Good [insert time of day here], students. My name is xHWA. I will be your defense against the dark arts teacher this term. Today, I have a super concise article to help you defend yourself against the most popular anti-Christmas claims.
A friend sent a video made by some guys talking about origins of Christmas trees. The hosts mentioned a couple, like St. Boniface and Passion Plays. I didn't watch the full video (after so many years of doing this, I rarely watch long videos because they just review what I've already seen 1,000 times). Instead, I went to the comments section to see what flak they received. That's where I prefer to rut around. I get a kick out of seeing the objections roll in form back seat scholars. They're always the same. You can count on it. The top five are almost always these:
- Nimrod and Semiramis
- Jeremiah 10
- Saturnalia
- Solstice festivals
- Constantine
It's odd to me how many people fall for these. Everything you need has been available for decades now, or much longer. The most difficult one to answer out of all of these is Saturnalia, and it's not really all that difficult to answer. How ironic that most of them say, "Look it up." Well, we did! And here's what we found. In short --
All of those are false. Fake. Fraudulent. Phony.
Nimrod and Semiramis - completely fictitious. Not a shred of evidence whatsoever in support, and every reason in the world to ignore it. All this Nimrod nonsense comes from Alexander Hislop. His material was demonstrated to be false the very decade he published it. You can't even find Nimrod's real name in history, let alone particular details of his life. There are multiple options, but who can know? And Semiramis - she lived over 1,000 years after Nimrod. Depending on what identity you choose for Nimrod, it could be almost 2,000 after. Awful hard to marry and have kids with those timeframes.
(See "The Babylon Connection" and "On Nimrod and Christmas Trees" and "Nimrod's Birthday Was January 6?" for more.)
Jeremiah 10 - false. Jeremiah mentions trees and gold, and people conclude Christmas tree. But the context of Jeremiah, taken together with nearly identical depictions in Isaiah, show clearly the item in Jeremiah 10 is a carved idol god. An idol god, carved, into a human form with a mouth and feet, overlayed in beaten gold, dressed, set up, prayed to and looked to for help, is not a Christmas tree by any stretch of the imagination. Can we find a tradition in the Middle East around 600BC that resembles the Christmas tree? No. So, it's bunk in imagery and from lack of evidence.
(See "Jeremiah 10 and Christmas Trees?" and "Jeremiah 10 Then and Again" and "A Dialogue on Jeremiah 10" for more.)
Saturnalia - fallacious. Christmas does not come from Saturnalia. Saturnalia was on December 17th. After Caesar's calendar reforms, it ran to the 19th. At its longest, and only for a short while, it lasted to the 23rd. At no time was Saturnalia ever on the 24th or 25th. Saturnalia did not merge with Christmas; it merged backwards in the month with Bruma, on November 24th. Only one tradition from Saturnalia made it into Christmas, but never on Christmas day, and that is the inversion of social order. The "Lord of Misrule" tradition, where a servant becomes the master for a day, was usually done on the 12th day of Christmas - January 5. Gift giving at Christmas does not come from Saturnalia, either. It comes from New Year. Gift giving wasn't done on Christmas day until the 1800s. Romans decorated with greenery swags at Saturnalia, sure enough. But Romans decorated with swags all the time. Decorating was not specific to Saturnalia. Google "Roman fresco" and see for yourself. Most of them have greenery swags of some kind; usually laurel. It was year-round. If anyone says, "I'm not honoring the nativity of our Lord and Savior, whose birth is the second greatest miracle in mankind's history, because of greenery," well then that's more of a matter of priorities.
(See "The Plain Truth About December 25" for more.)
Solstice festivals - fraudulent. Christmas is not nor was it ever on the actual solstice. December 25 was the traditional date of the solstice in Rome, but only because Julius Caesar set it that way when he reformed the calendar. Did you notice the solstice is on December 21? That's because Caesar's calendar lost a year every 130 years or so. Christmas is not a solstice festival. Rome had no solstice festival. There was no festival on December 25 until after it became associated with Jesus. December 25 was not chosen because of any festival. There was nothing for them to steal from. We have records from Hippolytus on why it was chosen - and it has to do with the crucifixion and "Integral Ages". Hippolytus was so important in Rome that they made a statue of him and carved his calculations into it.
(See "The Plain Truth About December 25" and "The Quartodecimans and Epiphany" for more.)
Constantine - phony. December 25th was chosen as the date of the nativity in the western church 50+ years years before Constantine was born. If the scholarly consensus on the Donatists from north Africa is correct, then Christmas became a festival several years before Constantine became emperor. And all the false claims about Nicaea, ask them for proof. There is none. Constantine gets more hate than most anyone else in history, but most of it is for things he never did. What ever happened to "you shall not bare false witness"?
(See "Christmas With The Donatists" for more.)
There are a handful of other silly excuses for Christmas.
Druids is one. Come on, people. The Druids? Seriously? Do poeple do any kind of actual research at all? The Druids were practically gone when Christmas was starting. They were 1,500 miles away. Christians hadn't set foot in Britain yet, so far as we know. Christmas has no connection to the Druids at all. Even mistletoe at Christmas does not come from the Druids. It came from being used medicinally for the 1,000 years from when the Druids disappeared to when mistletoe became a Christmas ornament after the British civil war. Usually, the claim is about Druid solstice festivals. They had no known solstice celebration. They had winter celebrations, yes, but in late October or early November, and again perhaps in January.
(See "Misinformed On Mistletoe" for more.)
Generic, nameless pagans is another. This one is just a desperate stretch. "It can be traced to pagans." Which pagans? They don't know. Name your pagan and then dig up the history, else why burden us with your miseducation. Just because some things are similar does not mean they are related. Correlation does not prove causation. Or, to put it another way, it isn't enough just to say something looks similar, you have to prove - from genuine evidence - that one thing actually comes from another thing. "I was a pagan and pagans like trees and winter festivals!" Which pagans, in which area, at which time, doing which specific thing? Pagans took quite a few things from Christians, don't you know. Wicca? Wicca was invented in the 1900s. Pretty sure I can show how Christmas is a little older than that. Not everything is pagan just because pagans do it. Pagans like worship ceremonies. Are worship ceremonies pagan? Better stop going to church! Pagans pray. Is praying pagan? Better stop praying! Pagans wear clothes. Are clothes pagan? Better sto... no, on second thought, please keep doing this one. If people actually stuck to the "pagans do it, so we can't" standard, they wouldn't be able to function.
(See "Everything I Don't Like Is Pagan" for more.)
I think this confusion can be laid at the feet of several things, but, in my opinion, the biggest culprits are 1) The Reformation, and 2) garbage "history" produced from 1600-1900 that's still being passed around on, 3) social media. You can trust everything you read on social media. (I read that on social media. It's a quote form Abraham Lincoln.)
The Reformation is when everything started coming apart. I'm not going to get into the details here, but in digging through various histories as long as I have, the pattern has become clear. The histories produced from the 1600s throughout the 1800s are a mixed bag. Some are of fantastic quality. Surprising, really, given what they had to work with back then. But many others are ridiculously poor quality. And it seems those are the ones that float around social media the most. It doesn't help that the many "one true church" -es out there promote the garbage heavily.
Lastly, there are the holier-than-thou type. They take personal offense, on God's behalf, that we are celebrating a day with no direct command to do so. Because they are offended, it must mean God is, too. It doesn't seem to matter that there is no command against it. It doesn't seem to matter that the Bible shows not one but two holidays the Jews invented for themselves - Purim and Hanukkah. And not only does the Bible give its full support but Jesus Himself is seen observing Hanukkah at the Temple. We see that establishing and imposing a new, un-commanded holiday to honor God is completely biblical in every way. I think people should be required to know what their Bibles actually say before they preach about it, let alone be taken seriously about that preaching. So, thanks but no thanks on this one.
(See "Established and Imposed" for more.)
And if there are any more things (and there are, but most of them are not so popular) then we have an article for that, too. Want to know the real history of Christmas? (See "Christmas Eras Tour" or "Christmas With The Donatists" or "The Quartodecimans and Epiphany".) Want to know the real history of Christmas trees? Hint: it wasn't Nimrod or St. Boniface or Martin Luther. (See "Falsely Accused?".) Have a more esoteric question? (See our most comprehensive Christmas article of all, "Christmas FAQ".)
So, there you have it. A handy little reference to help you defend yourself against anti-Christmas ridiculousness. Our articles come with references so you can trace our work. And our references are never, "I read it in an encyclopedia," or worse, "ChatGPT told me so". We insist on the oldest, most reliable material available. I hope this is useful to you.
God bless, and have a very Merry Christmas!
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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )
Acts 17:11
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