship, Mithraism . . . This winter festival was called . . . 'the Nativity of the SUN.' [...] Franz Cumont, perhaps the greatest scholar of Mithraism, wrote, quoting Minucius Felix, "The Mithraists also observed Sun-day and kept sacred the 25th of December as the birthday of the Sun. Many scholars have pointed out how the Sun- worshipping Mithraists, the Sun-worshipping Manicheans and the Christians were all syncretised and reconciled when Constantine led the take-over by Christianity[...]"

However, other Sun-worshipping groups were included too, because of the general importance and popularity of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun-deity. Mario Righetti, a renowned Catholic liturgist, writes, "the Church of Rome, to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, found it convenient to institute the 25th December as the feast of the temporal birth of Christ, to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honour of the 'Invincible Sun', Mithras. [...] The mixing of pagan Sun-worship and Christianity is exemplified by the testimony of a Syrian scholiast on Bar Salibi, who said, "It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same 25th of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the Christians also took part." Practically all the known Sun-deities were born on the 25th December. In S.E. Titcomb, Aryan Sun myths, the Origin of Religions, we find it cited, quoted from primary sources, that the following Sun-deities were all born on 25 December, according to their legends: Crishna (Vishnu), Mithra (Mithras), Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Dionysus (Bacchus), Tammuz, Indra, Buddha. Therein we also read of the Scandinavian goddess Frigga in whose honour a "Mother-night" festival was held at the winter solstice (+ - 25 December), as well as a similar great feast of Yule, where a boar was offered at the winter solstice in honour of Frey.

www.iahushua.com/ST-RP/xmas.htm, accessed 2005 Dec 06

Hutton highlights the role that the celebration of light has had through all the threads of history that combined to become part of the symbols of modern Christmas.

Book CoverWhat the Scots did emphasize, in common with many of the English, was light. In 1725 Henry Bourne, a Newcastle clergyman, commented that many people in the North of England lit huge 'Christmas candles' on Christmas Eve. [...] The Scots and] the Irish were also fond of them. [...] Yule candles were also common in Scandinavia, a region which had strong contacts with those parts of Britain which maintained them.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain" by Ronald Hutton (1996)6

It must also be clear that many Christmas customs are, as we heard from Moojan Momen and Prof. Hutton, very ancient. But they have in present centuries been combined with the very modern phenomenon of commercialism.

Pagan sun-worshippers divided the sky into 12 zodiacs, which is why Jesus, Mithras and other god-men had 12 disciples

1.3. The Date of the 25th

#christianity #Christmas #mithraism

Christmas day, by other names, "was the ancient feast-day of the Sun, in the depths of winter", pre-dating Christianity1. But the exact date of the Winter Solstice changes slowly over time. "So, although the solstice moved progressively from 6 January to 25 December, some traditions continued to celebrate it on the familiar night. Today it falls around 22 December"7. The Roman religion of Mithraism, which existed for hundreds of years before Christians started celebrating Christmas, holds that the birth of Mithras was on the 25th of December. In another coincidence, the birth of Mithras was also said 'to have been witnessed by three shepherds'8.

2. The Commercial Takeover of Christmas

The most skeptical view of modern Christmas is that the fads, decorations, festive goods and all the paraphernalia are a commercial scam to make us spend money on over-priced useless goods. However true this is, it has also become a secular social festival much akin to the American thanksgiving. Families come together at Christmas even if they do not for the rest of the year. It probably helps that Christmas and New Year's celebrations have become institutionally intertwined. These make Christmas in essence a meaningful family celebration, even if on top of that there is a thick cover of shallow commercialism.

The festivities are largely led by commerce and retail outlets: The relevant decorations, cards, food and goods are all marketed for Christmas, and it is the High Streets that press Christmas upon the populace way before the populace itself is ready. It is a frequent complaint that stores start Christmas "too early" and too aggressively. Several elements of Christmas are the invention purely of commercial advertisements.

2.1. The Origin of Christmas Cards

#Christmas

Take the example of the commercial invention of the Christmas card; with corporate effort, these would have remained an expensive privilege of the rich.

The Christmas card represented a convenient and sophisticated evolution of the ancient custom of giving blessings or good wishes for the New Year. By 1840 it was often carried on among the wealthier classes by sending a short poem engraved within an ornamental framework. [...] This, and some imitations, proved to be commercial failures because they were too expensive. In 1862, therefore, a fresh start was made by the stationers Messrs Charles Goodall, which printed cheap plain greetings. By the end of the decade they were becoming decorated, and other firms were producing them. [...] In 1878 the volume sent was sufficient for the Post Office to commence a separate record of Christmas mail, and in the 1890s the cards became a popular craze, and continued to expand their market over the next century. In 1992 1,560 million were sent, and the commercial value of the Christmas card trade was £250 million.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)9

2.2. Father Christmas, Santa Claus: The Personification of Christmas

#Christmas

The human figurehead of the festive season is a modern creation; before the seventeenth century such a figure has no history.

Nobody seems to have thought of personifying Christmas until the early seventeenth century. It was done then partly because of the general taste of the age for allegory and partly because the criticism of observation of the feast by radical Protestants made a representation of it convenient to writers determined to defend it. Thus in 1616 Ben Jonson introduced to the world, Christmas His Masque, presented a figure 'in a round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat with a brooch, a long thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs, and garters tied cross.' [...] Over the next 250 years this sort of character was to feature repeatedly in pictures, stage plays, and folk-drama, known variously as Sir Christmas, Lord Christmas, or (increasingly) as Father Christmas. He was essentially concerned with the adult world, personifying feasting and games, he had no connection with presents, and he was not treated with much respect, being generally a burlesque figure of fun. Then Santa Claus turned up. In origins he was, of course, the medieval patron of children, St Nicholas, who remained a favourite popular figure amongst the Dutch.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)10

This figure gradually moved from St Nicholas Eve to Christmas Eve.

In 1809 Washington Irving, whose sentimental interest in traditional Christmases has been mentioned, drew attention to the old tradition in his Knickerbocker's History of New York, rescheduling it from St Nicholas's Eve to Christmas Eve. Irving's portrait was repeated in an 1821 issue of the Children's Friend, published in the same city, and that may have been the direct inspiration to another New Yorker, Clement Clark Moore, to create the modern Santa. [...] His saint was not the traditional, sentimental, figure of the Dutch, but a magical sprit of the northern midwinter. He wore fur cloths, had a bushy white beard, traveled through the sky merrily in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, and came down chimneys with a sack of gifts. [...] Soon after 1863, he was frequently depicted wearing a red suit, trimmed with white fur.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)9

From 1931, Haddon Sundblom the illustrator for Coca Cola "drew a series of Santa images in their Christmas advertisements until 1964"11, which is where the tradition of a Santa Claus wearing red comes from. The colours red and green had always been prominent in Christmas card greetings, however.

2.3. Commercial Christmas

#Christmas

Prominent elements of Christmas are commercial inventions, from Father Christmas (and his suit) to Christmas Cards. The history of commercialist Christmas is older still than those creations. From the 1870s onwards, The Times broadsheet could be relied upon to attack the commercialism of Christmas12. Clearly, its commercialisation has not destroyed it and since the nineteenth century, it has become even more popular than ever.

To remove the commercial aspects of Christmas would be largely to destroy it; religious activists would create in its place a series of historically-challenged myths and break it into a sectarian event. Without commercialism the general populace, Protestant Christians, secularists and evangelical Christians would all cease to have anything in common during the festive season.

3. Christianity Versus Christmas

3.1. Christmas Was Always Largely Secular

Despite the nature-reveration, pagan festivals and sun-worship that formed the basis of the Christmas period, Christians sometimes complain that the 'original' Christian message is ignored at Christmas. Such modern Christians do not know its history. Christian Churches have themselves led long and bitter campaigns against the observance of Christmas and in various times and places banned it completely. The religious content was always very small, with most celebrations and rituals being secular (i.e., organized by the people, not by clerics). Major elements of Christmas are simply commercial inventions based on themes of nature, such as Christmas cards:

From the beginning, the proportion of religious themes in [Christmas card] designs was small. Examples from before 1890 (of which the Jonathan King collection has 163,000) show an overwhelming concentration upon the natural world and upon jollity. [...] The choice of imagery has remained more or less constant ever since; an evocation of survival, rejoicing, and the resilience of nature, usually constructed around the (literally) vivacious colours red and green.

"The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain"
Ronald Hutton (1996)9

Modern-day Christmas frequently contains modern Christian elements. Not least of all, in English, the word 'Christmas' is the one we are all familiar with, moreso than Yule or Winter Solstice. Nativity stories are taken from the Christian tradition - even though the ideas of shepherds, wise men and the like were all originally pagan, the stories are now told with Christian overtones at Christmas.

3.2. Anti-Christmas Christians

#christianity #christmas

Christmas continues to be stubbornly rejected by multiple small Christian Churches, many individual Christians, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. They oppose festivals or celebrations that are unbiblical or linked with pagan Yuletide and the celestial cycles. The only birthdays observed in the Bible are by two rulers "who did not worship Jehovah"13 (Genesis 40:20 and Mark 6:21) and the first Christian generations didn't celebrate Jesus' birthday13 nor know when he was born14. Debates from 1643 to 1656 established that "the feast of the Nativity was wholly a creation of later authorities"15. The Biblical book of Jeremiah, 7th century BCE16, warns readers not to learn the ways of pagans who bring trees into their homes and decorate them with silver and gold (Jer. 10:2-4).

Individual Christians17 have also railed over the years against the merry-making, drink and food (1875)2; against the gift-giving and christmas-tree preparations (1926)18. But mostly, they've preached against the commercialism of christmas-cards, the pagan nature of Santa Claus himself, and the prevalence of symbols of light and natural renewal, which have long since dominated all festivals that derive from the mid-winter solstice.

They aren't the first. In the 17th century English Puritans banned Christmas celebrations multiple times19 arguing that it lacked biblical connection with Jesus and that it was pagan20. The Scottish reformers of the 16th, 17th and 18th abolished all of the rites of Christmas and in New England celebrating Christmas was a criminal offense until the 19th century; in 1870s Boston, students who missed school on Christmas were punished'21. In 1926 Rev. Wagner preached that the gift-giving and decorations are all getting in the way of Christianity18. Christians who argue that we should 'put Christ back into Christmas' or 'remember the reason for the season' have forgotten their own history.

For more, see:

3.3. Early Christians Celebrated Christmas in April and May

#Christmas

44% of English children think Christmas is about Jesus22

Mostly derived from pagan myths, Jesus' birth stories are very dubious, and it very likely that all such beliefs were written retrospectively by the Roman gospel writers, or were assumed from the outset. There is no evidence or reason to believe that they actually occurred.

"The Birth of Jesus and the Christmas Story: Pagan and Unhistorical" by Vexen Crabtree (2014)

Christians of the first few centuries did not know for certain where Jesus was born, where he died, or where he was buried. This fact is bemoaned by early Christian leaders. When they did celebrate Christmas, they generally did so in April and May. "Pope Julius I, in the fourth century commanded a committee of bishops to establish the date of the nativity of Jesus. December 25 (the day of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun) was decided upon. Not coincidentally, that is the day when the "pagan world celebrated the birth of their Sun Gods -- Egyptian Osiris, Greek Apollo and Bacchus, Chaldean Adonis, Persian Mithra -- when the Zodiacal sign of Virgo (the sun is born of a virgin) rose on the horizon. Thus the ancient festival of the Winter Solstice, the pagan festival of the birth of the Sun, came to be adopted by the Christian Church as the nativity of Jesus, and was called Christmas"20. The reasons that the Christians annexed the Winter Solstice, and chose to celebrate Christmas in December instead of Spring, was that influential Roman religions celebrated the birth of the sun-of-the-sun on the Winter Solstice, and the first Christian emperor fused paganism and early Christianity, to create the Pauline Christianity that we know today23.

4. Case Study: The United Kingdom24

4.1. Statistics on Church Christmas Attendance in England and Wales

#christmas #easter #marriage

This data is from the Church of England, showing the percent of the total population of England and Wales involved. The marriages graph has "Anglican" mean "Church of England" or "Church of Wales", and also shows the % as the total population of England and Wales (excluding the Isle of Man and Channel Islands).25 You might expect that the National Secular Society would have found statistics that show lower attendance, therefore supporting their cause that organized religion should not be an official part of public politics. However in 2011 they commented on Christmas attendance and state higher values26. They mention that surveys before Christmas in 2010 saw about a quarter of respondents say that they were going to go to Church over Christmas, but, actual counts of attendance shows that only 11% did, which is less than half of those who said they would. This is very similar to the phenomenon by which in official polls, about twice as many say they are religious as actually are. See "Institutionalized Religions Have Their Numbers Inflated by National Polls" by Vexen Crabtree (2009). The Church of England think that just over 2% of the population attended Christmas or Easter in Church in 2010.

For more, see:

4.2. Winterval: The UK Controversy Invented by Cheap Newspapers Such as The Daily Mail24

#atheism #christianity #christmas #islam

Some low-quality newspaper outlets pushed the idea for many years that the 'political-correctness-gone-mad' idea of Winterval was officialdom's replacement for Christmas. The sensationalist idea was that because Christmas has the word 'Christ' in it, then, modern secular governments and councils could not support it. But it was all nonsense. The true source of the story is that one event promoter combined several winter events (including Christmas) into one Winterval slogan, in order to create a simple marketing campaign.

The types of newspapers that peddle anti-foreigner nonsense took up the story with gusto. The Daily Mail repeated it the most between 1998 and 2011, a total of 44 times. The Times and The Sunday Times together repeated it 40 times, The Sun 31 times, The Express 26 times and The Daily Telegraph 22 times. The Guardian even mentioned it a few times however, it also ran several articles debunking the myth.

[It was] gradually distorted to become [...] a pluralised, open-ended narrative that 'councils' and 'authorities' were rebranding or renaming Christmas as 'Winterval'. [And] a calculated attack on Christianity by 'atheists', 'Muslims', or the 'PC brigade' who feared offending 'other faiths' or 'ethnic minorities'.

The Guardian (2011)27

Eventually, in 2011, the Daily Mail, after years of providing infuriating misinformation, 'finally admitted that Winterval is a media fiction'27 and printed a small corrective notice28. When I first heard the story, I thought 'ridiculous' and didn't believe it was true. I spent a few minutes researching it, and found out that I was right to doubt. Therefore, my world-view was not distorted. Journalists broadcast their opinions to others; millions were convinced of the Winterval story, and enraged by it. It is downright criminal that failures in basic fact-checking can be so endemic amongst those papers.

For more, see:

5. Conclusion: Christmas is Multicultural

#christianity #christmas #history #paganism #polytheism #sun_worship

Christmas is a multicultural, multi-religious festival. It combines sun worship, polytheism, pagan nature religions who have venerated the natural cycle for many thousands of years, Christianity and other myths and traditions. When Christians complain it is too pagan, or when lay folk complain it is too religious, or when both groups complain it is too commercial, then they are all in need of realizing that Christmas is a commercial fusion of diverse nature-based festivals. The date of the 25th accords with Sun Worship thousands of years old, the Christmas tree and some of the decorations are pagan, even the Nativity stories are originally pagan, Mithraistic, Roman and Christian.

The main outstanding issue in the West is the Christian assertion that Christmas has something to do with the Christian figure of Christ or his birthday. These elements should be disclaimed. Firstly, the paganism inherent in Christmas, such as decorating trees, is warned against in the Bible (Jeremiah 10:2-4). Second, there are no Christian birthday celebrations in the Bible. Thirdly, early Christians celebrated Christ's birthday in April or May - it was only changed to match with 25th of December, a major pagan holiday, by Emperor Constantine, in order to harmonize Christianity with paganism. It is certain that Christians should not attempt to celebrate Jesus' birthday, and they certainly shouldn't do so at Christmas.

In addition to its rich history, Christmas has now become largely a secular holiday, a social festival based on the family, and a commercial enterprise. Critics largely concentrate of the portions of Christmas they don't like, and claim that those portions ruin the rest of it. As long as no-one tries to "capture the flag" and exclude others, then there need be no modern conflict over the nature of Christmas. The non-religious can celebrate the commercial and social event, Christians can pretend Christmas has something to do with Christ, pagans can celebrate nature, and all can be happy. There are even alternative and well-known names for Christmas, such as Yuletide, which can be used according to taste. Whether or not one choses to celebrate Christmas is often a matter of mood!