Before Christmas Was Christmas: Get to Know The Origins of Our Traditions
- Helena Dias
- Dec 2
- 5 min read
We are finally heading into December, so toss out your pumpkins and skeletons and dust off your trees and mistletoes — Christmas season has finally arrived. As we move towards the end of the year, the sound of holiday songs starts to flood the streets, malls start to crowd with eager family members buying gifts, and all products on supermarket shelves get replaced by panettone. Oh, how good it feels to be back to the best time of the year!
Holiday spirit has truly started to consume us, but do you ever wonder why we celebrate Christmas the way that we do? Where the image of a jolly, bearded man who rides a sleigh pulled by reindeers comes from, or why we decorate pine trees with lights and garlands? Well, it turns out that most of our Christmas traditions originated way before the holiday took on its Christian roots.
Christmas is celebrated on December 25th as the celebration of Jesus’ birth. But as a matter of fact, there is no way to tell the actual date in which Jesus Christ was born. For the first 2 centuries of Christianity, Christians were mostly against celebrating the birth dates of saints and martyrs at all. This is because they believed that birthday celebrations were pagan traditions, and that the right thing to do was to celebrate the date on which the saint or martyr died, since it was considered their true birth into eternal life.
Although there is no proof of Christ's actual birthday, the 25th of December became accepted universally as the celebration date. This can be explained and linked to the dies solis invicti nati (“day of the birth of the unconquered sun”), a popular pagan holiday in the Roman Empire that celebrated the winter solstice and the rebirth of the sun. Christian writers often make the connection between the birth of the Son of God and the rebirth of the sun. It is believed that this date was adopted by Christians as the day to celebrate Christmas as a way to Christianize the holiday and subtly appropriate some of its traditions.
Another viewpoint when analyzing the selected date for the celebration is by looking at its symbolic reasoning. It is believed that God created the world in the spring equinox, and that Jesus would have been conceived on the fourth day of creation, which is the day of creation of light, believed to be March 25th. With this mentality, if Jesus was conceived on March 25th, he would have been born 9 months later, which would be on December 25th.
But even with these reasons as to why we celebrate Christmas when we do, it also does not root in Christian practices alone. Many of the traditions we now associate with the holiday, such as feasting, gift-giving, and setting a tree, actually grew from much older celebrations. Two of the biggest influences on Christmas were the Roman holiday Saturnalia and the Northern European Yule.
Saturnalia was celebrated in the Roman Empire and originated around 300 BC. The holiday was a week long, starting on December 17th and going up to the 23rd. During the week, citizens and slaves of the Roman Empire got together to honor the Harvest God Saturn. Much like we do for Christmas, the Romans really anticipated their celebrations, starting preparations at least one week before the 17th. This happened because during the celebration week all businesses were to be closed, so everyone had to guarantee they had all they needed before it started.
On the early morning of the first day, people would line up in the streets wearing bright colors and freedman caps, which looked remarkably like elf or Santa hats, and would hope to see the parade of sacrificial bulls headed to the Saturn temple. Once they arrived and the sacrifice was offered to Saturn, celebrations began.
The week of Saturnalia was an extremely joyful time for the Roman people as music was played at all moments, people drank and danced, and everyone was treated equally. During the seven days, slaves weren’t mistreated, and were even served by their owners sometimes. This was the week when everyone was happy. One remarkable tradition was the crowning of the King of Saturnalia, who could be a member of any class and had to be obeyed by the citizens during their rule (although they could not create any serious rules and would be de-throned right after the end of the holidays).
One of the traditions that is most closely associated with Christmas is the costume of gift giving. People would buy presents for their family and friends, often giving them special wax candles that symbolized the arrival of a golden age, which would be the upcoming year. Overall, we can see Saturnalia's relation to Christmas in many ways, but perhaps its most important influence is in the emphasis of spreading joy and celebrating together.
Another major pagan holiday in which several connections to Christmas are notable is Yule. It was celebrated in Northern Europe by the Germanic people during the Middle Ages, and it would last 12 days and nights, starting on December 21st and carried through January 1st. The northern holiday included several traditions, such as feasting, singing, and dancing.
One of the most important symbols of Yule was the burning of logs. Every night of Yule people would burn a log of ash, and each spark from the log symbolized the life of a new calf in the year to come. This tradition also symbolized life overcoming death, with the light of fire sending away the darkness of winter.
Several Yule traditions show high similarity to traditions we know today, including mistletoes, decorating homes with holly, hanging wreaths, and carolling. The Norse people believed that hanging mistletoes protected their homes from the thunder and evils of the world. It was also believed that the plant represented the female element and that it could be an amulet for fertility, helping couples add new members to their families in the year to come. On another hand, holly was seen as the masculine element and pagans would decorate their doors and windows with them to capture evil spirits and keep them away from their homes. Wreaths, in the Yule's beliefs, symbolizes infinity of goodwill, friendship, and joy.
The German people also had traditions that resembled our famous and loved Christmas Tree. The Yule tree was a very important pagan symbol; it was set up in the center of the village and decorated with gifts, pinecones, berries, fruit, and symbols that were considered sacred for Norse gods and goddesses. The tree originally represented the tree of life, and was an evergreen tree because pagans believed that, due to their green never fading, they had powers and could defeat demons. The Christmas tree that we know was finally incorporated into Christian faith in the 1500s introduced by Germans who celebrated the special date.
In the end, many of the traditions we recognize today as uniquely Christmas are actually much older and have origins in Roman and Nordic festivals. And as we unwrap our gifts, decorate our trees, and gather with our loved ones, it is easy to forget how diverse the roots of Christmas are and the true meaning behind what we celebrate. Besides being a Christian holiday, Christmas is a blend of traditions from all around the world. Yet despite its diverse origins, all cultures had one main goal for the holidays: to spread light, warmth, and joy during the darkest days of the year.
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