Below is an excerpt from a message I recently sent a friend after he brought up the question of the history of Christmas. To give a little background, it is commonly suggested that the Church picked December 25 to be the date for celebrating Jesus's nativity because of Roman pagan festivals that supposedly were already celebrated on that day. There are problems with those claims, though, that are worth pointing out, as I explain below. Since it's not originally written to be shared with the congregation, it isn't as clear as I usually aim to be, both in its arrangement and vocabulary. But I hope you find it helpful.
Yeah, the history of Christmas. People ... like to make claims that are overblown about Christian festivals being repackaged pagan festivals. ... It certainly did happen that the Church timed her own feasts with festivals that converted peoples had already celebrated. On one hand there's a note of grace in that. There's an effort to look for what's good and true in people's ways of life, and then the Church makes clear how the glimpses of goodness and truth that people already have [are] perfected, fulfilled, and finds [their] place in Christ. Further, there was a desire at times [not to] overburden people or ask too much of them when they were converting to Christianity, so the Church looked for ways to accommodate what people were already doing.
On the other hand, it gets exaggerated [that is, the extent to which the Church harnessed pagan festivals to its own celebrations]. Part of what I think is behind that [exaggeration] is an unwillingness to recognize the ways that Christianity is fruitful where our post-Christian culture isn't. Here's what I mean: Our own culture is painfully bad at throwing parties. We pride ourselves that people can believe whatever they want to believe and won't give them a hard time about that, but [the problem with that is it] doesn't go very far in inspiring people to celebrate. Hence, we more and more move our public celebrations to Mondays, since we aren't very invested in the things we're celebrating; then we can at least get excited about the prospect of a three-day weekend. Meanwhile, the Church throughout her life has known how to party. Mardi Gras. Christmas. Easter. All Hallows' Eve.
Part of our problem is we have such a workaholic culture that we aren't willing to let the machine come to a stop so that we can actually enjoy something (cf. Josef Pieper's book Leisure: The Basis of Culture). There's little sense that something is so important we should all stop what we're doing. Obviously, I'm painting with a wide brush, but I do think these dynamics are in play. A relatively sterile culture will be prone to a kind of envy of Christianity's fruitfulness.
Take Halloween for example. It's commonly claimed that Allhallowtide (All Hallows' Eve--that is, the Eve of All Saints--All Saints' Day itself, and All Souls' Day following that) is a ripoff of Samhain, an ancient winter festival in pagan Ireland. You'll find that claim all over the place, tossed out there as a settled fact. The claim is completely bogus. It was advanced by two English scholars in the 1800s, and there is almost no basis for that conclusion. We know very little about Samhain anyway, not near enough to argue for clear precedents for the medieval church's All Saints' and All Souls' celebrations on November 1 and 2. Again, it's imagined that Christianity doesn't have anything to offer, so all it can do is leach off the vibrancy of pagan practices. This completely misses the way that praying for the dead is a deeply Christian practice. Praying for the dead was widely seen even in the early Church: it springs from the Gospel, and it very naturally answers deep human issues [connected] with death and loss. So I point out Allhallowtide to give context for the history of the Christmas festival. It should just be really clear that Christianity didn't have to borrow from paganism to create great festivals. They come forth from Christianity's own impetus and unfold naturally out of its own life.
As for Christmas, obviously it's debated. I think that this article, while there are problems with it, hits the highlights that are familiar to me. The author puts too much emphasis on actually fixing the date to December 25, when the force of the arguments better supports the more modest claim that the celebration was self-generated, rather than an attempt to hijack someone else's good time.
There are a couple of reasons I think it's helpful to dig into these questions. One, when people come across bad arguments suggesting that the Church steals festivals from other cultures, it creates a vague impression of conspiracy and leaves people suspecting that the Church isn't trustworthy. Two, combating those arguments calls attention to the ways that Christianity is fruitful, which makes for a good apologetic: the invitation to life with Jesus in his Church is an invitation into a rich and interesting ... life (cf. Hebrews 12:22-24). There is a counter balancing point to make, though, that while it may be helpful in certain ways to dig into these details, not all that much is hinging on the outcome of debates like this. Even if it turns out that Christmas was in fact a repackaging of Saturnalia, there are other ways to think about that than just conspiracy or sterility, like generosity and gentleness, as I suggest above.
shc+
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