The History of Christmas

At Christmas the birth of Jesus is celebrated. However, it is quite certain that Jesus wasn't born around that time, but rather in spring. In the early church Christmas was not celebrated. After Christianity gained increasing influence in ancient Rome it became obviously a kind of "mission method" to turn the pagan feasts into Christian ones. The birthday of the sun god Mithras became the birthday of Jesus Christ.
According to another theory Christmas was said to have replaced the old pagan Yul feast (feast of the winter solstice). This seems to be wrong, however, as the Yul feast was moved from January to the end of December - to the time of Christmas - only in the 10th century.

In 20th century Germany there have always been efforts to replace Christmas by the Yul feast. The first ones with that idea were the socialists in the twenties. During the Third Reich it was mainly the SS who tried to revive pagan rituals and therefore also took efforts to abolish the Christian feasts. In the GDR angels were officially called "Jahresendfiguren" (end-of-the-year-figures). Nonetheless Christmas was tolerated by the state and December 25 and 26 were public holidays. Until nowadays there are efforts by so-called "freethinking" people to turn Christmas into a pagan feast. They want to keep the feast, but obviously cannot bear the meaning behind it.

Many thanks to Angelika
from Dessau (Sachsen-Anhalt)
for the information
on Christmas in the
former GDR.

Last update: January 19, 2009