Christmas: From Sun Worship to Commercialism

Christmas is the celebration of the time when the days start to lengthen. Many religions have claimed the winter solstice as a holy day.

The 25th of December

The exact date of the Winter Solstice changes slowly over time. "So, although the solstice moved progressively from 6 January to 25 December, some traditions continued to celebrate it on the familiar night. Today it falls around 22 December" [Freke & Gandy 1999, p41-42]

The Roman religion of Mithraism, which existed for hundreds of years before Christians started celebrating Christmas, holds that the birth of Mithras was on the 25th of December. In another coincidence, the birth of Mithras was also said 'to have been witnessed by three shepherds!' [Freke & Gandy 1999, p40]

Pagan Religions and Sun Worship

“Most Christmas customs are, in fact, based on old pagan festivals, the Roman Saturnalia and the Scandinavian and Teutonic Yule. Christians adopted these during the earliest period of Church history. The Church, however, has given this recognition and incorporates it into the Church year without too many misgivings. Only the more radical fundamentalist elements in some churches protest from time to time about this mixing of 'pagan' elements into the religion”

Moojan Momen, "The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach"

Osiris-Dionysus represented and was represented by the sun, as was Jesus, whom the Church father Clement of Alexander calls 'The Sun of Righteousness' [Freke & Gandy 1999, p42]. When old relics and religious symbols (such as Human faces) are given a light backdrop of rays of light or a corolla it means they represent the sun.

Sun worship formed the basis of Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, other Roman religions and many other pagan traditions. It is the reason Sun-day is a holy day in many religions, and why major festivals are held at Spring and the Solstices. The real meaning of Christmas is sun worship; a reminder to all life on Earth that we owe everything to the Sun. Sun worship is one of the main pillars of all religion, especially older religions. Sun worshippers and nature religions, the most ancient of the religious, held major celebrations at the Winter Solstice the victory of the strength of the Sun over the forces of darkness that try to suppress it.

“The Catholic Encyclopedia says, "Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian omit it from their lists of feasts." [...] Sir James Frazer says, "The largest pagan religious cult which fostered the celebration of December 25 as a holiday . . . was the pagan sun- worship, Mithraism . . . This winter festival was called . . . 'the Nativity of the SUN.' [...] Franz Cumont, perhaps the greatest scholar of Mithraism, wrote, quoting Minucius Felix, "The Mithraists also observed Sun-day and kept sacred the 25th of December as the birthday of the Sun. Many scholars have pointed out how the Sun- worshipping Mithraists, the Sun-worshipping Manicheans and the Christians were all syncretised and reconciled when Constantine led the take-over by Christianity[...]"

However, other Sun-worshipping groups were included too, because of the general importance and popularity of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun-deity. Mario Righetti, a renowned Catholic liturgist, writes, "the Church of Rome, to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, found it convenient to institute the 25th December as the feast of the temporal birth of Christ, to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honour of the 'Invincible Sun', Mithras. [...] The mixing of pagan Sun-worship and Christianity is exemplified by the testimony of a Syrian scholiast on Bar Salibi, who said, "It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same 25th of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the Christians also took part." Practically all the known Sun-deities were born on the 25th December. In S.E. Titcomb, Aryan Sun myths, the Origin of Religions, we find it cited, quoted from primary sources, that the following Sun-deities were all born on 25 December, according to their legends: Crishna (Vishnu), Mithra (Mithras), Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Dionysus (Bacchus), Tammuz, Indra, Buddha. Therein we also read of the Scandinavian goddess Frigga in whose honour a "Mother-night" festival was held at the winter solstice (+ - 25 December), as well as a similar great feast of Yule, where a boar was offered at the winter solstice in honour of Frey.”

www.iahushua.com/ST-RP/xmas.htm, accessed 2005 Dec 06

It must also be clear that many Christmas customs are, as we heard from Mojan Momen at the beginning of this page, very ancient. But they have in present centuries been combined with the very modern: Commercialism.

Commercialism

The most sceptical view of modern christmas is that the fads, decorations, festive goods and all the paraphernalia are a commercial scam to make us spend money on over-priced useless goods. However true this is, it has also become a secular social festival much akin to the American thanksgiving. Families come together at Christmas even if they do not for the rest of the year. It probably helps that Christmas and New Years celebrations have become institutionally intertwined.

In any case, the festivities are largely led by commerce and retail outlets: The relevant decorations, cards, food and goods are all marketed for Christmas more than any other festival, and it is the High Streets that press Christmas upon the populace way before the populace itself is ready: It is a frequently complaint that stores start Christmas "too early" and too aggressively. But push it they do, for very good commercial reasons!

From 1931, Haddon Sundblom the illustrator for Coca Cola "drew a series of Santa images in their Christmas advertisements until 1964"_[OCRT], which is where the tradition of a Santa Claus wearing red comes from. Such a prominent part of the Christmas tradition is directly and purely a commercialist invention.

Christianity

Modern-day Christmas frequently contains modern Christian elements. Not least of all, in English, the word 'Christmas' is the one we are all familiar with, moreso than Yule or Winter Solstice. Nativity stories are taken from the Christian tradition - even though the ideas of shephards, wise men and the like were all originally pagan, the stories are now told with Christian overtones.

In opposition to paganism, Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals sometimes tell Christians not to celebrate Christmas. "Three and a half centuries ago the English Puritans used their influence within the Cromwellian Republic (Protectorate) to ban Christmas celebrations. [...] They asserted (quite correctly by their own lights) that the 25 December had no biblical connection with the birth of their messiah and that the Christmas festival was therefore essentially pagan"₁.

It is not just modern Christians that are concerned about the paganism of Christmas. In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, 7th centuryBCE [Roberts, 1990], it warns Jews/Christians not to 'learn the ways' of those who decorate trees with silver and gold:

"This is what the LORD says: Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter."

The Christian Bible, Jeremiah 10:2-4 (NIV)

Some Christians of the first few centuries celebrated the birth of their messiah. They did not know for certain where he was born, where he died, or where he was buried. This fact is bemoaned by early Christian leaders. When they did celebrate Christmas, they generally done so in April and May. "Pope Julius I, in the fourth century commanded a committee of bishops to establish the date of the nativity of Jesus. December 25 (the day of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun) was decided upon. Not coincidentally, that is the day when the "pagan world celebrated the birth of their Sun Gods -- Egyptian Osiris, Greek Apollo and Bacchus, Chaldean Adonis, Persian Mithra -- when the Zodiacal sign of Virgo (the sun is born of a virgin) rose on the horizon. Thus the ancient festival of the Winter Solstice, the pagan festival of the birth of the Sun, came to be adopted by the Christian Church as the nativity of Jesus, and was called Christmas"₁. The reasons that the Christians annexed the Winter Solstice, and chose to celebrate Christmas in December instead of Spring, was that influential Roman religions celebrated the birth of the sun-of-the-sun on the Winter Solstice, and the first Christian emperor fused paganism and early Christianity, to create the Pauline Christianity that we know today.

Conclusion: Christmas is Multicultural

Sometimes non-Christians complain that Christmas is too Christian, and sometimes hardline Christians complain that Christmas is too pagan. Agents of the Politically Correct complain it is too culturally or religiously homogenous. In reality, Christmas is already a multicultural, multi-religious festival. It combines sun worship, polytheism, pagan nature religions, Christianity, and other later myths and traditions. The date of the 25th accords with Sun Worship thousands of years old, the Christmas tree and some of the decorations are pagan, the Nativity stories are pagan, Mithraistic, Roman and Christian. In addition to all of its rich history, Christmas has now become largely a secular holiday and a commercial enterprise with many tacky, mass-produced, plastic and branded items such as Santa Claus's red uniform, designed by Coca Cola. The non-religious can celebrate the commercial and social event, Christians can pretend Christmas has something to do with Christ, pagans can celebrate nature, and all can be happy. Unless of course you are an anti-commercialist anti-popularist secular cynic like me.