Why is the date of Christmas December 25th?

There is not only the Christian tradition. It is ancient and fascinating history that places al December 25th the date of Christmas. There is a whole pagan tradition. No Gospel indicates this date which was chosen as that of the birth of Jesus. As with almost all holy holidays, even behind Christmas there is an ancient rite or belief starting from the pagan celebrations for the sun which returns to triumph after the darkness of the winter solstice.

To remove some other certainty know that Santa Claus it didn’t always exist and even on fir and holly there are different versions from nation to nation.

Christmas

The literal meaning of the word Christmas is birth. Obviously for the Christian tradition it is the day of the birth of Jesus Christ, but it was there before the rebirth of the sun in the period of the year in which, after the winter solstice, the days lengthened. The date also does not coincide with that of the birth of Jesus, which no one knows exactly and is not mentioned in the Gospels.

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Latin Dies Natalis Solis Invicti it is the birth day of the undefeated sun. This is the pagan festival that matches, as a date, with Christmas. Between 24 and 25 December the sun is reborn after the darkest days of the year around the winter solstice, between 21 and 22 December. In the same period the Romans celebrated the Saturnalia. The god Mithras was celebrated, in the third century after Christ, precisely on the day of December 25, brought by the emperor Elagabalus and by the tradition of the East. It was the emperor Aurelian, in 274 AD, who instead consecrated the temple of Sol Invictus. In the same years, the birth of Jesus was celebrated on January 6 in the eastern part of the Empire.

AD 336

The Chronograph of 354, a written document on the Roman Empire, says that in 336, the birth of Jesus was celebrated on December 25th. Only in 380 with the edict of Thessalonica did Christianity become the sole religion of the empire and the cult of Sol Invictus disappeared.

Christian tradition

According to the Gospels, Jesus was born in a grotto in Bethlehem by Mary who had gone to Joseph’s birthplace for a census that historians identify with that of 6 AD ordered by the Roman governor Publius Sulpicius Quirinius in the provinces of Syria and Judea. There is talk of Herod who would die in 4 AD. All dates around what we consider year zero, which is a historical convention.

Creche

The tradition of the crib (linked to Saint Francis then to 1200) reconstructs what is told by the evangelists with the baby placed in a manger, the shepherds in adoration, who would know more of spring than of winter even if we are in the Middle East, called by the angels. The Gospel of Luke tells it in chapter 2, like that of Matthew. The apocryphal gospels, excluded from the Bible, instead report the details of an ox and a donkey to warm it, such as the names of the Magi.

Not just December 25th

For Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox who follow the Gregorian calendar this is the date of Christmas, but the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates it on January 6 and it goes to January 7 for the Orthodox with the Julian calendar. Oliver Cromwell in the seventeenth century erased it from the Anglican tradition. The Pope celebrates mass in the night between 24 and 25 December. It is at midnight that the Savior is born (but this year masses are brought forward due to a curfew due to Covid). At noon the Urbi et Orbi blessing, to the city and to the world, by Pope Francis.

The Christmas trees

There has always been the tradition of evergreen trees as capable of keeping evil spirits and witches away and of ornate trees sacred to the gods. The idea of ​​decorating the tree would come from Germany. Martin Luther is said to have been the first to put candles on trees. The tradition would then be associated with Protestantism. It has been common in Germany since the 1800s and arrived in the rest of the world in 1900.

Another tradition reports the birth of the modern use of the Christmas tree a Tallinn, Estonia in 1441. A large fir tree was erected in the Town Hall Square. Around these young bachelors, men and women. A Bremen chronicle from 1570 tells of a tree decorated with apples, nuts, dates and paper flowers.

The prince brought him to Great Britain Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, husband of Queen Victoria. From here it spread throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. Queen Margherita would have brought him to Italy, who would have seen him attending the other courts and the European nobility. You decorated one in the second half of the 19th century at the Quirinale.

The kiss under the mistletoe

According to the druids, the priests of the Celts, mistletoe had great power, as an aerial plant that lives attached to the trunk of trees, without touching the ground, like the gods who live in heaven. According to the Vikings, however, it was associated with the goddess Freya, protector of love and lovers, and one of the wives of Odin, king of the gods. As always with the Vikings there is the hand of the bad Loki who with mistletoe, the only thing to which he was not immune, struck Baldr, son of Freya. She cried over her son’s corpse, her tears became the white berries of the mistletoe and Baldr came back to life. Since then he has thanked those who kiss under the mistletoe with the protection of love.

St. Nicholas

The first and only Santa Claus is Bishop Nicholas. Born around 270 in Pàtara in Lycia, the region of present-day Turkey where Antalya is located, was elected bishop of Myra and soon became a saintly figure. The hagiography also records how he calmed a storm at sea, resurrected three schoolboys killed by an innkeeper, saved three sisters from prostitution by giving their father three bags of gold to use as a dowry. When the bishop dies on 6 December, the faithful come from all over the tomb of Myra and the place soon becomes a recognized pilgrimage destination. The remains are mostly in Bari, because a group of sailors from Bari went to recover them in Turkey, which was no longer Christian in 1087.

Gifts

It is not known when the first gifts were delivered in the bishop’s name. Possibly in France in the 12th century. It is remembered in Strasbourg in 1480 a benefactor who on December 6 dressed up as Saint Nicholas and gave gifts to the children. According to the tradition of the Netherlands, Sinterklaas lives in Spain all year round and notes in his red book what good or bad children do. In November he is ready to leave together with his helper, Zwarte Piet, a small Moorish servant, arrives at the port of Amsterdam and then on the night of December 5th rides the skies distributing his presents. A good Santa Claus, but not only, because his helper has a sack big enough to carry away the capricious children.

From green to red

Brought by the Dutch to Nieuw Amsterdam (New York) still with the features of the bishop, Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus returns no longer dressed in green (as well as the spirit of Christmas present in Dickens’ Christmas Carol), but in red, plump and with a beard. The version later made universal by Coca Cola. He has a reindeer sleigh. Thus he appears in an advertisement for the drink in 1931 thanks to the pen of the illustrator Haddon Sundblom. Even the transfer to the North Pole (or to nearby Finland, where it also has its post office) is given by the fascination for the Arctic ice that was being explored between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and which matched the winter period in which it arrives from we Santa Claus.

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