Merry Christmas

The holiday of Christmas has mixed origins. The holiday of the Sun god, held on the day that the sun begins returning and the days begin to lengthen (the winter solstice) in the northern hemisphere, and the Roman holiday of Saturnalia. The Christmas tree has its roots in the tradition of Saturnalia.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25.  During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.  The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.”  Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week.  At the festival’s conclusion, December 25^th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

In the 4^th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.  The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25^th, to be Jesus’ birthday. The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc

Some of the most depraved customs of the Saturnalia carnival were intentionally revived by the Catholic Church in 1466 when Pope Paul II, for the amusement of his Roman citizens, forced Jews to race naked through the streets of the city. An eyewitness account reports, “Before they were to run, the Jews were richly fed, so as to make the race more difficult for them and at the same time more amusing for spectators. They ran… amid Rome’s taunting shrieks and peals of laughter, while the Holy Father (the Pope) stood upon a richly ornamented balcony and laughed heartily.

The New Testament gives no date or year for Jesus’ birth.  The earliest gospel – St. Mark’s, written about 65 CE – begins with the baptism of an adult Jesus.  This suggests that the earliest Christians lacked interest in, or knowledge of, Jesus’ birthdate.


The year of Jesus birth was determined by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian monk, “abbot of a Roman monastery.  His calculation went as follows:

a.      In the Roman, pre-Christian era, years were counted from ab urbe condita (“the founding of the City” [Rome]).  Thus 1 AUC signifies the year Rome was founded, 5 AUC signifies the 5^th year of Rome’s reign, etc.
 b.     Dionysius received a tradition that the Roman emperor Augustus reigned 43 years, and was followed by the emperor Tiberius.
c.      Luke 3:1,23 indicates that when Jesus turned 30 years old, it was the 15^th year of Tiberius reign.
d.      If Jesus was 30 years old in Tiberius’ reign, then he lived 15 years under Augustus (placing Jesus birth in Augustus’ 28^th year of reign).
e.      Augustus took power in 727 AUC.  Therefore, Dionysius put Jesus birth in 754 AUC. f.       However, Luke 1:5 places Jesus’ birth in the days of Herod, and Herod died in 750 AUC – four years before the year in which Dionysius places Jesus birth.

So there you have it, the history of Christmas.