Is Christmas Pagan?

Dear Isabel,

Is it true that Christmas is really a pagan holiday? I have a super-religious evangelical uncle who says we shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because it’s pagan, and an atheist I know told me it is too. I love Christmas, but I want to be a good Christian.

Thanks,

Merry Christmas?

Dear Merry,

The name Christmas is thoroughly Christian; it means “Christ’s mass.” And religions borrow from each other and adapt and rewrite each other all the time. So there is overlap between Christianity and pagan rituals, and some of the elements of Christmas have their roots in what pagans were doing before Christianity took hold. That doesn’t make Christmas “really” pagan (or Pagan. I won’t get into the whole question of whether and when to capitalize it).

A couple of the things people are referring to when they talk about how Christmas has pagan roots are:

1. At the time that Christmas began to be celebrated, which was around the year 330 in the Roman Empire, there were two important Roman festivals in December. One was Saturnalia, a mid-December Carnival-type celebration in which people did things like eat and drink a lot, gamble, and give each other gifts (sound familiar?). Another, which had only been around for a couple of generations at that point, was the celebration of the god Sol Invictus, “the unconquerable sun,” which occurred on December 25 (sound familiar?)

The Gospels don’t say what time of year Jesus was born, and various scholars have pointed to clues that it was in spring or around September. But if you’re a new-ish religion trying to get people to celebrate the birth of your savior, it’s a good strategy for you to put your holiday in the season that the people are already celebrating. And if they give each other gifts to celebrate Saturn, you might start giving each other gifts to celebrate Jesus.

Share

2. Many centuries later, in northern Europe, Norse and Germanic people celebrated Odin with a festival called Yule, at the winter solstice (usually December 21). December nights are looooong in northern Europe, and people were looking forward to the return of shorter nights and longer days. They burned a huge log and gathered by the fire, a symbol of the returning warmth of the sun, and they brought boughs of evergreens into their houses, since evergreens represent life even in the depths of winter. It’s possible that they also decorated trees with lights (candles, of course, since this was before 1000 CE) and hung fruits from the branches. As the people of those places began to convert to Christianity, they adapted some of these elements of their winter holidays to the celebration of Christ’s birth. That’s probably the origin of wreaths and garlands of evergreens, and festooning trees with lights and hanging ornaments.

Thematically, the two are a good fit: the return of the light out of the winter’s dark cold and the birth of a savior who will bring eternal life. If you’re a Christian trying to convince your neighbors to become Christians too, instead of trying to convince the worshippers of Odin to give up their enjoyable rituals—a losing proposition—why not repurpose them?: “Look, we bring evergreens into the house too, because Christ, who was born on this day, brings life everlasting.”

So, Merry, if you don’t think it’s right to celebrate a Christian holiday that has any roots in, or resemblance to, a pagan one, then Christmas is not for you. But I have bad news for you: neither are any other Christian celebrations, because they all adapted elements of earlier religions. That’s what religions do. Easter was patterned on pagan celebrations of resurrection and new life, and explicitly connected to the Jewish holiday of Passover. The weekly Christian mass bore a resemblance to the Jewish Sabbath service—and that service had grown out of the rituals of other ancient religions.

Subscribe now

Since being Christian is important to you, why not focus instead on what Christianity has made of these celebrations? How is the evergreen tree related to Jesus? Why do you give gifts on Jesus’s birthday? If you have a clear sense of those connections and keep them in mind as you celebrate, then you will make it a thoroughly Christian holiday.

Wishing you well,

Isabel

Share Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed or Vexed