before Christ was born. The giving of gifts, carnivals, parades, carolers going from house to house, holiday feasts, and church performances can all be traced back to the early Mesopotamians (1500 BC).
Persians, Babylonians, Scandinavians, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all had elaborate rituals that were celebrated at the Winter Solstice intended to pay tribute to the mythological importance of the sun and to the perennial cycles of nature. But, don’t be too quick to dismiss the ancient traditions as being simply pagan rituals. In fact, they were VERY spiritually oriented.
It is true that the peoples that populated what is now the Middle East 3000 years before Christ were polytheistic they had numerous gods. But they were also VERY religious. A large part of their culture was focused on seeking to learn the will of the gods, and the early Winter Solstice traditions reflected that focus. The Romans decked the halls with holly and candles as a tribute to one of their most powerful gods, Apollo. The Scandinavians built huge bonfires and held feasts that lasted for days as a way to help their sun-god defeat the power of darkness. These bonfires and feasts are the beginnings of our famous “Yule” log – the “12 days of Yuletide” was a lengthy ceremony which heralded the power of their gods over the domain of evil.
These beautiful ceremonies and ancient traditions all sought to do what our modern Christian traditions now do celebrate the dominion of the supernatural forces of the cosmos over the earthly world of man. They sought to honor their gods, and sometimes even assist them, in the ongoing battle over darkness.
So, Who Put The “Christ” In Christmas In the First Place? Well, now, that’s an