December 25th has finally arrived once again. Today marks a day where a glance into the many homes in the United States would probably see presents from small to large lying under a festively light Christmas tree. And by the end of today each of those nice bow-tied and vibrantly wrapped packages will be ripped open with the wrapping paper tossed easily aside into very large garbage bags, which end up on the curb a few days from now. Christmas has continued to grow into a present-centered holiday and sadly, it seems as if this is becoming the true meaning of the holiday for most these days.
But what is the true meaning of Christmas anyway?
I’m sure if you were to do a random poll of 100 individuals and ask them this very question, each answer would likely be different. I would guess many would say it’s about being with family and loved ones, and of course children would say it’s definitely about the gifts. Then there are those who would respond they don’t even celebrate this holiday for various reasons including religious or personal ones. But the most interesting answer to that question for me is from those who claim the holiday is solely about Christ’s birth.
Did you know that Christ wasn’t even born even close to this time of the year? Ironically, theologians and religious scholars have done enough research to know that Christ was actually born somewhere between March and September. But even more thought provoking is what I found on the origins of Christmas itself.
Before Christmas ever existed, there was a festival celebrated by the Romans between December 17th and 25th and was named Saturnalia. It was a week long period of lawlessness where the government was closed and people could not be punished for damaging property or hurting people. Each year this festival began with the Roman authorities choosing an enemy of the people to represent the “Lord of Misrule”. Each community at the time chose a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the end of this week on December 25th, this person would then be innocently and brutally murdered with the belief that the forces of evil were being destroyed with them. Throughout the period leading up to this, it was common to see many acts of lawlessness, widespread intoxication, public nakedness, rape and other sexual debauchery, and a tradition of consuming human shaped biscuits.
By the 4th century, Christianity was on the rise and its leaders at the time wanted to convert the pagans who celebrated this holiday. They were able to end up doing just that by promising them they would carry over the Saturnalia festival. Because the festival held no Christian principles, the leaders decided to start shifting the focus away from it by claiming December 25th as the birth of Christ and calling it Christmas. Unfortunately these Christian leaders soon discovered that this still didn’t lead to much success in reducing or changing the practices of the festival. So an early agreement was reached that if there was a massive observance on December 25th for the Savior’s birth, that the holiday could be celebrated similar to how it always had been. In fact, in many historical texts, it is known that early Christians were noted for their drinking, sexual indulgence, and singing naked in the streets (which actually was the precursor to caroling). As the centuries passed, the pagan practices slowly started to disappear though.
Something I found extremely interesting that I never learned in high school about our country’s history was how the Puritans banned the observance of Christmas between 1659 and 1681. The sole reason for that was due to the Saturnalia practices still being tied into the Christmas holiday at the time for everyone else.
But even as late as the 18th and 19th centuries in Rome, some of the festival’s practices could still be detected as rabbis were forced to wear clownish outfits and march throughout the streets of the city to the jeers and pelts of various objects by the people. And even on December 25th, 1881, Christian leaders whipped the Polish masses into Anti-Semitic frenzies that led to riots across the country. In fact, in Warsaw, 12 Jews were brutally murdered, huge other numbers were maimed, and many Jewish women were raped.
Thank God none of this occurs anymore on December 25th!
So while the main focus these days seems to have has shifted quite a bit to that of giving those nice bow-tied and vibrantly wrapped presents, I think that’s a whole lot better than the idea of getting drunk, raping, and murdering people, which regularly once occurred on this very day.
I honestly couldn’t imagine myself living in a society that did the practices that originated during Saturnalia; especially not with the focus I have today on serving God. Hopefully your practices and traditions today are far from this as well. But whatever they are, it’s my only hope and prayer that the true meaning of Christmas for you will involve the spreading of love and light and nothing else.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson