What is Christmas and What Does It Mean?
Christmas is a Christian festival that celebrates the birth of Jesus. Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December and a figure named Santa Clause is the main role of the holiday. The word Christmas that we currently use is relatively new. Christmas sued to be called Yule, which may have come from the German word jōl which refers to the feast of the winter solstice. “Christmas” in English means “mass on Christ’s day”, other languages such as French and Spanish have different terms that usually denote nativity.
The Development of Christmas
In early Christianity, people differentiated the birth date of Jesus and the date that it was celebrated. In the first two centuries of Christianity, the majority of people were against recognizing the birthdays of martyrs and Jesus. Many Church Fathers agreed that instead of having the custom of celebrating their birthdays, they should be honored by the days of their martyrdom as their “true” birthdays. From exactly where and when the day December 25th was assigned as Jesus’s birthday is unclear. However, December 25th was first said to be Jesus’s birthday by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221 and was later accepted universally.
A theory that is widely accepted is that December 25th is the Christianizing of the dies solis inviciti nati which means the day of the birth of the unconquered sun. Dies solis inviciti nati was a very popular holiday in the Roman Empire that recognized the winter solstice as a symbol of the resurgence of the sun when winter is fading away as the spring and summer is rebirthed. During the 9th century, Christmas began to be celebrated but it did not gain as much popularity as Easter or Good Friday which are the other two main Christian holidays. Christmas is celebrated by the Roman Catholic Churches holding a mass at midnight, more and more Protestant Churches had begun to hold Christmas candlelight services in the evening of December 24th. Special services of “lessons and carols” are held as they mix Catholic readings with Christmas carols.
Western Customs of Christmas
In western customs, we have Christmas trees, colorful lights, decorations, Santa, etc. But where did all of it originate from? There are still some uncertainties of the date and origin from which the tradition of Christmas trees came, however, it seems that fir trees that were decorated with apples were first found in Strasbourg in 1605. Using candles to decorate the tree was recorded by a Silesian duchess in 1611. These customs become more and more recent as Christmas gains more popularity. The Advent wreath custom began in the 19th century but has origins dating back to the 16th century. The Advent wreath currently has 4 candles noting the four Sundays of the Advent season, but in the 16th century, it had 24 candles for each day leading up to Christmas day. This led to the advent calendar, a calendar that has 24 openings: one for each day leading up to Christmas. It is said by tradition that the advent calendar was created by a Munich housewife who was tired of always being asked when Christmas would come, and the first-ever advent calendars were produced in Germany in the year 1851.
Now, Christmas and the advent season are blended together as families rush to prepare for Christmas. People put up Christmas decorations well before Christmas day on December 25th as the holiday began to be commercialized throughout the western tradition. Nearing the end of the 18th century giving gifts to family members were being well celebrated. In the 19th century, the sending of Christmas began first in England. At the same time in Australis and Germany, they made the connection of a family holiday with the Christian festival by naming the Christ Child as the giver of gifts. In some European countries, St. Nicholas brings gifts on his feast day on December 26th, meanwhile, in North America, the role, of Santa Clause began to rise as the source of Christmas gifts for families. All this leads up to how we celebrate Christmas today, with colorful decorations, Christmas trees, Advent calendars, Santa, and more.
Written by The Lost Man
The Anonymous Helpers (TAH)