Where Did Christmas Come From?

In this post, I am going to begin the anticipated series about the history of Christmas tradition. I’ll start with today’s post about the origins of Christmas, and then follow it up (hopefully fingers crossed) with a couple of posts about the history of two popular Christmas traditions.

So, where did Christmas come from? How did we come to celebrate it on December 25th?

When it comes to the origin of the Christmas celebration, people usually point to the Roman Saturnalia, which was a mid-December Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn. It was a time when people got off work, when slaves were temporarily freed, and when there was lots of gift-giving and feasting. The pre-Christian Scandinavian/Germanic festival of Yule was also celebrated at the mid-winter solstice around this same date. The Anglo-Saxons brought this tradition to England. Feasting and merry-making at Christmastide first appears in the historical records between 1100 and 1300 as a continuation of the pre-Christian celebration in a Christian way, as I will explain further on.

Our word ‘Christmas’ comes from the Middle English ‘Christemasse’ meaning ‘festival’. ‘Christ’ comes from the Greek meaning ‘anointed’, so Christe-masse means the festival or mass of Christ. The word ‘Christmas’ became part of our English vocabulary in the 11th century.

So, why December 25th? There are significant reasons why December 25th was selected as the date for Christ’s birth and birthday celebration (since the Bible doesn’t say when Christ was truly born). It is exactly 9 months after March 25th which is a very significant date in the old Christian tradition. According to this tradition, it is the date for the creation of the world, the fall of Adam, the sacrifice of Abraham, the immaculate conception, and the crucifixion of Christ. for those of you who know your Tolkien lore, March 25th is also the day when the One Ring was destroyed and Sam’s daughter Eleanor was born, symbolising the defeat of the Shadow and the birth of new life.

So, what did early Christmas celebrations look like?

The medieval Christmas actually began 40 days prior to Christmas. This period was called Advent, from the Latin ‘Adventus’ meaning ‘coming’. This was a serious time of fasting, penance, and contemplation. Then, at the end of that time, they would all get together and feast and make-merry. This period lasted for 12 days and was called Christmastide, tide referring to the passing of time. This is where we get the 12 Days of Christmas (and yes, that really annoying song haha!) Christmastide lasted until Twelfth Night on January 5th, and then the following day, January 6th, was Epiphany, the celebration of the visit of the 3 Magi. In the medieval period, celebrating Epiphany was actually a bigger deal than Christmas was.

Originally, Christmas was a time for quiet prayer and reflection during the Christmas Mass. But by the 14th century, Christmas had become a time of feasting and merry-making, gifts for the rich and poor, over-indulgence in food and drink, and lots of singing and dancing. I think you could imagine what a big medieval feast would have been like! By this time, Christmas had become the most important holiday or holy-day in England.

During the feasting, foods a variety of foods were eaten, such as pasties, sausages, black-pudding, pies, fish, fowl, roast meats, custards, tarts, nuts, and sweetmeats, according to a 14th century source.

Houses were decorated with Evergreen and Holly. Evergreen features a lot in pre-Christian myth and symbolises eternal life as it stays green throughout the winter. Red holly berries symbolise Christ’s blood, while the holly prickles symbolise Christ’s crown of thorns. Evergreen and holly are the reason why our Christmas colours are green and red – and gold, for gold symbolises royalty and was one of the gifts the Magi brought baby Jesus. Mistletoe, another plant associated with Christmas, is also quite prominent in European myth and folkloric tradition.

To finish this post, I would like to say this, since many of my readers are Christians.

In my experience, I have seen Christians freak out about whether or not to celebrate Christmas, with some opting out altogether because it has pagan roots. If you google the origins of Christmas, this is what you’ll usually find. Modern historians are quick to link Christmas back to pagan roots, not to Christian ones. But I have been studying the way medieval people saw the world and their Christianity and its much different to what you’ll get in most history books or websites. It’s so much deeper and richer.

I used to believe that the early Christians mixed paganism with Christianity and so compromised it. I have since learned that that is not how the early Christians saw it at all! They saw the early pre-Christian Greco-Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Scandanavian, etc. mythologies and traditions as not an end in themselves, but rather as pointing ahread to Christ’s incarnation. They saw Christ and the Cross as the True Myth, the fulfillment of those pagan myths and traditions, as the fulfillment of the deep longings held within them, of what they were looking ahead to, in a similar way that Christ fulfilled the longings of the Old Testament. Thus it was only right therefore for the Christian Christmas, as a celebration of Christ’s birth, to replace the Roman Saturnalia and the Germanic/Scandanavian Yule.

There’s a lot more I could say about this but I havn’t the space here. I do truly find it facinating. If you are a Christian, there is no need to freak out (Christians freak out about a lot of things they don’t need to). Christmas is rooted in a very old Christian tradition, and is more deeply Christian than you realise.

So there you go, that’s where Christmas came from. 🙂

Stay tuned for part 2!

References

Cartwright 2001, Christmas Through The Ages, worldhistory.org, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1893/christmas-through-the-ages/, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

Eldridge NA, Yule Festival, britannica.com, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Yule-festival, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

NA NA, Christmas Traditions, wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_traditions#cite_note-ADS-59, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

NA NA, Father Christmas, wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Christmas#cite_note-Vindication-20, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

Roos, 2021 updated 2023, How Christmas was Celebrated in the Middle Ages, history.com, https://www.history.com/news/middle-ages-christmas-traditions, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

Facista NA, Mar 21 The Ring & The Cross: Why March 25th is The Most Important Date of all History, teawithtolkien.com, https://www.teawithtolkien.com/blog/2017/2/11/the-significance-of-march-25th, accessed 20 Dec 2024.

NA NA, Christmas in the Middle Ages, medievalists.net, accessed 20 Dec 2024.