Hands Off Our Solstice!

Los Angeles's celebrated Kwanzaa parade, 2014. From Newsbusters.

Is Christmas really a makeover of a pagan holiday?

Everybody now seems to think so. It is an element of conventional wisdom. I’ve written myself, years ago for the Toronto Star, that it is, but now I have my doubts.

First, there is actually good reason to believe that Jesus was born on or about December 25. Count back nine months. You get March 25. What is March 25? The Feast of the Annunciation. That is, it commemorates the conception of Jesus. Nine months—a reasonable period for a pregnancy.

The time of the Annunciation can in turn be dated, from scriptural references, to six months after the conception of John the Baptist. And the conception of John the Baptist can be dated, by scriptural references, to the Jewish New Year. Which happens on or about the autumnal equinox, or on or about September 25.

So no, it ain’t random or unscriptural. Estimated, maybe.

It is true that there was a Roman holiday, the Saturnalia, which took place from the 17th to the 23rd of December, just before Christmas. Fine; no doubt some traditions have crossed over. But that’s a problem, actually. The usual claim is that Christmas was dated as it was to correspond with Saturnalia, so as not to attract attention to the Christian feast. But Saturnalia ends before Christmas begins, and both run for a number of days. No cover at all. And while the Roman version of the feast, Saturnalia, was held in December, the Greek version of the holiday, the Kronia, was held in July-August. So even if Saturnalia in Rome did take place at the same time as Christmas, it would have been little cover for half the Christian world, which lived in the Greek-speaking East of the Empire.

Both Saturnalia and Christmas seem to owe something to the symbolism of the winter solstice—the rebirth of the light in the heavens. Fair enough—but the winter solstice is the common experience of mankind, not something of special interest to pagans. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the light"; surely the symbolism is obvious. Pagans everywhere actually seem to have taken much less notice of the winter solstice than Christians do. The original Roman New Year was closer to the spring equinox, in what is now March. It crept back to modern January only in the time of Christ, not because that time of year was now especially significant to the Romans, but to fit in two extra months in honour of emperors. In Northern Europe, the pagan New Year was, like the Jewish High Holidays, in autumn. The Hindu New Year is in April; the Chinese New Year is in late January or early February, halfway between solstice and equinox. The closest Western equivalent would be Groundhog Day.

Not an elf -- St. Nicholas of Myra.

The solstices and equinoxes in general are more important in the Christian calendar than in the various pagan ones. The Christian Gregorian/Julian calendar is uniquely solar, so that the solstices and equinoxes will fall on the same date every year. Everyone else’s calendar seems to be either lunar or lunar-solar, so that equinoxes and solstices are not tracked directly, and are harder to determine.

People why try to avoid the Christianity of Christmas by wishing “Happy Hanukkah,” or “Happy Kwanzaa,” or “Happy Diwali,” or indeed “Happy Solstice,” as if the holiday were not really Christian but shared, are simply a delusion to themselves and others. Hanukkah, unlike Christmas, is resolutely a second-tier Jewish holiday, not mentioned in the Talmud. Much of its current popularity can be traced to a modern tendency—largely since the 1970s--to promote it as a Jewish alternative to Christmas. Kwanzaa was invented out of whole cloth in 1965, and has never really been more than a minority interest even within the black community in the US. Diwali is a harvest festival which corresponds closely to the date of Hallowe'en. Only the Christians really make a big fuss over the winter solstice.

Merry Christmas. Deal with it.