Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?

You've probably seen the post. It seems to circle back around every year, right about the time the church Christmas tree goes up.

"Christmas isn't even Christian. It's a pagan holiday. This church is pagan!"

If you clicked on this article, you've probably heard this at some point from friends, family, coworkers, or that one weird neighbor.

It's a fair question. So let's actually look at it.

The short answer

No, Christmas isn't a pagan holiday in disguise.

It actually did start out as a Christian celebration of Jesus' birth. Yes, it grew up surrounded by (and persecuted by) cultures that had plenty of pagan festivals. But living next door to something isn't the same as being it.

And here's what surprises most people: the "pagan Christmas" idea isn't ancient. It mostly took shape about 300 years ago, among Protestant writers who were suspicious of anything that felt too Catholic. It's been repeated so often since then that it feels like settled fact. It isn't.

So where did December 25 come from?

This is the fun part. Early Christians didn't start with a pagan calendar. They started with the cross.

Back in the early 200s, a lot of Christians believed Jesus died on March 25. There was also a common belief at the time that great figures died on the same day they were conceived, as if their lives came full circle.

So do the math:

• Jesus conceived on March 25
• Add nine months
• Born on December 25

That's it. No sun worship required.

Want proof that this was really how they thought? Many Christians in the East dated Jesus' death to April 6 instead. Nine months later is January 6, and that's exactly the day they celebrated his birth. Different starting point, same math.

And Christians were working this out more than 100 years before Christmas became a big public holiday in Rome. This is the very principle behind Occam's razor: the simplest explanation is usually the right one, and here it fits the evidence best.

"But what about Saturnalia?"

Saturnalia was a rowdy Roman festival with feasting and gift-giving, so it's easy to see why people connect the two.

One problem: it wasn't on December 25. It started on December 17 and, at its longest, wrapped up by December 23.

And early Christians weren't exactly fans. Around AD 200, a church leader named Tertullian scolded believers for joining in. That doesn't sound like a church trying to copy the party.

"Okay, but what about the sun god?"

This is the big one. The story goes like this: in AD 274, the Roman emperor Aurelian created a festival for Sol Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun," on December 25, and Christians later took over the date.

Here's the catch. Nothing from Aurelian's time actually says the sun festival was on December 25. The first record we have of a December 25 sun celebration comes from a Roman calendar made in AD 354, and that same calendar also lists Christ's birth on December 25.

In other words, we can't show the sun festival came first. Historians still debate it, but "Christians stole the sun god's birthday" is a guess, not a fact.

What's fair to admit

I don't want to oversell this, so let's be honest about a few things.

• We don't know Jesus' actual birthday. December 25 is a traditional date, not a birth certificate.
• By the 300s, December 25 did mean something to pagans too. Both celebrations show up on the same day in that Roman calendar.
• Some Christmas customs have mixed backgrounds. Things like evergreens and mistletoe each have their own story. We'll dig into those in a later post.

None of that makes Christmas pagan. It just means Christmas has a real history, lived out by real people in a messy world. Same as the rest of us.

The bottom line

Christmas didn't start as a pagan party with a Christian sticker on it. Early believers reached December 25 by thinking about Jesus' death and resurrection, and that tells you what the day was always about.

So go ahead and hang the lights. Christmas is, and always has been, a celebration of God coming near to us in Jesus.