How did Christmas start?
Before Christ was born, Christmas was celebrated by Europeans to honor the winter solstice and by the Romans as Saturnalia. The European tradition was a way to look forward to longer days and more sunlight known as "Yule." Men would bring home fire wood, and people would feast until the fire went out.
The Roman holiday of Saturnalia is to honor Saturn – the God of agriculture. It was a month long holiday when all of society stopped to party. The social order was turned upside down (slaves would become masters and masters would become slaves) and people drank and ate a lot.
In 354 AD, Christmas turned into a Christian alternative to the pagan rituals – it became a day to honor the birth and message of Jesus Christ. It was a time for family to share good times and memories.
Since about 400 AD, Christians have celebrated the birth of Jesus. ‘Christ’ means ‘Messiah’ or ‘Anointed One’ – the title given to Jesus – and ‘Mass’ was a religious festival. In the West today, the real meaning of Christmas is often forgotten. It has become a non-religious holiday! More children believe in Father Christmas than in Jesus. Christmas Day is a time for eating and drinking too much and watching television. But the real Christmas story is found in the Christian Bible. It is told in two different books: Matthew and Luke chapters 1 and 2. If you have no Bible, you can read these chapters online. You may think that the story of the birth of Jesus, and the way that the West celebrates Christmas today, do not seem to have many connections. Mary says “yes” copyright New Tribes These chapters tell how Jesus was born as a baby to Mary. This was no ordinary birth! She was not married, she was a virgin, (yes, really!) and an angel had told her she would bear a special baby. Her husba
The basics of the celebration, like feasting and gift-giving, go back to a Roman festival: Saturnalia. But the origins of the holiday go back even further than that, to our hunter-gatherer roots. Our ancestors depended on the plants and animals that were much less available during the cold winter months. They would have noticed the days shortening as the winter solstice approached. That day, the shortest of the year, was the dividing line. The days would start to get longer again and soon food would be available. This was most certainly a reason for our primitive ancestors to celebrate! Most early religions have a celebration around the winter solstice for those reasons. The association with Jesus came much later as a result of conversion efforts. He was, assuming he existed, born in summer.
Christmas began in 4th century. The vatican needed to give Christians a holiday as the pagans were partying it up with Winter Solstice. This also was the perfect opportunity to use (once again) a holiday to get converts (the church was very political). Many of the traditions now are the same as in the early years. The tree (which wasn’t popular until around 1600’s when Prince Albert made it a “must-have”), the star atop the tree (for pagans it symbolizes the 5 elements and christians the star in Bethlem), the nativity scene (germanic pagans celebrated the birth of their sun god with a nativity scene sans the 3 Wise Men), gift giving (pagans offered gifts to the gods, christians honored the 3 Wise Men giving gifts with this tradition). Oddly enough in around 1600’s in the US, christmas was banned because it held too many pagan traditions. On top of the fact that the Christians bolted here to get away from persecution….they really didn’t want to bring too many traditions that reminded
