Christmas – Christian or pagan feast?
Some people say that Christmas is an old pagan midwinter festival that the Christians took over. Instead of, like the pagans, celebrating the return of the sun, the Christians began to celebrate the birth of Jesus. This is a rather common perception.
But in fact the celebration of Christ's birth has nothing to do either with sun worship, midwinter or any other pagan holiday. The Christmas celebration has a completely different story behind.
Nowadays a computer can calculate that Jesus was crucified on Friday, April 3 in the year 33 AD. However, it is still an open question what date he was born. The fact that no information about Jesus' birthday has been preserved is certainly due to the fact that birthdays were not celebrated in ancient Judaism.
In Gen. 40:20, on the other hand, Pharaoh celebrates his birthday. Job cursed his birthday, Job 3:1. Ecclesiastes 7:2 considers the day of death better than the day of birth. In Matt.14:5 Herod Antipas celebrates his birthday with a fatal end for John the Baptist. Within the early church, birthday celebrations were seen as something pagan.
The Christian alternative was instead to celebrate the name day on the day of the saint after whom one was baptized. But since ancient pagan kings celebrated their birthday, Christians wanted to celebrate their king, Jesus Christ, since Christianity became an official religion.
In his book The Blessing of Christmas, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) argues that Jesus' real birthday was December 25. Ratzinger has previously advanced the same view in The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000, p. 108; cf. p. 100).
This may surprise theologians who have been taught that the celebration of Christmas is connected to a festival, Sol Invictus, which in Rome was celebrated at the winter solstice on December 25 and to the Saturnalia festival which was celebrated on December 17–23. These pagan festivals are said to have been so popular that the Christian church could not overcome them, but instead allowed them to have a Christian content. But how do we know? Could this seemingly well-established fact actually be a factoid?
The theory of pagan origin of Christmas has gradually been called into question. There is nothing in the church fathers, such as Irenaeus or Tertullian, or in any other older material that supports such a thought. Clement of Alexandria speaks with some irony of those who not only want to know the year of Jesus' birth but even the day. He himself stayed for May 20, but also pointed out that there were advocates for March 23, April 9 or 18, November 17. A text from the year 243 states March 28 as the Savior's birthday, while other tradition highlights March 25, the vernal equinox according to the Julian calendar.
No sun worship on December 25
Already in the second half of the 2nd century the birth of Christ was celebrated. At that time, however, it was more important for Christians to distance themselves from the surrounding pagan practices than to adapt to them. It is true that the birth of Jesus was celebrated on December 25, but this date was based on the fact that, according to Tertullian, it was considered that Jesus' crucifixion took place on March 25.
In ancient Judaism there was a common belief that the great prophets of Israel died on the same date they were born or conceived (William J. Tighe, Calculating Christmas in Touchstone, December 2003). Then, according to the way of thinking of the time, the Lord also came to life on March 25. Therefore, the Annunciation of Mary was celebrated on March 25, and thus the birth of Jesus coincided when Mary's pregnancy nine months later was completed, on December 25.
Thus this date has nothing to do with any solar cult. Possibly such already existed in Republican Rome, but official sun worship was only introduced in 274 AD by Emperor Aurelian with special competitions in honor of the sun held on October 19–22. The sun cult otherwise had its feast days on August 8, August 28 and December 11. (Steven Hijmans, Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas, Mouseion Calgary, 2003, 3.3: 377–398).
In the so-called Chronograph, a calendrical work from 354 AD, i.e. from a time when Christianity already had become dominant, mentions that the festival of Natalis Invicti (the birth of the invincible) is celebrated on December 25. There is no indication that this would be a feast for the sun. Rather it indicates a Christian Christmas celebration.
First, Julian the Apostate, the emperor who wanted to replace Christianity with sun worship, tried to move the celebration of the sun to the end of December. He does so in the hymn to King Helios that he wrote in 363.
That Christmas would be associated with a Roman celebration of the winter solstice is first witnessed in the 12th century in a note by the Syrian biblical commentator Dionysios bar-Salibi. He claims that in ancient times the celebration of Christ's birth was moved from January 6 to December 25 with the intention that the Christian holiday would coincide with the celebration of Sol Invictus. (Gustaf Lindberg, Kyrkans heliga år, 1937, p. 177; Andrew McGowan, How December 25th Became Christmas in Biblical Archeology Review 18/6 2002).
The theory of Christmas as a Christian pagan holiday then was launched in the early 18th century by Jean Hardouin and Paul Ernst Jablonski (Tighe, a.a.). Jablonski was professor of oriental languages in Frankfurt a.d. Oder and expert in Coptic, while Hardouin has become mostly known for his strange view that most literary works from antiquity in fact are forgeries from the 13th century and that the New Testament originally was written in Latin. The idea of Christmas as an originally pagan holiday was carried forward by researchers in the 19th century when comparative religious research came to dominate.
The Nordic Christmas blanket is first mentioned in the Ynglingasagan, whose value as a historical source is questionable. Presumably the northerners' midwinter blot is a construction, a pagan response to the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus in the same way that the Asa mythology with its trinity Oden-Tor-Frej probably was a construction to compete with Christianity as well as with the possibly pagan temple in Uppsala.
In old Swedish farming society, there is no evidence that the winter solstice was celebrated or noticed, although people had an idea that the days before Christmas were the shortest of the year. According to some information, during pre-Christian times (Viking times) at this time there must have been a sacrificial festival, which sometimes in the Nordics is said to be a precursor to Christmas. However, it is extremely unclear whether this ritual existed at all, which means that from a scientific point of view one should be careful with interpretations. It can be said that Christmas arose when Sweden and the Nordic countries were Christianised and has little to do with pre-Christian cult practices.
What in the Nordic countries was connected with the winter solstice, on the other hand, are the traditions surrounding the night of Lucia that previously existed during the time of the Julian calendar. Back then, the longest night was around December 13, but in 1753 when the Gregorian calendar was introduced in Sweden, the winter solstice jumped forward nine days. The night of Lucia then was no longer the darkest night of the year. Instead, Lucia was transformed, beginning in vicarages and manors, into a festival of lights with a white-clad "lussebrud". This is where the modern Swedish Lucia celebration has its origin.
Hanukkah
In his Christmas meditations, Joseph Ratzinger claims that Jesus was born during Chanukkah, the temple dedication festival, mentioned in John 10:22. According to the Jewish calendar this feast is celebrated on the 25th of Kislev and then eight days ahead up to and including the 4th of Tevet: "On the last and greatest day of the feast..." (John 7:37).
Sometimes it happens that Hanukkah partially coincides with the Christian Christmas, something that last happened in 2011. During those eight days, the eight candles in the Chanukkah menorah are successively lit, something that reminds most Swedes of the late tradition of successively lighting Advent candles. Undeniably, it is an edifying thought that Jesus would have been born during this festival. Ratzinger sees the connection with Isaiah 9:2: "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light." In support of his assumption, Ratzinger refers to an article by Bo Reicke, Jahresfeier und Zeitenwende im Judentum und Christentum der Antike in Trierer Theologische Quartalschrift 150 (1970), pp. 312–334. According to Reicke, people in Jewish circles were determined that a messianic child would be born at Hanukkah. In that case, Jesus would have been born in such a year that December 25 fell during Hanukkah.
Alan D. Corré, professor at the University of Wisconsin, constructed a converter that could calculate the Jewish calendar for any desired year compared to the Gregorian calendar. There you could found out that 4 Tevet in the year 7 BC. could possibly have fallen on December 25, at least close. However, there was some uncertainty about converting from the Gregorian date to the Julian date due to a calendar reform that took place in 8 BC. to 4 AD Since Alan D. Corré passed away in 2017, however, this website was discontinued. Instead you now can use the Rosetta Calendar, designed by software developer Scott E. Lee.
There are also other reasons that speak for Jesus being born in 7 BC. Reicke’s and Ratzinger's hypothesis is thus from a calendar point of view possible.
Rabbinic Day of Mourning
Another way of arriving at December 25 as Jesus' birthday has been conveyed through Alfred Edersheim (1825–1889), a Jew who was born in Vienna, grew up with Talmudic studies, converted to Christianity, and then moved to England. In The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London 1883), Edersheim believes that Jesus was born on December 25. He relies on an article in Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche (1853–68), volume 17, pp. 588 ff. Furthermore, he points out that in an addendum to the Megillath Taanith, a rabbinical tract dealing with Jewish feast days, the 9th of Tevet is mentioned for some unknown reason as a fast day. According to Edersheim, Jewish chronologists established December 25 as the birthday of Jesus. They also found that during the years 500 to 816 the fast day 9 Tevet on twelve occasions fell on December 25 (p. 132, note 18). The conclusion is that the Jews would fast to mark that this day on which, from their point of view, the false Messiah was born, is a day of mourning. But this cannot be reconciled with the theory of Chanukkah because it then is forbidden to fast.
Could it really be possible that the knowledge of Jesus' birthday was preserved in rabbinic circles? In contrast to Edersheim the internet gives the opportunity to test the question. In the year 4 BC., the year 3758 according to the Jewish calendar, the 9th of Tevet actually fell at the same time as the 25th of December, but then according to the Gregorian calendar. To convert to the then current Julian calendar, we have to add about three days and then end up on December 28 and then we miss Christmas Day. An explanation for the rabbinic fast on the 9th of Tevet could be that it arose in a later period when the Christian custom of celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25th already had begun to spread.
Zechariah in the temple
Another justification for celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 is to be found in a Christmas sermon from the 380s by Johannes Chrysostomos. He meant that Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple on the Great Day of Atonement on September 9. When his wife Elizabeth was six months pregnant (Luke 1:26), i.e. on March 25, the angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, who nine months later, on December 25, gave birth to Jesus (Lindberg a.a, p.170). However, Chrysostomos' calculation was a distinct post-rationalization. Zechariah was just an ordinary priest and not a high priest. Therefore he was not allowed to enter the Holy of Holies.
Another fairly widespread belief is that Jesus was born on Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, which falls in September–October, just after the Great Day of Atonement. The idea is as follows: According to 1 Chron. 24 there were 24 different divisions of priests serving in the temple. They answered for half a month each year. Abijah's department, to which Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, belonged according to Luke. 1:5, was the eighth in the order. Since the religious year begins with the month of Nisan, Zechariah would have had his temple vision in the fourth month, Tammuz. In that case, Jesus would have been born fifteen months later, in the month of Tishri, when the Feast of Tabernacles falls. Possibly alluding to John 1:14 on this: »And the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.» In that case, Mary's annunciation, the actual giving of life, would have taken place at Chanukkah.
This method of calculation contains several uncertain factors, i.a. the priestly divisions in the time of the New Testament are considered to have served one week at a time on two different occasions during the year and in that case the calculation does not hold.
Thus there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the date of Jesus' birth and the origin of the Christmas celebration, but it is not at all a matter of a christianised pagan celebration. We probably have to live in uncertainty about the right day, but that the year of birth is about 7 years before the beginning of our era is reckoning.
Also we should note that Joseph Ratzinger published his Christmas meditations as a private person. He did not speak as Pope ex cathedra. And, above all, »Christ has come to earth, a Savior is born to us».
Anders Brogren
Dean h.c., Falkenberg, Sweden
Sankt Lars Kyrkogata 4
S-311 31 Falkenberg
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