Was Christmas originally a pagan holiday?

[Neoma]

[tjdee]

1. Yes...Saturnalia? Or something?

The Christians merged their Christ's birthday holiday to be around the same time as the pagan one, whichever it was. They hoped to get them to be like "We used to celebrate Dionysus (or whatever), but now we're celebrating Jesus!"

Because if they weren't celebrating something, people would get nasty. :silly:

[On the Road]

10. "Christians" Should Probably be Singular in This Case

The date of the Christmas celebration is often attributed to Constantine, who, being the emperor, pretty much set whatever rules he wanted. Constantine kept a lot of pagan practices after his conversion, for example he felt that sun worship was perfectly compatible with Christianity. The church didn't make it official until shortly after his death.

[AllegroRondo]

2. Depends on how you mean that

Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus, is strictly a Christian holiday.

But many of the things we do to celbrate have their roots in the pagan winter solstice celbration.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Yes, Christ was likely a spring baby but the Christians

co-opted a winter holiday to celebrate it. Took the trees from the other faith too.

[tjdee]

4. I thought it was September?

There are soooo many theories about this, LOL.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. I dunno.. I rather thought the mention of the lambs and all pointed toward

spring.. but maybe sheep have babies in fall too?

[mojavekid]

5. Yes,

It was meant to replace the Winter Solstice celebrations of most cultures - Celtic, Persian, Roman, Germanic, etc. (Celebrating the waning of Winter and the eventual return of Spring.

on edit: and the Xmas tree thing...pretty phallic...like the May Pole, etc.

[Debbi801]

9. Hi Mojavekid!

:hi:

My husband is from mojave, too. :-)

[mojavekid]

15. "Hi Debbi801!!"

I grew up in L.A., but have spent years wandering the Mojave and Eastern Sierras...I will be there this weekend, fishing and hitting the hotsprings!!

There is a great book on the Mojave, perhaps your husband has read it, "The Mojave, Portrait of a definitive American Desert" by Darlington.

:smoke:

Thanks for the Hello!

[Lerkfish]

7. the date, yes.

but no, christmas was never a pagan holiday.

just getting overly semantic on your medeival butt.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

8. Absolutely.

It's complete denial to suggest otherwise.

See also: Easter

[tjwmason]

11. Yes, no, and maybe

The earlier Christian feast is that of the Annunciation (25 March) which marks when Gabriel pottered down to Our Lady and told her she was to have a sprog. In many ways this is the more important date, in the early Church it was thought that this was the date when Creation began, and when Christ was crucified (hence the image of perfection has him conceived then as well). It was kept as New Year's Day in England for ages, and (when account is made of the shift between Julian and Gregorian calendars) is still the first day of the new fiscal year.

It was later that Christmas was celebrated, and 9 months after Christ's conception seems a pretty obvious place to put his birth.

As has been noted, there were pagan celebrations at that time - plus the very natural desire to have a good party in mid-winter to cheer everybody up.

The exact extent to which all of the various factors comes into play cannot really be discerned.

[catmandu57]

12. All the pagan holy days were coopted

only the names and characters were changed to fuck the innocent, christmas, easter, halloween etc etc etc...

[El Fuego]

13. They stole the holiday to convert the pagans.

Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice, the time when the shortening days started to get longer again. Some early pope decided to declare Jesus' birthday to be around the winter solstice to co-opt all the celebratory activities.

[Kraklen]

14. Yup. So was Easter.

That's why we have Christmas trees and Easter bunnies. Nothing to do with Jesus.