Christmas is quickly coming upon us again.  Do you realize there is a very interesting history to Christmas?  The Christmas we celebrate in our culture has only been practised for about 150 years in the Western World. Christmas has some very interesting background, beginning in the Roman Empire.  Much of what we do and how we run governments originated with the Roman Empire. However, even before the Romans, there were a mixture of pagan cultures that were adapted into the Christmas celebration.  Now, before you read any further, I am not trying to be a bah humbug Scrooge about Christmas.  I am simply hoping to educate our reading audience about the history of Christmas as we know it today.  I also want to encourage our readers to keep the sacred aspect of our Christmas alive and real.  We are losing all of the sacred aspects of our culture, and we are losing it because we are allowing it.   

For the Christian segment of society, we try to emphasize the birth of Christ our Saviour at Christmas and reflect on the important aspects of his birth. However, the date we celebrate is not even close to the actual birth date of Christ.  There is nothing in the Bible about the date when Christ was born.  However, by dating the tax census of Caesar Augustus that forced Joseph and Mary to take the long trek to Bethlehem from Nazareth to be registered for the taxing in the province of Judah, it is estimated that the birth of Christ was probably more around a February or March date.  The fact is, the Bible did not mention the date because God knew if there was a date, it would become idolatrized rather than the Saviour.  It is just our nature to idolatrize dates, cloths, pictures, crosses, places and anything else from biblical history rather than worship Jesus Christ by faith in the spirit and truth of Scripture.  Things of earth will not help you know God, but his Word will open your eyes to who God is. 

Our Roman roots in the celebration of Christmas comes from one of the festivals the Romans held in December called the festival of Saturnalia.  This was a two-week festival honouring the god of agriculture, Saturn.  On December the 25^th the Romans celebrated the birth of the sun god Mithra.  This Saturnalia and Mithra celebration was one of the largest festivals of the year.  It would be comparable to the Mardi Gras of New Orleans. It was a total drunken orgy of party and sexual lewdness where all restraints were removed for everyone to do whatever.  Temple prostitutes and regular prostitutes in the Roman Empire were instructed not to charge for their services.   I believe the Roman coffers rewarded them for their services during the festival. During all this revelry, this same crowd regularly went to the Coliseums to watch Christians be put on display with horrible tortures and death as a part of the Coliseum entertainment, before the horse races or contests.  Christians would be strapped to wild bulls’ horns and then several of these bulls would be released into the Coliseum arena. Of course, the bulls would charge each other and the Christians tied to the horns would be crushed.  Another sport the crowd enjoyed was putting a group of Christians in the arena and then release several wild, starving lions in their midst. The Christians would have their flesh torn from their bones.   

During the first 300 years of Christian history, Christians hid in obscure places and in the catacomb caves throughout the Roman Empire. If you can ever tour Rome, in these catacombs and coliseums you will observe preserved history.   Remember, if you visit these places, the ground in the arenas was soaked with the blood of thousands of Christian martyrs. I recall the saying: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.   

Christianity was eventually legalized and acknowledged as a recognized religion along with any other Roman religion by Emperor Constantine around 313 A.D. The leadership of the newly recognized churches quickly tried to implement policies that would bring restraint to the wicked celebrations of Saturnalia.  So, they decided they would celebrate the birth of Christ in place of Mithra, the sun god. However, much of the same revelry continued and most of the population in the Roman Empire did not pay much attention to this new God called Christ.  

The Romans had also adopted a pagan Gothic practice that, during December in the north with short and dark days, they would light candles and bonfires to keep the darkness away and usher in the light of longer days.  The Christian tradition in Rome adopted these pagan cultures into the Roman Christmas celebration.   Another pagan tradition among the northern Gothic tribes was to decorate their homes with evergreens since they believed that the evergreen staying green through the winter had special powers.  They would decorate the evergreens with pieces of decoration, dried fruits and candles.   The Romans adopted this practice into their Saturnalia celebrations.  In the 1500’s, during the Reformation, the practice of having Christmas trees was first done in Germany.  They would put up trees in the houses and decorate them with toys, special cooking treats and shiny decorations.  

Then there is Santa Claus.  Where did he come from?  It started with someone by the name of St. Nicholas, who was tortured and imprisoned for his faith during the 200 A.D.’s.  Legend says he was a wealthy Christian who gave away his fortune to help the poor and less fortunate.  Legend is that he saved a family with three daughters from being sold into slavery by throwing gold pieces through the window of the family home in a sock. The family was then able to pay their debt without selling the daughters.  From this comes our tradition of putting a sock out at Christmas.  Well, it was not long before the Christian St. Nicolas was replaced with Santa Claus using a German rendering for the name St. Nicolas. This was shortened even more and Americanized to be Santa Claus. I personally think Santa Claus is a false personality created to replace Jesus Christ as the one who brought the greatest gift to mankind.  2 Corinthians 9:15 reads: Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.  Christmas should be about telling about that gift, but few children will hear anything about Christ this Christmas in Canada.   

Another little-known fact is that Christmas was banned and against the law to celebrate in the USA for 22 years.  Even when the law was rescinded, not until the mid 1800’s, was Christmas celebrated anything like we observe today in the USA and Canada.  This law was put forth by the Puritan church.  They had observed a serious problem that was growing in the new American society that was falling back to resemble more like the Roman Saturnalia festival rather than anything resembling godliness.  I am not for banning Christmas, but if you were to take a poll across Canada today and ask these questions: “Do you like the way we are observing Christmas today?” and “Do you look forward to Christmas time?” I have a feeling that the results would be surprising with an answer of NO to both.  We have lost the family gathering and worship of God aspect of Christmas.  Our Christmas time resembles more like the Roman pagan worship of Saturnalia.  My question to you is will your Christmas resemble the pagan celebration of Saturnalia or will the birth and worship of Christ be given pre-eminence in your Christmas this year? 

We have a Christmas Eve musical service at our church 60-12^th St E on Christmas Eve at 7:00 p.m.  I would encourage everyone to come out to observe the sacred aspect of Christmas before we lose it too.

The content of this article is solely the personal opinions of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Prince Albert Shopper.