The War on Christmas

It has become quite fashionable in recent years for "Christians" to decry the "War on Christmas." This usually means that Christians have felt that somehow the celebration of Christmas has been separated from its Christian meaning.......or as they would put it its "true Christian meaning." I am here to debunk the true Christian meaning of Christmas and to claim my/our right as a non-Christian to celebrate this fabulous holiday.

It is always quite difficult to make a case about what it is "Christians" do, because whatever it is some Christian faction cites, another opposes and says, "Christians would never do that." There is a Christian BDSM Listserv on the web comprised primarily of Anglican BDSM-ers and if you cite any of the actions of the Fundamentalist right, or of conservative Catholics, etc. they decry those and declare them to be non Christian..........while of course their beleifes are entirely "Christian." Of course the fundamentalists would likewise proclaim these extremely liberal Anglicans to be infidels, etc. So discussing anything as being Christian or not is like trying to capture fog in a grocery bag.

What follows here are quotes from (non-theologian) historians about the origins of the holiday we celebrate today as "Christmas."

"The biblical narrative of Jesus' birth gives no date for the event, though it more likely occurred in spring than in winter. Saint Luke tells us that shepherds were "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night" -- shepherds guarded their flocks day and night only at lambing time, in the spring; in winter, the animals were kept in corrals, unwatched. The idea of celebrating the Nativity on December 25 was first suggested early in the fourth century, a clever move on the part of Church fathers, who wished to eclipse the festivities of a rival pagan religion, Mithraism, which celebrated the birth of their sun god Mithras on December 25, and that threatened the existence of Christianity. It is important to note that for two centuries after Christ's birth, no one knew, and few people cared, exactly when he was born. Birthdays were unimportant; death days counted. Besides, Christ was divine and his natural birth was deliberately played down. In fact, the Church even announced at one point that it was sinful to contemplate observing Christ's birthday "as though He were a King Pharoah." On December 25, pagan Romans, still in the majority, celebrated Natalis Solis Invincti, "Birthday of the Invincible Sun God," Mithras. The Mithras cult originated in Persia and rooted itself in the Roman world in the first century B.C.E. By the year 274 C.E., Mithraism was so popular with the masses that Emperor Aurelian proclaimed it the official state religion. In the early 300s, the cult seriously threatened Christianity, and for a time, it was unclear which faith would emerge victorious. Church fathers debated their options. It was well known that Roman patricians and plebians alike enjoyed festivals of a protacted nature. The Church, then, needed a December celebration. Thus, to offer converts an occasion in which to be pridefully celebratory, the Church officially recognized Christ's birth. And to offer head-on competition to the sun worshipers' popular feast, the Church located the Nativity on December 25. The mode of observance would be characteristically prayerful: a Mass; in fact, Christ's Mass. As one theologian wrote in the 320s: We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of him who made it. Although centuries later, social scientists would write of the psychological power of group celebrations -- the unification of ranks, the solidification of collective identity, the reinforcement of common objectives -- the principle had long been intuitively obvious. The celebration of Christmas took permanent hold in the Western world in 337, when the Roman emperor, Constantine was baptized, uniting for the first time the Crown and the Church. Christianity had become the official state religion in 313. And in 354, Bishop Liberius of Rome reiterated the importance of celebrating not only Christ's death but also his birth. "


Prior to the fourth century and the convening of the Council of Nicea in 325 C. E. there was no Christmas, just as there was no virgin birth, Christ being the son of God, resurrection, holy Trinity, Easter, or Christmas. All of these were incorporations of pagan theology and more importantly holidays that were necessary to get the populace of that time to "swallow" a merger between the traditional Roman pagan religion and its newly morphed Christian/pagan hybrid religion. None of these precepts have any basis in any historically valid teachings of Christ, or his apostles. They are all fictional adptations to resolve political conflicts and market the new religion to both factions.

A further description of this process of the 'absorption" of Rome's pagan state religion follows:

"'Put the Christ back in Christmas’, we’re always told. ‘Jesus is the Reason for the Season’ they keep saying. Good people speak these things, earnestly and frequently. Unfortunately for such pious folk, Christmas is related to Christianity in the same limited way as Caesar’s wife is to history: only by marriage. Christ was never really in Christmas. In fact, when you celebrate Christmas by eating too much, drinking too much, feeling up the boss’ wife at the office party, driving the porcelain bus and/or spending a fortune on presents almost, but not quite, entirely unsuitable for the person to whom you gave them, you come rather closer to the real spirit of Christmas.
In the early days of the Church, Jesus Christ got along fine without a birthday. The Gospel writers were as unsure about his birth date as we are now: Matthew tells us that Herod the Great was on the Judæan throne when He was born, and then proceeds to narrate Herod’s massacre of the innocents. Luke, by contrast, times Christ’s birth to coincide with a Roman census. Herod died in 4 BC. Governor Quirinius carried out his census of Judæa in A.D. 6. Considerable interpretive latitude was thus already present in the narrative. No doubt the early Christians knew it and (sensibly) chose to leave well alone. In any case, birthday parties were worldly, pagan affairs, and Christians did not want to associate the good name of their saviour with any of them.
But when Christianity became a faith with claims to universality, the official religion of Constantine’s Empire, this lack of a birthday became something of an embarrassment. Besides, people still expected their twelve days off in December.
Lo! A multitude, handsome and well-dressed, Numerous as those on the benches, makes Its way all along the rows. Some carry basketsWith breads and napkins and luxurious fare,Others serve languorous wine in plenty…
Rome’s Saturnalia was a curious mixture of ancient fertility rite and social event. It celebrated the winter solstice, a time when people believed, perhaps, that they needed to make themselves a warm place. It also recalled - for all Romans - a mythical golden age in the distant past when the world was truly merry, a world without war, slavery or hunger.
Romans decorated their doorposts with holly and kissed under the mistletoe. Shops and businesses closed and people greeted one another in the street with shouts of Io Saturnalia! On one day of the twelve, masters waited on their slaves at table while, in the legions, officers served the ranks. A rose was hung from the ceiling in banqueting rooms, and anything said or done sub rosa went no further than the front door. That banqueting could get out of hand is attested to by Seneca, who tells of slaves detailed especially to clean up the spew. The government - in both Rome and the provinces - often laid on free public feasts. In the poem by Statius, we’re told how the emperor Domitian held one such feast in the colosseum, somehow combining (and the organisation can only be marvelled at) vast quantities of food with entertainment. The Romans, I should add, had no weekend, no useless and unproductive Saturdays and Sundays, so they looked forward to their sanguinary feriae with considerable relish. The festival of Saturnalia was a time, too, for family dinners, for parties, for amours, for socialising, for wishing others well.
And, of course, the Romans also did something for which the proprietors of department stores the world over should be eternally grateful. They exchanged gifts. Originally (before Rome’s citizens acquired great wealth) these were small earthenware statuettes known as sigillaria. By the end of the first century, however, Martial provides a list of such gifts - with accompanying decorations in verse - that reads for all the world like the David Jones Christmas catalogue: backscratchers, socks, medicine chests, comforters, woolly slippers, board-games, gold-inlaid dishes, jewellery - among other things.
That the commercial aspects of Christmas are Roman in origin should not cause surprise. ‘No one in Gaul ever does business without the involvement of a Roman citizen,’ boasts leading lawyer (and later politician) Cicero in one of his defence speeches, ‘there is not a denarius jingling in Gaul which has not been recorded in the account books of Roman citizens’. Set into the mosaic floors of a number of homes in Pompeii are the phrases Hello Profit! and Profit is Happiness! The Romans were probably history’s first unregenerate capitalists.
Now, as the shade of night steals on
What song heralds the scattering of largess!
Here are young women stirred to lust, easily bought;
Here is all that wins favour with skill and beauty
Buxom Lydians, cymbals of Cádiz, shouting Syrians…
Statius’ picture is a beguiling one, and it is easy to forget that these same Romans could also be rather correct, formal people, militaristic and bloody-minded all at once. Saturnalia, like Christmas, was a time of licence, when people would wink indulgently at each other’s foibles or look the other way. We’ve all heard horror stories about somebody’s brother’s friend’s office Christmas party where the brother’s friend hopes that the boss, his accountant, the head of department, the fellow from the tax office - whoever - will have as little memory of the insults they received as the person who did the insulting.
Christmas is a venerable pagan festival, on a sort of permanent loan from Ancient Rome, and is, perhaps, the very antithesis of Christianity in the lines of its pagan decent. Some of the churches know this, and have left Christmas to the revellers, appalled as much by the Teutonic Christmas tree (which has its origins in Germanic and Norse tree worship) as by the libidinous connotations of too much wine and too little thought, and by the merry jingle of all those cash registers (well, merry beeping these days. The good old capitalistic bell of yore has gone, it seems, the way of the blue suede shoe).
How many years shall this festival abide?Age will not destroy so sacred a season!While the hills of Latium remain,While Father Tiber flows, while Rome standsWith the Capitol you have made ."

I have no problem with Christians celebrating Christmas as they choose. While it would likely be more historically correct for me to celebrate Christmas as Saturnalia, the reality of this culture is that what we celebrate is Christmas. I do however believe I have no reason to have to celebrate Christmas as a Christian holiday. It is estimated that the celebration of December 25 as the ultimate annual holiday goes back 8 to 10 centuries before Christ. It was celebrated with feasting, drinking and evergreens and red berries, and gifts, singing songs naked in the streets, and, yes, bachanalian orgies, including the flagellation of women (an exceptionally fine Christmas tradition.:)


I claim Christmas as my favorite holiday and decry Christ's birth as anything more than an entertaining myth. I love the music and the food and drink, and fully intend to resurrect flogging as a tremendously potent aspect of commemorating the season.



There has been a war on Christmas, or more correctly a war an Saturnalia, which has been mounted by Christianity for the last 1682 years. Christmas is not the true holiday tradition at all but a bastardization of pagan winter solstice festivities to market a new hybrid religion to heal a politically threatening scism that was occurring in the first quarter of the fourth century between adherents to the old traditional Roman (previoulsy Greek, previously Egyptian, previously Mesopotamian) pagan religion and the upstart but rapidly growing Christian cultists that was threatening the empire under Emperor Constantine.



Merry Christmas to those of you who are traditionally Christian. Congratulations on yet another celebration of the birth of your saviour and blessed Emmanuel.


To the rest of us. Do not let the Christians, in their presumptious arrogance, steal this holiday from us once again. As they stole this holiday 1682 years ago and perverted its puposes and beliefs, there is no reason we should not be able to return the favor. IO SATURNALIA!!!! Let the feasting and licentiousness begin:)


Tom


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