THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTMAS
It’s hard to imagine a time with Christmas was not observed as a holiday. Even the oldest among us can recall childhood memories of waking up to stockings filled with toys or presents under the tree, local malls filled with holiday music and city streets decked out in garland and lights. Although Christ’s life was celebrated even during his life, the holiday as we have come to know it is much more recent.
Christmas came from two words compounded together from the English “Christ’s Mass.” But how is it that the abbreviation from Christmas came to be known as Xmas. In both the Greek and Roman writings, X was known as the first letter of Christ (Greek letter chi) as well as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century (Roman letter).
Christmas for Christians is a celebration of Jesus’ birth but was Jesus really born on December 25th in the year 1 CE? One truth is that the New Testament does not provide us with the exact date or year jesus was born. There have been fourhighly recognized calculations made regarding the date and year Jesus was born.
The best calculation Dionysius Exiguus (a Scythian monk of a Roman monastery) came up with was put Jesus’ birth was 754 years after the founding of the city of Rome but as close as he came his calculation would still be off by 4 years. The others were anonymous document called theDePascha Computus which was believed to have been a calculation made about 243 CE placing the birth of Jesus on March 28, Clement (bishop of Alexandria) placing Jesus’ birth on November 18, and Joseph Fitzmyer placing His birth on September 11, 3 BCE.
So how is it that Christmas is celebrated by Christians around the world as the birth of Jesus if these other calculations are truer to the case? One tradition has it that Roman pagans celebrated the holiday of Saturnalia which was a week-long celebration of lawlessness of every kind. The week this holiday was celebrated was December 17-25. During the 4th Century CE, Christians leaders were able to convert many of those who celebrated Saturnalia with one promise – that they could continue to celebrate Saturnalia even though there was nothing Christian regarding this celebration only to mark the last and final day as Jesus’ birthday. The goal was to take the observance of pagan holidays and through the effort of aligning Christian observances alongside the pagan traditions with the hope of transforming pagan traditions into Christian ones.
There are other reasons as to why December 25th may have been chosen by Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Isaac Newton stated the date must have been set aside to join the winter solstice celebration. German paul Jablonski believed it was celebrated at the same time as the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti.”
Despite the reasoning as to why the early Christians chose this day, the main emphasis remains which is to ensure Jesus’ birth does not go unrecognized and is tradition to be celebrated as Christians remembering the birth of their Savior.
By John Bates
P.S. In case you are wondering what CE and BCE represent, these have replaced what we are familiar with BC and AD. AD represented “After the death of Christ”, but if continued to be used, religious leaders discovered, we would have a 33 year gap between BC and AD, because of the life of Jesus there on this earth. Therefore, the religious leaders came up with CE and BCE. “CE” represents the “Christian Era” and “BCE” represents “Before the Christian Era”. This information was gathered from one of my classes taken from Trinity College and Theological Seminary.
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