In Rome, Saturnalia – honouring Saturn, the god of agriculture – began just before the winter solstice and continued for seven days. There was plenty of meat as animals were slaughtered so they wouldn’t need feeding over the winter, and home-brewed wine and beer was ready for drinking at Yuletide. In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated ‘Jul’ (Yule) from the winter solstice (21 December) for as long as it took for large logs to burn out, usually about 12 days.
But the reason why Pope Julius I picked 25 December was to appropriate pagan midwinter festivals and transform them into a Christian occasion. Not as a festival to celebrate the nativity, obviously.
Christmas is celebrated by Orthodox Christians on 7 January in Russia, Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Moldova and Montenegro.įact box 1 So there was no holiday season before the birth of Jesus? It took a while to catch on: Christmas wasn’t celebrated in England until the end of the sixth century, didn’t reach northern Europe until the end of the eighth century, and Christmas Day didn’t become a federal holiday in the US until 1870.Ģ5 December is the day that the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches celebrate Christmas, but many Orthodox Christians use the Julian calendar, which runs 13 days behind the standard international Gregorian calendar, for religious festivals. In the fourth century, Pope Julius I chose 25 December as the date of the Feast of the Nativity. “And in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields, and keeping watch over their flock by night.” (Luke 2:8) So how did it come to fall on 25 December ? Some people have suggested it was in the spring because of the custom of sending sheep into the fields at that time of year. The bible does not specify the date of Jesus’s birth. Shepherds and wise men brought birthday gifts. Months earlier, Mary had been visited by the Angel Gabriel and told she would give birth to a boy who she would name Jesus, and who would be the son of God. The short answer is that it’s a Christian festival that celebrates the birth of Jesus.Īccording to the nativity story, Mary and Joseph travelled from their home in Nazareth (in what is now Israel) to Bethlehem (in what is now the West Bank) to take part in a census.
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