OPINION:
It’s that “most wonderful time of year” again, when pseudo-intellectuals from the History Channel, as well as secular skeptics too numerous to count, are rushing to outdo one another in putting a lump of coal in everyone’s stocking by telling us that Christmas isn’t really what we think it is.
They say it’s actually little more than a stolen holiday — a pagan festival co-opted by the medieval church to placate the pagan cultures it was trying to colonize and control.
Is this true? Is Christmas really more Druid than it is orthodox? Are our yuletide traditions actually grounded more in worshipping the sun than in celebrating the Son of God? If so, should today’s Christians abandon the whole thing because, well, Christmas really isn’t even Christian? What are we to make of all this? What’s the truth about Christmas?
Maybe the best way to answer all this is to listen to someone who knows what he is talking about, rather than all these biased scrooges clearly more intent on grinding their grinchly axes than defending the truth. Consider Wesley Huff, a biblical, historical and linguistic scholar who has been featured around the world on venues such as “The Joe Rogan Experience,” CNN, Fox News, NPR, the BBC, ABC News and PBS “NewsHour.”
When asked about some of the most oft-repeated claims about the pagan roots of Christmas, Mr. Huff offers the following. First, it’s not true that the date for Christmas was borrowed from pagan festivals such as Sol Invictus, Saturnalia and the winter solstice. The fact is, even though we know from some of the earliest available writings that the church was celebrating Christ’s birth on Dec. 25 as early as 204 A.D., the feast of Sol Invictus (a festival honoring the sun god) was not placed on the Roman calendar as the 25th day of December until 354 A.D. Before this, sun festivals were celebrated on various dates from Aug. 8 to Dec. 11.
Regarding Saturnalia (a holiday honoring the Roman god Saturn), history tells us the festival was never celebrated on Dec. 25. Neoplatonic philosopher Macrobius specifically says that the Saturnalia feast began 14 days before January and lasted three days. Furthermore, the Fasti inscriptions indicate that during the days of the republic, this holiday was extended to last until Dec. 24, but again, it never had anything to do with Dec. 25 or Christmas.
It’s also important to note that the winter solstice apparently never had any significance to the ancient Romans. No historical records indicate any celebration of this event on Dec. 25, and there is even a dispute over which day the solstice occurred. Pliny the Elder, for example, placed it on Dec. 26, and the Roman writer Columella (c. 70 A.D.) said it was on the 23rd.
What about the claim that Santa Claus is just a Christianized version of an ancient pagan deity? Not even close, says Mr. Huff. The truth of the matter is that the earliest references we have to Ol’ St. Nick, Sinterklaas or anyone else like him are not from the mythologies of Greece or Rome but rather from the 1800s and Dutch immigrants in New York.
Yes, there is mention of a character called “Father Christmas” in the writings of Richard Smart of Plymtree (c. 1470), but it was clearly a reference to a personified “Sir Christmas,” whose simple job it was to annually announce the birth of Christ.
Finally, there is the ongoing claim that Christmas trees originated in the pagan practices of bringing pine trees into the home to ward off evil spirits. Nope, not true either, declares Mr. Huff. In fact, hardly any early cultures thought pine trees were sacred. About the closest you can get to any of this is the fact that the Celts did honor Zeus in the form of a lofty oak, but none of this had anything to do with Dec. 25 or any antecedent holidays to Christmas. By the way, the tradition of mistletoe doesn’t have its roots in paganism either. The first time we ever hear of it as a Christmas decoration is in the 17th-century poetry of Robert Herrick, and the whole idea of kissing under it didn’t begin until the end of the 18th century in Great Britain.
No, Christmas is not just a cheap “knockoff” of an earlier pagan holiday. Rather, it’s a uniquely Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.
So don’t let all the naysayers spoil your holiday season. Go tell it on the mountain: Jesus Christ is born! And have a very merry Christmas!
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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