# Christmas has nothing to do with ancient Roman holidays **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 13, 2019, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791 "2019-12-13T03:54:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/1 "2019-12-13T03:54:53Z")
Ok, around now we read or hear this meme - on FB, here maybe or anywhere around the internet or even radio or TV: “Jesus wasnt born on Dec 25. The ancient Christians picked that day to compete with the ancient Roman Mitraic Holiday of Saturnalia, also celebrated on Dec 25. Saturnalia was a time of great merryment, with gift giving, parties and everything we associate with Christmas. Note the Similarity with the Solstice, “the celebration the Sun reborn” vs “the celebration the Son reborn”!” It’s all wrong and all bullshit- except maybe the part about “Jesus wasnt born on Dec 25” because honestly we have no idea. Saturnalia wasnt about Mitra, it was about (oddly, eh) Saturn. It wasnt celebrated on Dec 25, but the 17th (however, the Roman calendar being what it was, things moved about). Yes, as Wiki puts it: _“The holiday was celebrated with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms: gambling was permitted, and masters provided table service for their slaves as it was seen as a time of liberty for both slaves and freedmen alike.[1] A common custom was the election of a “King of the Saturnalia”, who would give orders to people, which were to be followed and preside over the merrymaking. The gifts exchanged were usually gag gifts or small figurines made of wax or pottery known as sigillaria. The poet Catullus called it “the best of days”.[2]”_ Note the types of gifts. Saturnalia was more Mardi gras. Then, if you were gonna compete with a Dec 17th holiday, you wouldnt pick Dec 25th. But altho the ancient Christian picked Dec 25th in the 3rd century , calling it “celebrating” would be a gross exaggeration. It was a “feast day” which all you catholic know, has nothing actually to do with feasting. The person (usually a saint) whose day it is remembered on their individual feast days with special mention, prayers, and possibly a scripture reading. Not until the time of Charlemagne , many hundreds of years later, (and after saturnalia hadnt been celebrated for over 500 years) was Christmas actually a time for merrymaking. So, the Christians didnt pick Dec 25th to "compete’ with saturnalia (which was dying out by that time anyway) as a riotous fun day of drinking, gambling and foolishness is not gonna be outdone by a day of quiet prayer and maybe lighting a candle. Easter was the big holiday, Christmas was pretty small potatoes. As for that _the celebration the Sun reborn" vs “the celebration the Son reborn”!"_, that pun only works in English, otherwise it’s _sol_ and\* filius.\* The Roman version of the cult of Mitra came _after_ Christianity, and it was a secret cult in any case (what we know about it for sure wouldnt fill a small pamphlet).And the Solstice is the 21st, not the 25th (to be sure, the Roman calendar was off by several days so stuff moved around). Why did they pick the 25th? A very early Christian tradition said that the day when Mary was given the news she would bear the baby Jesus (called the Annunciation) was on March 25th - and it’s still celebrated today on same day. Nine months after the 25th March is the 25th of December. March 25th was also the day that Jesus died on when he was an adult. Numerology. It kinda makes sense. But it was backwards calculation, not “Hey, lets compete with saturnalia!”. Mind you, Dec 25th is likely wrong, but it’s as good as any other day, so why not? So, dont believe the UL. Mind you, many Christmas _traditions_- holly, mistletoe, wreaths, the tree, yule logs and what not were folk (or even (shhh) pagan ) traditions we appropriated. So there is a little element of Yule in there. But no Saturnalia. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/2 "2019-12-13T08:30:49Z")
I don’t know, I just thought a midwinter festival, to warm you up, and to celebrate the worst of the cold weather being half over, was what it was really about. It didn’t need a name or holy day, or even a specific date, for that to be a common occurrence across multiple cultures. Not sure anybody knows any confirmed dates associated with Mary or Jesus as specific as March 25th, considering they may not even have been real people who existed. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/3 "2019-12-13T09:40:25Z")
You posted the same thing last year, **DrDeth**. [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=867798](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=867798) \ ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/4 "2019-12-13T14:11:21Z")
But Santa Claus is still real, right? RIGHT??.. Do NOT ruin this for me. ---
**Author:** ![Yakamaniac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a5b964/32.png) [@Yakamaniac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yakamaniac)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/5 "2019-12-13T14:16:42Z")
Because the winter solstice can fall as late as December 23rd, December 25th is the first day of any year that one can be sure that the sun is no longer lower in the sky at noon. That date was considered the beginning of the Yule festival, which was so widely celebrated that the early Christian church decided to incorporate into the list of official church holidays. The birth of Christ was chosen as the reason for the celebration, because the pagans believed that their god was reborn at the Yule, and so Christ being born at the Yule would fit into the pagan beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/6 "2019-12-13T14:23:36Z")
From another thread: > [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > The thing that seems to escape both the Keep Christ in Christmas types and the evangelical atheists is that Christmas is a mashup of two separate events: Christmas, _per se_, an important but definitely secondary celebration in the church calendar (Easter being, of course, the Big Deal), and the big year-end party, which, whether you call it Saturnalia, Yule, or Festivus, has really nothing whatsoever to do with the other. > > As a moderately believing Catholic, I would be quite happy to separate the two events, and let the churches celebrate the birth of Christ, and let the merchants ring their cash registers for the Big Show. Not sure how to go about making that happen, however. Maybe the wester4n churches should adopt the Eastern church’s calendar and celebrate it on January 7? ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/7 "2019-12-13T14:38:13Z")
Christmas is a hodge-podge of both Roman tradition from Saturnalia. Mithraic celebrations of “dies natalis solis invicti” AND northern European Germanic/Norse Jul/Yule traditions. And Christianity in general has been pretty notorious for syncretism, i.e. adapting local gods as manifestations of saints or angels, and co-opting pagan festivals with similar Christian ones. So it’s not surprising at all that some enterprising early Church people decided to co-opt Saturnalia and/or Yule by placing Christmas right smack-dab at the same time. Same thing happened with Easter & most other spring fertility/rebirth festivals. Stuff like eating ham or roast pork at Christmas is a direct pagan adaptation- it was part of Yule to slaughter a pig as part of the celebrations, and that’s carried forward as a modern-day tradition of eating ham, for example. Or eggs/bunnies at Easter. It turns out that Dies natalis solis invicti (“Birth of the unconquerable sun”) from Mithraism was also celebrated at the same time as Saturnalia during the year, and later in the empire, the old worship had significantly waned, making the organized celebration of Christmas more of a reaction to this holiday rather than Saturnalia. Here’s an article that goes in to it: [Did the Romans Invent Christmas? | History Today](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/did-romans-invent-christmas) ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/8 "2019-12-13T14:38:46Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > You posted the same thing last year, **DrDeth**. > > [https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=867798](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=867798) It’s taking longer than we thought? ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/9 "2019-12-13T15:18:50Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > But Santa Claus is still real, right? RIGHT??.. > > Do NOT ruin this for me. This atheist believes in Santa. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/10 "2019-12-13T15:40:27Z")
Santa is real, Jesus wasn’t divine. Simple right? Oh, and Santa is really Odin who was also Gandalf, so QED Christmas is all about celebrating Gandalf saving us. 🆒 So seriously, Christmas is a fairly minor religious holiday that was marketed to replace the various winter festivals that took place around the Solstice. There is really no denying this part. Not unlike St Bridget replacing the Goddess Bridget. (Brigid). ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/11 "2019-12-13T15:50:59Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > Santa is real, Jesus wasn’t divine. Simple right? Oh, and Santa is really Odin who was also Gandalf, so QED Christmas is all about celebrating Gandalf saving us. 🆒 No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong. Santa lives at the North Pole, but the North Pols isn’t real. Jesus was real, and human, but was not the son of god until he was adopted by god after his death, and so ascended bodily into heaven as a newly reborn divine entity. Santa is Odin, yes, but Gandalf is merely a representation of Dumbledore in another realm. The One True Wizard. ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/12 "2019-12-13T16:14:44Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > But Santa Claus is still real, right? RIGHT??.. Yes, Virginia. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/13 "2019-12-13T17:06:23Z")
> [@QuickSilver](#): > > But Santa Claus is still real, right? RIGHT??.. > > Do NOT ruin this for me. Yes, Virginia. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/14 "2019-12-13T17:11:41Z")
> [@Yakamaniac](#): > > Because the winter solstice can fall as late as December 23rd, December 25th is the first day of any year that one can be sure that the sun is no longer lower in the sky at noon. That date was considered the beginning of the Yule festival, which was so widely celebrated that the early Christian church decided to incorporate into the list of official church holidays. The birth of Christ was chosen as the reason for the celebration, because the pagans believed that their god was reborn at the Yule, and so Christ being born at the Yule would fit into the pagan beliefs. The Christians didnt know anything about yule when they picked Dec 25th. In fact we also dont even know \*today \*that “pagans believed that their god was reborn at the Yule”. It is true that the Christian Church, when they tried to convert the pagans \*around a thousand years later \*did try to show a connection between Yule and Christmas. > **[Yule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule)** > > Yule (also called Jul, jól or joulu) is a winter festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples that was incorporated into Christmas during the Christianisation of the Germanic peoples. In present times adherents of some new religious movements (such as Modern Germanic paganism) celebrate Yule independently of the Christian festival. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the heathen Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht ("Mothers' Night"). The te... ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/15 "2019-12-13T17:20:02Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Christmas is a hodge-podge of both Roman tradition from Saturnalia. Mithraic celebrations of “dies natalis solis invicti” AND northern European Germanic/Norse Jul/Yule traditions. > > And Christianity in general has been pretty notorious for syncretism, i.e. adapting local gods as manifestations of saints or angels, and co-opting pagan festivals with similar Christian ones. So it’s not surprising at all that some enterprising early Church people decided to co-opt Saturnalia and/or Yule by placing Christmas right smack-dab at the same time. Same thing happened with Easter & most other spring fertility/rebirth festivals. > > Stuff like eating ham or roast pork at Christmas is a direct pagan adaptation- it was part of Yule to slaughter a pig as part of the celebrations, and that’s carried forward as a modern-day tradition of eating ham, for example. Or eggs/bunnies at Easter. > > It turns out that Dies natalis solis invicti (“Birth of the unconquerable sun”) from Mithraism was also celebrated at the same time as Saturnalia during the year, and later in the empire, the old worship had significantly waned, making the organized celebration of Christmas more of a reaction to this holiday rather than Saturnalia. > > Here’s an article that goes in to it: [Did the Romans Invent Christmas? | History Today](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/did-romans-invent-christmas) By the time Christmas was actually celebrated as a time of merrymaking, gifting and etc, Saturnalia and _dies natalis solis invicti_ were long forgotten, being some 700 years in the past. And the early Christians had never heard of Yule. We also dont know anything about “part of Yule to slaughter a pig as part of the celebrations” and we know NOTHING about Eostre except one line by The Bede: "_Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance."_ That’s it, in total. Note nothing there about eggs or bunnies. That’s just a guess. and again, Roman Mithraism came AFTER Christianity , not before.Mithraism copies from Christianity not the other way around. In any case, altho Christianity was indeed happy to absorb traditions and pagan festivals, and no doubt many Christmas traditions had their roots in paganism, \*\*the date of Christmas wasn’t chosen to compete with anything. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/16 "2019-12-13T17:21:09Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > It’s taking longer than we thought? I know, we get the same thing every year. I at least rewrote it. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/17 "2019-12-13T18:57:04Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Stuff like eating ham or roast pork at Christmas is a direct pagan adaptation- it was part of Yule to slaughter a pig as part of the celebrations, and that’s carried forward as a modern-day tradition of eating ham, for example. Or eggs/_bunnies at Easter._ Ital mine. You eat bunnies at Easter??! You monster! ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/18 "2019-12-13T19:50:18Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > You eat bunnies at Easter??! You monster! Back in the day we were content with sacrificing a few schmucks to Xipe Totec and dancing around wearing their flayed skins. Poor bunnies. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/19 "2019-12-13T19:55:17Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Roman Mithraism came AFTER Christianity , not before.Mithraism copies from Christianity not the other way around. One problem with this: nobody really knows when Romans started following Mithraism; they certainly became aware of the concept when Alexander conquered Persia circa 330 BC. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2019, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791/20 "2019-12-13T22:53:24Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > One problem with this: nobody really knows when Romans started following Mithraism; they certainly became aware of the concept when Alexander conquered Persia circa 330 BC. Yeah but Roman Mithraism is pretty much completely different, being more of a Military cult. Best guess is that it started around 120AD, the first mention of it is when a Christian complained they were copying them. Nothing is before AD 100. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/christmas-has-nothing-to-do-with-ancient-roman-holidays/844791.md?page=2)