Christmas Without Christ

More of this Feature • Part 2: Pre-Christian & Christian Traditions • Part 3: Post-Christian Traditions • Part 4: Modern Christmas    Join the Discussion "I celebrate Christmas. It's an excuse for parties, gifts, feasts, and a day off. " ONEGESIUS     Related Resources • Atheism & Christmas • Questioning Christianity • Secular vs. Religious

It's not unusual to hear people putting out a call that we should "put Christ back into Christmas." Interestingly, this isn't new. Such attempt go back at least to the years immediately following World War II, when people were upset over how merchants were over-commercializing the holiday. Has anyone noticed an improvement?

The problem isn't the stores and it isn't in the devotion of contemporary Christians. The problem, if there is one, lies I think in the holiday itself. Christmas is something of a paradox. Around the world, few things are more representative in people's minds of Christianity than the annual Christmas celebration. Yet, despite this, few aspects of Christianity are ultimately less Christian than this holiday.

Contemporary Christmas celebrations draw from three things:

• Pre-Christian traditions
• Christian traditions
• Post-Christian traditions

What many don't realize is that out of these three, Christian traditions have contributed the least! This raises interesting questions for contemporary efforts to "put Christ back into Christmas." We should ask: how and to what extent was "Christ" ever really there? And is there any reason to put him "back" into something that is largely non-Christian anyway?

It also raises important issues for atheists. Many nonbelievers would like to move away from religious holidays now that they are no longer religious. Indeed, some feel hypocritical celebrating things that they no longer believe in. But if Christmas is mostly a mish-mash of ancient beliefs that nobody, not even Christians, really believe in, then there is little cause for atheists to worry.

Christmas Dating

The first question to look at is that of the date: if Christmas is supposed to be Jesus' birthday, should we then assume that Jesus was born on the night of December 25th? Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no hint in the Gospels about the time of the year when Jesus is supposed to have been born - except that it couldn't have been midwinter, because in that part of the world this is the rainy season and shepherds would not be out at night. This means that early Christianity found itself in the odd position of trying to tell everyone about what they claimed was the most tremendous birth ever without being able to say when it happened. It was centuries before the year itself could be determined, and even that was a goof.

The net result of all this confusion was that, for several hundred years, various churches celebrated the birthday of Jesus on different dates. The eastern Churches generally used January 6th, which they now call the Epiphany. Other churches chose April 24th or 25th; and some even placed it in May.

It was not until after 354 CE that the Roman Church chose December 25th as the anniversary of the birthday of Christ - and it took this long because it was on;y in 354 CE that Philocalus wrote a famous Christian martyrology in which he claims that Jesus was born on December 25th. Since he purported to use an earlier work as support for this, we can perhaps put the use of December 25th as early as 335 CE in Rome.

Next page > Pre-Christian & Christian Traditions > Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Index of previous articles

Do you have an opinion about this article? Make it known on the Discussion Forum!