A holly jolly holiday

Well, ‘tis the season again, bringing carols, trees, gifts, holly, some time off and a heightened sense of anxiety. Have you written your Christmas cards? Do you have gifts for everyone? Do you have enough time to make it to all your social engagements while still having enough time to prepare for the big day?

I love Christmas time and those first few snowfalls, when everything is frosted over with the season’s icing. The days get shorter and the nights get long, and everything seems to descend into a twilight illuminated by soft Christmas lights and candles. Trite though it may seem, everything feels magical, almost as though all emotion is heightened. The intensity of feeling - both positive and negative - permeates the season.

But how did Christmas come to be Christmas - as we know it?

Most people know at least a little bit of “the reason for the season,” but not a lot of attention is given to how the “reason” developed historically. Often, people draw attention to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, stating that this is what is being celebrated - whether we know it or not.

But Jesus wasn’t necessarily born in December. There is some debate over the actual season, and even the year, in which he was born, but scholars have argued that Jesus was born sometime in the spring.

With the development of Christianity as an organized religion, there was the development of a liturgical calendar to ensure that the church was united in its celebrations. A big part of the development of the liturgy was appropriating (and “redeeming”) pagan or secular holidays.

In fact, Dec. 25 corresponds most closely with the Winter Solstice or the Roman holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (roughly translated as “the birthday of the unconquered Sun”). The celebration of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti was placed on the Winter Solstice, already a popular festival, and celebrated the end of the Sun’s retreat to darkness. The Sun, at the Winter Solstice, proves itself to be “unconquered” as it reverses its southward retreat and the days begin to lengthen again. This celebration included gift-giving, lights, greenery (Christmas tree?) and feasting, all big parts of how Christmas is celebrated today.

An early reference to the date of the Jesus’ birth as being celebrated on Dec. 25 is found in the Chronography of 354, a manuscript from Rome in 354 AD. It is possible that because of the rocky beginnings of Christianity, a time when there was extensive persecutions, that Christians chose a time of year when there was already a large celebration in order to conduct their own celebration in secret.

For a long period, Christian scholars accepted that Christmas was the actual date of Jesus’ birth, until the early eighteenth century, when scholars began proposing alternate explanations. Isaac Newton suggested the Dec. 25 was chosen to correspond to the Winter Solstice festivals. Paul Ernst Jablonski argued that the celebration of Jesus’ birth was specifically chosen to correspond to Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and, by its association with the pagan festival, debased any true celebration. Another scholar, an astronomer, found solar evidence of the appearance of a star, which he argued corresponded to the appearance of the star at Jesus’ birth as recorded in the Bible, placing the actual birth date of Jesus in March.

Regardless of the controversy over the actual date of Jesus’ birth and any person’s insistence that Christmas be kept “pure” as a religious celebration, the fact of the matter is that Christmas has developed culturally over the past 2000 years. The first Christmas occurred without an evergreen tree or mistletoe or gift-giving.

The current form of Christmas celebrations is a product of centuries of tradition, whether constructing a religious calendar, appropriating secular holidays and customs or trying to find the truth of the matter. Christmas has been produced by a variety of cultures (both religious and non-), over a long period of time and through the force of convention, political enforcement and, most recently, advertisement.

The thing about the Christmas season, as it has developed in mainstream Western culture, is the breadth of the celebration. What has most notably developed - apart from the rampant consumerism and the expectation to “spread the holiday cheer” and the injunction to “be jolly” - is the focus on friends and family. Christmas can be seen as a holiday of love, a time that brings people together - even people of different backgrounds or religious orientations. For instance, the Winter Solstice is still celebrated; so is Kwanzaa (from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1) and Hanukkah (the eight-day Jewish holiday beginning at sundown on Friday, Dec. 11 this year). The holiday season seems to begin in early December and float right on into the new year, landing on the twelfth day of Christmas, Jan. 6 (the day of Eastern Orthodox Christmas and Epiphany).

So instead of getting caught up in the details of how exactly you ought to celebrate or, even worse, how others should celebrate, remember the magic of the season: Christmas has come from many different traditions and coincides with a great many more, so just embrace the difference. Love is still there. Peace is still a goal. And there is all kinds of magic in it.

Happy Holidays to all, different and alike!