Christmas and Yule

Many of you may have been asked by your kids, why is Christmas on December 25? My granddaughter dutifully said, that’s when Jesus was born. Of course, that is not true. Nobody has any idea when Jesus was born. In the middle of winter, the shepherds would not have been watching their flocks by night outdoors; the flocks would have been in barns or mangers or something. I read one article that figured out when John the Baptist was born, based on the priestly schedule of his father (“the course of Abijah”), and then added six months to it (Jesus was a half year younger than John), and came up with sometime in September.

But the church realized celebrating Jesus’ birthday was a good idea. Not knowing when it was, the early church chose an existing pagan holiday and transformed it into Christmas. The holiday was, of course, Yule, on December 25. Midwinter? Not quite. It is four days after the first day of winter.

The pagans wanted to celebrate the day when the sun appeared to be returning. It reached its lowest point in the sky (at midday) on December 21. But how could ancient people know this? They didn’t have accurate time measurement. They lined up stones that indicated the winter solstice. But it was a few days after the solstice before they could be sure the sun was, in fact, “coming back,” by eyeballing the stones.

This was too much to explain to my granddaughter, but I tried. Christmas is not when Jesus was born, but when we celebrate it. Never mind, for now, whether it actually happened. We have a spiritual desire to believe that there is some force of good (God) behind the operation of the world.

In Egyptian mythology, Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25. In the Mithras cult, you were saved by eating the body and drinking the blood of Mithras in a meal. In Zoroastrianism, blood sacrifice was followed by a resurrection three days later. It should be obvious that many Christian beliefs came from pagan sources.

But this does not change the basic idea. They, like us, wanted to believe that there was some ultimate significance. Just think about the words to some of our favorite Christmas carols. They are about the general idea, rather than doctrinal assertions. Consider, for example, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight,” and “For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.” Scrooge was not converted to a doctrine, but to love. I am only the millionth blogger to write about the true meaning of Christmas; maybe somebody will read it.