The Christian community in the early years have distinguished between the identification of the date of Jesus’ birth and the liturgical celebration of that event. The actual observation of the day of Jesus’ birth was long in coming.
For most people, Christmas is a holiday deeply rooted in Christianity, but is that really the case? It’s been celebrated for more than two millennia, so it’s pretty safe to assume that the holiday we celebrated today is a mixture of different cultures and religions.
The earliest history of Christmas is composed of “pagan” (non-Christian) fertility rites and practices that predate Jesus by centuries.
Most of the traditions we associate with Christmas are actually not Christian at all, including decorating Christmas trees, singing Christmas carols, and giving Christmas gifts.
The Pagan tradition custom which was also called (wassailing) or singing from door to door, started a long time ago where the rich feasted and the poor sing for alms. The Christian sort of gravitated toward adopting this date. Whether or not it was to capitalize on the popularity of the festival.
It’s a mistake to say that our modern Christmas come directly from pre-Christian paganism, but is it? In reality, the notion that Christmas is a festive stolen from pagans is quite as much a compound of confusions and inaccuracies as anything believed about the feast day by Christians themselves. There is no evidence, absolutely none that the birth of Jesus was on the 25th of December.
It is possible to recognize in Christmas its fundamentally Christian character. The light shining in the darkness proclaimed by the festival is very theological, one that promises redemption from the miseries of a fallen world. In a time of the pandemic, when the festive season is haunted by the shadows of loneliness and disappointments, of poverty and dread, the power of this theology, is one that fueled the celebration of Christmas for century after century, becomes easier, perhaps, to recognize than in the time of prosperity.
The similarities shared by the feast day of Christ’s birth with other celebrations that, over the course of history, should not delude us into denying a truth so evident as to verge on the tautologous; Christmas is a thoroughly Christian Festival