A Brief History of Christmas
Christmas is special. Christmas is magic. It is a time of warmth and peace. A season when we can revel unashamedly in nostalgia and tradition. The cynics amongst us have described Christmas as a period of preparations, invitations, anticipations, relations, frustrations, prostration and recuperation! But to most of us it is, above all else, a time of celebration. It always has been, and let’s hope it always will be.
In the Christian world Christmas is celebrated in remembrance of the birth of Christ but many of the traditions associated with a modern Christmas stem back many thousands of years.
In 440AD at a meeting held on December 25, the leaders of the Christian Church fixed that day as the date to observe the birth of Christ. It is literally the ‘Mass of Christ’. Yet, strangely, the rituals associated with this religious festival are of pagan origin and were celebrated long before Christ was born.
Since time immemorial it has been in Man’s nature to worship something, and because all life seems so dependent on that burning ball of fire in the sky, so vital to the success of harvests, early man went down on his knees and prayed to the sun. In the winter, the strength of the sun being less, it became necessary to slaughter animals for food, and these became the first religious sacrifices.
In December, the annual rebirth of the sun turned into an important festival, and many traditions and rituals became established.
In Rome on 25 December the Dies Natalis Invicti Solis was celebrated – the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun – sacred to Mithras, the god of light, and to Attis, the Phrygian sun god. The festival was known as the Saturnalia and was a period of celebrations from 17 December right