The Beginning of Christmas
Have you ever wondered where Christmas came from? Not Christmas as a single day, but Christmas as a season lasting several days. To supply an answer, we might begin by identifying the most important components of this season. One is an activity—the activity of gift-giving. By most accounts, gift-giving originates with the story of the Magi bringing gifts to the baby Jesus. This part of Christmas is formally celebrated on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, which is the last day of Christmas. The other component, I think, is not an activity but a feeling. It might be described by recalling two words from a carol: comfort and joy. The Christmas season is fairly saturated with comfort and joy, and this feeling, I think, derives from the event celebrated on the first day of Christmas, the birth of Jesus. Jesus is constantly referred to in carols as “Christ our savior.” Jesus is thought to have brought salvation to humankind, and as a result all of us can stop worrying about what happens after we die. We can now relax, sit back, and soak up some comfort and joy with friends and family during the Christmas season.
But this is only half the answer. In the years following Jesus’s death, people who had known him celebrated his birth. He was a popular figure in his day, and, as the historian Josephus attests, his followers loved him. Also, celebrating birthdays was important for the Romans, who always celebrated the birthday of the emperor. Thus, it was only natural that certain followers of Jesus would celebrate the birthday of this man who was thought to be a king designate. But these celebrations were only minor affairs, so without some kind of reinforcement, they likely would have faded away in a few years. And as concerns the Magi, these people probably never actually existed at all, so it is very likely there was no actual giving of any gifts by anyone. The idea of kings or wise men following a star to find an infant lying in a manger is certainly a cute story, but that’s about all it is. If there were any star, astronomers would by now have figured out what it was, and even though we regularly hear of some astronomer finding something that might be interpreted as being the Bethlehem star, these accounts are more imagination than science.
What was needed to guarantee that Christmas would survive as a major festival was an action by religious leaders that defined the precise date of both the Nativity and the Epiphany and cast in concrete, so to speak, these dates as occasions for celebration. This action was taken by Christian bishops in the fourth century. There was no formal council of bishops, like the Council of Nicaea (in 325), to accomplish this, so we can only assume that the needed steps were taken by a few bishops scattered here and there around the empire. To the Nativity they assigned the date of December 25, even though they had no idea when it actually happened, and to the Epiphany they assigned the date of January 6, even though it probably never happened at all. Before long, the tradition took hold, and the twelve days of Christmas were celebrated throughout Christendom. Assuming this account is correct, we can say that Christmas as a festival began in the fourth century AD.
As an aside, I note that Saint Nicholas was a fourth century bishop (died in 343), but there is no evidence that he had anything to do with establishing Christmas as a festival. However, he is associated with gift-giving because he is supposed to have given gifts in secret. For example, he is said to have secretly dropped off sacks of gold coins to the father of three impoverished girls to provide for paying their dowries, thus saving the girls from prostitution. Nicholas became the convenient model for Santa Claus, who entered the picture many years later. As a giver of gifts, he and the legend that developed around him have strengthened the practice of gift-giving originated by the Epiphany.
All festivals are created, at least in part, to augment the power of those who create them, and this is especially true of religious festivals. As I argue in Religion, Power, and Illusion, any religion would quickly die out were it not for festivals. Religions are all about God or gods—entities that cannot be seen, heard, or sensed in any other way. For these entities to play an important part in people’s lives, they must be attached to activities that people enjoy, and Christmas fits the bill perfectly. Religious festivals strengthen religious beliefs and they therefore augment the power of the priests who depend on those beliefs to sustain and strengthen their role as priests.