The Origins & History of Christmas Traditions

Christmas, as many of us know, is celebrated on December 25 to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ (Jesus of Nazereth).  What most people do not know is that Jesus' birthday is thought by most scientists, archaeologists, and historians to have not occured in the winter at all.  This does not diminish the joy of Christians all over the world celebrating the holiday nor does it take away in any shape or form its true meaning, but let's dig a little deeper and look into some of the traditions that were created from other religions and cultures and made the Christmas tradition we celebrate today!

Let me begin by explaining a little bit about the evolution of Christianity as a religion at the time Christmas began as a celebration.  In Europe, and in many other evolving regions of the world in antiquity were made up of many Polytheistic Pagan religions. 

For Pagans in many traditions, as there were many different kinds in the old world just as our modern world is made up of many differnet religions, and then further broken up into differnet denominations.  There were the Catholics, but several sects broke off from Catholocism and were still considered Christians.  These Christians were labeled as Protestants.  Further, Protestants are divided into many different sects.  Protestant just means that they were no longer Catholic, but held most of the same Christian beliefs. 

I digress, let me dig deeper into the past and describe a few of the other relgions around at the time that helped create our Christmas celebration and seasonal tradions in modern times.  Seasons largely effected people before there was modern technology, such as heat, modified agriculture as we know it today, and other modern convenieniences that make our winters and summers more comfortable and bearable.  The key factor now is that in our times, these seasons are "survivable". 

Pagan religions are largely based on earth and nature.  The Romans were Polytheistic Pagans believing in many Gods in charge of many different eartly functions.  There were Gods for every act of nature and season.  The Earth was governed by these "forces of nature" and still is!  Holidays like Yule ocurred in late December to early January.  Yule is where we got our decorated Christmas Tree!  This was something the Germanic people did during their winter festival.  We also got mistletoe from Yule.   This was a festival believed to be derived from the Roman's Saturnia, a end of the harvest festival celebrating a fruitful year and the end of the light season and the beginning of the dark, but we will discuss the nature of this festival more in detail later in this article.

The 12 Days of Christmas originally were considered to be Christmas Day, December 25th to January 5th in the Gregorian calendar and still is today for many people.  Many don't celebrate the whole twelves days in modern times, but still, the Gregorian Calendar, used by Christians of many sects observe these "Christmastide" dates.  On the twelfth night of Christmastide it ends, and then The Feast of the Epiphany occurs on January 6th.  This is the celebration of the coming of the savior, not his birth.  Christmas celebrates the actual birth.  In some traditions the Feast of Epiphany & the 12th day of Christmas are one in the same.  Julius Caesar's Julian calendar held December 25 as The Winter Solstice.  On this important date, the Roman's festival of Saturnia was thrown!  Saturn, the God this festival was in honor of, was the God of harvest.  This festival was to thank the God for a fruitful year and for the food they were able to harvest for winter months.  This was a huge high holiday to the Pagan Romans.  According to the Gregorian Calendar (the one we currently use), the winter solstice occurs on December 21. It is the longest day of the year literally. It signifies the beginning of winter and the end of fall. 

Saint Nicholas, also known as Father Christmas is based on an actual man who did live in the third century.  He was a Christian, and came from a wealthy family. He used all his money to help the less fortunate. He was actually a Catholic Bishop.  He loved children and could not stand to see them suffer. 

We got Christmas stockings from a story associated with St. Nicholas.  A poor man was said to have had three children (all girls). He had no dowry for his girls to get married & was going to have to sell the girls into prostitution. Saint Nicholas heard of the sad tale. He knew the man would not take his money willingly out of pride, so he crawled down their chimney with three bags of gold, one for each girl. He stuffed them in their stockings drying by the fire knowing it would be impossible to not find them.

Much of Santa Claus' tradition and tales of his deeds come from Bafana, "The Italian Christmas Witch".  Bafana is said to have offered food and shelter to the three wiseman on the night they went to go visit Jesus in Bethlehem. The Wiseman asked her if she had directions, but she didn't know the way.  The men asked Bafana if she wanted to come meet Jesus, but she was busy taking care of her house and everybody around her. Bafana's own child died, so she decided to become everyone's mother figure. She was very kind to children and the unfortunate as well. She was said to fly over Italy on a broomstick on The Feast of Ephiphany and drop good children candy down the chimney and naughty ones got rocks or coal.  Does this story sound familar?