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Pope Liberius |
Where Christmas Came From
Celebrating the turn of the year is an ancient custom. The Romans
celebrated the Saturnalia, the festival of Saturn, god of the harvest, between
December 17 and 23. It was the most cheerful festival of the year. All work and
commerce stopped, and the streets were filled with crowds and a carnival
atmosphere. Slaves were temporarily freed, and the houses were decorated with
laurel branches. People visited one another, bringing gifts of wax candles and
little clay figurines.
Long before the birth of Christ, the Jews celebrated an eight–day
Festival of Lights [at the same season], and it is believed that the Germanic
peoples held a great festival not only at midsummer but also at the winter
solstice, when they celebrated the rebirth of the sun and honored the great
fertility gods Wotan and Freyja, Donar (Thor) and Freyr. Even after the Emperor
Constantine (A.D. 306–337) declared Christianity to be Rome’s official imperial
religion, the evocation of light and fertility as an important component of
pre–Christian midwinter celebrations could not be entirely suppressed. In the year 274 the Roman Emperor Aurelian
(A.D. 214–275) had established an official cult of the sun–god Mithras,
declaring his birthday, December 25, a national holiday. The cult of Mithras,
the Aryan god of light, had spread from Persia through Asia Minor to Greece,
Rome, and as far as the Germanic lands and Britain.
Numerous ruins of his shrines still testify to the high regard in
which this god was held, especially by the Roman legions, as a bringer of
fertility, peace and victory. So it was a
clever move when, in the year A.D. 354, the Christian Pope Liberius (352–366)
co–opted the birthday of Mithras and declared December 25 to be the birthday of
Jesus Christ.
NEUE ZÜRCHER
ZEITUNG,
ANNE–SUSANNE RISCHKE,
DECEMBER 25, 1983.
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