Theology
December 5, 2017
In the Christian Bible’s New Testament books, all four of the gospel writers include an account of the death and resurrection of Christ, yet only Matthew and Luke make mention of His birth. With so little Biblical information written about the day He was born, how did Christians come to commemorate December 25 as the birth of Christ, and why has His birth come to be celebrated with such devotion?
Over the centuries, Christian theologians and historians have had more than one theory about the origins of Christmas according to Fr. Richard Rutherford, C.S.C., professor emeritus of theology at the University of Portland. Rutherford says that, though there is “no hard data,” as early as during the second century, CE, there are references to celebrating the birth of Jesus. Rutherford explains that after Christians were allowed to practice their religion openly in the fourth century, celebrating Christ’s birth on December 25 became “well established.”
Why 25 December? Rutherford states that the most popular answer is no longer accepted as the most accurate; that December 25 was chosen because Christians were deliberately “Christianizing a pagan feast.” The birth of the unconquered light, the “sol invictus” was a Roman festival celebrated at the beginning of the new solstice on December 21, which on the Julian calendar in use at that time was our December 25. For centuries, historians viewed this pre-existing pagan celebration as the reason this date was selected.
According to Rutherford, in the last 50 plus years, liturgical historians found a different path to December 25 emerging in early Church writings. These reveal that the the Church celebrated the conception of Jesus on March 25, the same day believed to mark God’s creation of the world. In time this date came to commemorate the feast of the Annunciation, when Christians believe an angel told the Virgin Mary she would conceive a child by the Holy Spirit who would be the Son of God. Rutherford explains that, if Jesus was conceived on March 25, the Christ child would be born nine months later, on December 25.
The celebration of Easter, that is, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, is a much older feast day that also influenced the belief that Christ was conceived on March 25, Rutherford says. The early Church believed Christ was crucified in March. According to Rutherford, in the ancient Church, it was believed that Jesus died on the same day in the same in month that he was conceived. In fact, Rutherford states, “a rare early image depicts the Christ child arriving at Christmas riding on a cross.” To early Christians, the dates of the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus were all intertwined.
As an explanation of why the celebration of Christmas seems to have taken on more significance than the celebration of Easter, Rutherford speculates, “if you consider the Mystery of the incarnation, if that hadn’t happened, there would be no cross, and no resurrection, so that’s the focal point.”
Christmas Traditions
Regarding the inclusion of a tree in Christmas celebrations, Rutherford explains that Christianity, which began in the Mediterranean world, was spreading into Northern Europe in the fourth through sixth centuries. Here cultural customs already in place included using a green tree to mark the celebration of the mid-winter solstice. “The green gave hope for the new life to come, because you’ve got the darkest days ending with December 21,“ says Rutherford. When Christianity spread to these regions and and along with it, Christmas, using a live tree made sense to these early Christians, as a “symbol of the hope of life” that the tree represented.
Another Christmas tradition, using the colors red and green to decorate, may have emerged from the use of the holly bush as a symbol of Christmas in England. Rutherford explains that the word “holly” derives from the word “holy.” Using holly made perfect sense to Christians as the green of the plant symbolized hope, and the red of the berries symbolized the blood of Christ that would be shed before rising on Easter.
The arrival of the Magi in the gospel story is one inspiration for gift giving at Christmas. However, Romans were already in the practice of giving gifts at the time of their mid-winter celebrations. “In the western Mediterranean, in very early Christianity, the Roman influence is big, so they were accustomed to giving gifts at mid-winter. Then when we think of Christmas, and the fact that ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,’ then gift giving all connects,” says Rutherford.
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