interesting, and not fully complete, historical detective story. The most popular conclusion by archeologists, biblical scholars and anthropologists, is that the pagan traditions were co-opted by the early Christian Church. In the first three hundred years after the death of Christ, there was no prescribed “feast” for the occasion of Christ’s birth. This was partly because no one actually knew when or where Christ was born and partly because the major Christian celebration was the Crucifixion and Resurrection. Some local monasteries and churches had their own “birthday” celebrations at different times of the year, but it wasn’t until the mid-4th Century AD that Christ’s birth became an official celebration, complete with a specific date.
Why did it happen then? Getting the diverse peoples of the Roman empire to reject their historical religions and raucous merriment in favor of the official religion of Christianity (so decreed in 350 AD) was no easy matter. Grudgingly, but inevitably, the church accepted the perennial revelry of its diverse citizenry (pagan though it was) and wisely decided to include those celebrations for their own agenda. In what many historians consider to be a stroke of public relations genius, in 320 AD, Pope Julius I proclaimed that the pagan celebration of the December 25th “Festival of the Sun” (Natalis Invicti, i.e. “The Nativity” ) would henceforth also celebrate the Birth of Christ – ta da! Enter the Official Birth Day of Christ.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia The Advent, by 402 AD the “Feast of the Birth of Christ” (the new interpretation of The Nativity) was practiced through out the Holy Roman Empire. The Nativity scene itself (you know, the livestock, the stable, etc.) didn’t emerge