Answer # 46

Where Christmas customs came from is really no secret. You can read the origins of Christmas customs in encyclopedias and other reference works.

The Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, draws the reader's attention to these facts: "Christmas customs are an evolution from times that long antedate the Christian period - a descent from seasonal, pagan, religious and national practices, hedged ' about with legend and tradition" (15th ed., art. "Christmas").

It's a fact. At the end of December and the beginning of January festive celebrations were taking place in various nations of Europe centuries before Jesus was born!

When that festive season rolled around, little children were filled with anticipation and excitement. The whole family got busily involved in putting up decorations. Boughs of holly and evergreen were assembled and placed about the house. The mistletoe was hung. A tree was chosen and decorated with ornaments.

It was a season of giving and receiving presents, a time to sing songs, admire all the pretty lights and burn the yule log. There were parades with special floats, sumptuous meals and merrymaking.

All this and Jesus wasn't even born yet!

In ancient times, many of the earth's inhabitants, realizing their dependence upon the sun for light, heat and the growing of crops, watched the sun's yearly course in the heavens with deep interest. At different seasons, feasts and Celebrations were held to help, it was thought, the solar orb on its way.

The end of December was an especially significant time in the Northern Hemisphere. The days were short. The sun was at its lowest point. Special festivals of thanksgiving and encouragement to the sun were held. When, at the winter solstice, the days began to lengthen, there was great celebration lasting into the first part of January. The sun - the light of the world - had been (re) born!

Such festivities, once meant to honor the sun and its god, were freely adopted by the spreading and increasingly popular "Christian" religion. Why not, in the same way, honor Jesus - the real light of the world (even though He was not actually born in December)?

The modern Christmas tree is supposed to have originated in German lands in the Middle Ages. Since evergreens were green throughout the dead of winter, people looked upon them as especially imbued with life. It was in honor of the tree spirit or the spirit of growth and fertility that greenery was a prominent part of ancient pagan winter celebrations.

The Romans trimmed trees with trinkets and toys at that time of the year. The Druids tied gilded apples to tree branches. To certain peoples an evergreen decorated with orbs and other fruit-like objects symbolized the tree of life in the garden in Eden.

Branches, of holly and mistletoe were likewise revered. Not only do these plants remain green through the winter months, but they actually bear fruit at that time, once again a type of the spirits of fertility. Still today, catching someone under a branch of mistletoe can serve as a convenient springboard for romantic activity.

Few people stop to wonder what in the world such strange customs have to do with the birth of Jesus!

The ancients lit festive fires in the last part of December to encourage the waning sun god, just as Christmas bonfires, candles and other lights burn today at the same time of the year. Use of the "yule log," part of the "yuletide" season, hearkens back to the ritual burning of a carefully chosen log by the Druids. The word yule comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word hweol. meaning "wheel," a round wheel being an appropriate symbol for the sun.

You thought the Christmas shopping spree was a 20th century phenomenon?

Listen to how fourth-century writer Libanius described end-of-the-year gift-giving and partying in the ancient non-Christian Roman Empire: "Everywhere may be seen ... well-laden tables. ... The impulse to spend seizes everyone. He who through the whole year has taken pleasure in saving ... becomes suddenly extravagant ... A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides" (as quoted in Christmas in Ritual and Tradition).

Of all times in the year, it was indeed the season to be jolly. Drunkenness was widespread. Fortunately, however, the modes of transportation in those days did not lend themselves to the high rate of drunken-driver-induced traffic fatalities that are part of the Christmas season in many nations today.

An important part of the pagan harvest festivities - beginning in October-November with what has become Halloween - involved good and bad spirits. In many lands, visitors - usually bringers of good or evil - made their appearance in the winter season. Through blending pagan legends with traditions about saints, certain figures emerged, with similar personalities. We recognize them today in different nations as Santa Claus, Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, St. Martin, the Weihnachtsmann, Pere Noel. Whatever name is used, all these winter visitors fulfill a similar role. These fictional persons - "Christianizations" of the pagan Germanic deities - clearly perpetuate certain folk-ritual themes wherein varying degrees of rewards and punishments were dealt out to the celebrants. Through the centuries these customs came to be centered around children.

It is not too hard to see a connection between Santa using the chimney or the shoes and stockings hung by the fireplace and the ancient superstitions about hearth spirits. For thousands of years, especially among the Chinese, it was customary to sweep and scour the house in preparation for the visit of the hearth spirit. Each year, dressed in a pointed, fiery red cap and red jacket, this fire god traveled from the distant heavens to visit homes and distribute favors or punishments. Today he is welcomed in the Western world each Christmas season.

Popular Christmas customs, as we can see, plainly reflect non-Christian legends and practices. Some of the very Christmas customs observed today were once banned by the Catholic Council of Rome, the English Parliament and the Puritans of New England. The logical question to ask is, What is there that is Christian about Christmas?