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Where Christmas Came From

When did people start celebrating Christmas?

For roughly the first two hundred years, we find no sign that Christians kept a feast for Jesus’ birth. The oldest record of Christmas on December 25 is a Roman list of feast days that opens with Christ’s birth in Bethlehem on that day. It was copied into an almanac in 354 and was probably drawn up by about the year 336, though it is not certain the Christmas line was already in it.

From Rome, it seems, the December feast spread. In Constantinople it was still new in 379 or 380. Why Christians chose December 25 is a question historians still debate, and this chapter takes it up: why December 25, is Christmas pagan?, and the Christmas truce of 1914. How a saint became Santa is told in from Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus.

True story

An old leather-bound book lying open with a goose quill, an ink pot and a sprig of holly.
Plate II An old book left open, with its quill and ink close by.

In this chapter

  1. Why is Christmas on December 25?8 minTrue story
  2. Is Christmas pagan? What historians say8 minTrue story
  3. What was the Christmas truce of 1914? What really happened6 minTrue story

Where our facts come from

  1. Andrew McGowan, "How December 25 Became Christmas", Bible Review, December 2002 (Bible History Daily), The paragraph beginning "The extrabiblical evidence from the first and second century": no mention of birth celebrations in Irenaeus or Tertullian; "As far as we can tell, Christmas was not celebrated at all at this point."
  2. The Chronography of 354, Part 12, "Depositio Martyrum" (Latin text), Heading "ITEM DEPOSITIO MARTIRVM", first entry: "VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae"
  3. C. C. Martindale, "Christmas", Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (1908), Section "Rome": "even if the 'Depositio Martyrum' dates, as is probable, from 336, it is not clear that the calendar contains evidence earlier than Philocalus himself, i.e. 354", and "almost universally has it been concluded that the new date reached the East from Rome"; section "Constantinople": "In 379 or 380 Gregory Nazianzen made himself exarchos of the new feast"