Just How Pagan Is Christmas Really?

The Christmas season is upon us and, if there’s one thing I know I’m going to get for Christmas, it’s spurious claims about modern Christmas traditions supposedly having ancient “pagan” origins. Most of my readers are probably already familiar with the sorts of claims I am referring to; it is popularly believed that Christmas is really an ancient “pagan” holiday that was hijacked by early Christians and that modern, twenty-first-century, secular American Christmas traditions are actually of ancient “pagan” origin.

Well, I’m here to tell you that, although there was a time when Christmas did indeed incorporate some pre-Christian traditions, virtually none of the traditions associated with Christmas in the United States today are actually of ancient pre-Christian origin. In fact, virtually all of the Christmas traditions that you usually hear people going around claiming are “pagan” are actually traditions that only arose within the past two hundred years or so, within a Christian cultural context.

A review of the misconception about Christmas being “pagan”

Every year around Christmas time, news organizations always publish new articles claiming that modern Christmas traditions are of ancient “pagan” origin and every year these articles are always filled with all sorts of false information. For instance, here is an article with a video interview published by “CBS This Morning” on 25 December 2018 titled “The Unexpected Pagan Origins of Popular Christmas Traditions.”

The video interview featured in the article is with Kenneth C. Davis, a non-academic writer who, at least according to his Wikipedia page, has no college degree. In any case, whatever his credentials may be, Davis clearly has not thoroughly researched the subject of ancient pre-Christian religions at all in any sense, because almost everything he says in the interview is wrong and rooted more deeply in popular modern stereotypes about what ancient “pagans” were supposedly like than in actual ancient sources.

In the interview, Davis tells an elaborate yarn about how all the most beloved Christmas traditions we know today come directly from ancient “paganism.” He declares “Christmas is really about bringing out your inner pagan.” The things Davis says in the article are exactly typical of the kinds of things you usually hear from people around this time of year, so I am going to use him as an example in this article. I am not doing this to shame him or make fun of him, but rather so that I will have a real, specific person to quote in order to avoid giving people the impression that I am attacking a strawman.

Misconception #1: Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th in honor of the winter solstice.

In the interview, Davis is asked why Christmas is on December 25th. This is his reply:

“Primarily because, in ancient Rome, there was a feast called Saturnalia that celebrated the solstice. What is the solstice? It’s the day that the sun starts coming back, the days start getting longer. And most of the traditions that we have that relate to Christmas relate to the solstice, which was celebrated in ancient Rome on December 25.”

There really was an ancient Roman festival called Saturnalia; I talk extensively about the holiday and how it was celebrated in this other article I wrote. Everything else Davis says here, though, is incorrect. First of all, Saturnalia was not celebrated on December 25th. It was, in fact, originally celebrated on December 17th. Nonetheless, as a result of the holiday’s widespread popularity, by the first century BCE, it seems to have been extended into seven days of celebration, starting on December 17th and culminating on December 23rd.

The emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BCE – 14 CE) tried to shorten Saturnalia to only three days, lasting from December 17th to December 19th, but most people kept celebrating for several days after the holiday officially ended. A generation later, the emperor Caligula (ruled 37 – 41 CE) officially extended Saturnalia to five days of celebration, lasting from December 17th to December 21st.

Thus, the official dates for how long Saturnalia was supposed to last varied depending on which time period a person happened to live in and which emperor happened to be in power at the time. Nonetheless, throughout the entire period of the Roman Republic (lasted c. 509 – c. 27 BCE) and the Principate (lasted c. 27 BCE – c. 284 CE), by the time December 25th rolled around, Saturnalia was definitely already over. Throughout this entire period of Roman history, there is not a single mention of anyone ever celebrating Saturnalia on December 25th or even thinking that other people celebrated it on December 25th.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons of a Roman marble bust of the emperor Caligula on display in the Glyptothek Museum in Munich, Germany

Davis is wrong about the date of Saturnalia and he’s also wrong about why it was celebrated. Saturnalia was not a celebration of the winter solstice. In fact, at least on its original date of December 17th, it did not occur on the day of the solstice or even on a day that ancient Roman people believed was the solstice.

The Julian calendar was poorly calibrated, so the exact date of the solstice changed over the course of many years, but, in antiquity, it was always between roughly December 23rd and December 20th. Many ancient Roman writers considered December 25th the solstice. As I have already emphasized, though, Saturnalia was not celebrated on December 25th.

In reality, Saturnalia originated as a religious holiday in honor of the agricultural god Saturnus. The ancient Romans believed that, in very ancient times, before Iupiter became the king of the gods, the world had been ruled by Saturnus. They believed that the reign of Saturnus had been the “Golden Age” when all things were perfect. Saturnalia was seen as a temporary restoration of the rule of Saturnus, a time when the traditional rules and norms were reversed.

During Saturnalia, instead of slaves serving meals to their masters, masters would serve meals to their slaves. Meanwhile, gambling, which was normally illegal, was temporarily legalized for the holiday. People would don colorful clothes and wear the pileus, a conical cap usually worn by freedmen, as a symbol of the freedom from social norms that the holiday brought.

Saturnalia was often something of a noisy occasion; celebrants of the holiday are recorded to have often cried out the exclamation “Io Saturnalia!” in the spirit of the holiday. It was a topsy-turvy time when the normal rules didn’t apply and people were allowed to have good time.

The Roman neoteric poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (lived c. 84 – c. 54 BCE) famously describes Saturnalia in his Carmina 14 as “optimō diērum,” which means “the best of days.” The Syrian writer Loukianos of Samosata (lived c. 125 – after c. 180 CE) gives a somewhat more vivid description of what celebrations of the holiday were often like in his dialogue Saturnalia. He writes, as translated by H. W. and F. G. Fowler:

“[During Saturnalia] the serious is barred; no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water…”

It’s clear from these ancient descriptions that Saturnalia was a rather rowdy holiday and that it was in many ways closer to a modern Mardi Gras celebration than a modern Christmas celebration.

ABOVE: Roman fresco dating to approximately the first century CE from the Osteria della Via di Mercurio in the city of Pompeii depicting men playing dice. Gambling games involving dice were a very popular activity during Saturnalia.

Saturnalia’s proximity to the winter solstice probably occurred more-or-less by accident. Many people today seem to have the misimpression that people in ancient times were totally obsessed with solstices and equinoxes, but, in reality, they weren’t. In fact, most people in ancient Greece and Rome paid little to no attention to the solstices and their most important holidays actually took place on various days all over the course of the year.

For example, one of the most important religious festivals in Athens during the fifth century BCE was the Panathenaia, which was celebrated in the month of Hekatombaion, which lasted from around mid-July to around mid-August. Another important religious festival in classical Athens was the City Dionysia, which I briefly discussed in this article I recently wrote about the alleged parallels between Jesus and the Greek god Dionysos. The City Dionysia fell sometime in around late March or early April.

The Thesmophoria was an important religious festival that was celebrated by women in ancient Athens. I wrote about it in this article from January 2019 about ancient Greek festivals that included practices we would consider bizarre. The Thesmophoria was celebrated during the month of Pyanepsion, which lasted from around mid-October to around mid-November. None of these festivals I have just mentioned were linked with any solstices or equinoxes that we know of. In fact, the ancient Athenians do not seem to have had any festivals for the winter solstice or the summer solstice at all.

Now, as it happens, the ancient Romans did have a winter solstice festival, but this was actually highly unusual; most people in the ancient world did not have any kind of winter solstice festival. The Roman winter solstice festival was not Saturnalia, but rather Brumalia. Brumalia, however, is not really pre-Christian. It is first attested in a work written in the late second century CE by the Christian apologist Tertullianus (lived c. 155 – c. 240 CE). Tertullianus writes in chapter ten of his apologetic treatise On Idolatry, as translated by S. Thelwall:

“What less of defilement does he recur on that ground, than a business brings which, both nominally and virtually, is consecrated publicly to an idol? The Minervalia are as much Minerva’s, as the Saturnalia Saturn’s; Saturn’s, which must necessarily be celebrated even by little slaves at the time of the Saturnalia.”

“New-year’s gifts likewise must be caught at, and the Septimontium kept; and all the presents of Midwinter [i.e. Brumalia] and the feast of Dear Kinsmanship must be exacted; the schools must be wreathed with flowers; the flamens’ wives and the ædiles sacrifice; the school is honoured on the appointed holy-days. The same thing takes place on an idol’s birthday; every pomp of the devil is frequented.”

We do not know much about Brumalia, since it seems to have always been a relatively minor festival overshadowed by the earlier festival of Saturnalia. It is only mentioned offhand in a few sources. Tertullianus mentions here that apparently it involved the exchange of presents. As I will explain in the moment, though, for most of its history, Christmas did not involve exchanging presents and it has only been in the past two hundred years or so that this custom has emerged.

ABOVE: Second-century CE Roman marble bas-relief depicting the god Saturnus, in whose name the festival of Saturnalia was held

Misconception #2: Christmas is celebrated on December 25th because that was the date of Saturnalia.

I have already quoted the part of the interview in which Davis claims that Saturnalia is the reason why Christmas is celebrated on December 25th. This is extremely unlikely. As I have already established, throughout the entire Roman Republic and the Roman Principate, there is no record of anyone having ever thought that Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th and this is the historical context in which Christians first came to believe that Jesus had been born on December 25th.

As I discuss in this article I wrote in November 2019, no one knows which day Jesus was really born. The gospels do not say anything about the date of his birth, nor do they provide any clues that might allow someone to determine an exact date. Even if they did, modern Biblical scholars generally agree that the birth narratives in the Gospel of Matthew 1:18-2:23 and the Gospel of Luke 2:1-40 are legendary accounts with little or no basis in historical reality.

For roughly the first two hundred years of Christianity, Christians generally do not seem to have really cared or even thought much about when Jesus was born. Then, in around the late second century CE, the date of Jesus’s birth became a major area of speculation for Christian authors. As I discuss in this article I wrote in September 2021, this is also around the same time that Christians began attributing the canonical gospels to the authors to whom they are now traditionally attributed.

The earliest author who is thought to have claimed that Jesus was born on December 25th is the Christian church father Hippolytus of Rome (lived c. 170 – c. 235 CE). Hippolytus records this belief about the date of Jesus’s birth in his Commentary on Daniel 4.23.3, which he probably wrote sometime around 235 CE. He writes, as translated by Tom C. Schmidt, a professor of religious studies at Fairfield University:

“For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.”

The authenticity of this passage has been challenged, but Schmidt convincingly argues in an appendix to his translation that Hippolytus did indeed believe that Jesus was born on December 25th and that this passage is authentic.

Schmidt argues in both this appendix and in a paper titled “Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ Canon and Chronicon,” which was published in 2015 in the academic journal Vigilae Christianae (vol. 69, pp. 542–563), that Hippolytus arrived at this date using a calculation method based on his assumption that the world was created on Sunday, March 25th. Schmidt argues that Hippolytus believed that Jesus was born exactly 5,502 years and nine months after the creation of the world, thereby placing the date of his birth on December 25th.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a statue dating to the fourth or fifth century CE that is sometimes thought to represent Hippolytus of Rome

The next earliest reference to Jesus having supposedly been born on December 25th after Hippolytus occurs in the Chronography of 354, a collection of ancient Roman calendrical and chronographic texts that a professional calligrapher and illustrator named Furius Dionysius Filocalus made for a wealthy Christian Roman patron named Valentinus in the year 354 CE.

It just so happens that the Chronography of 354 also contains the only surviving mention of the only known ancient “pagan” holiday in honor of the birth of a deity that is supposed to have taken place on December 25th: Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, which means “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.” The Chronography of 354, however, is the only source that even mentions this event taking place on December 25th, it dates to over a century after Hippolytus of Rome’s Commentary on Daniel, and it also mentions the birth of Jesus on December 25th as a separate event.

The surviving evidence therefore suggests that Christmas is, in fact, older than Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. Christians most likely concluded that Jesus was born on December 25th based on the sort of calculations based on the presumed date of creation that Schmidt attributes to Hippolytus of Rome. Then, later, the cult of Sol Invictus came along and adopted December 25th as the birthday of their god, either because December 25th was considered to be the winter solstice (in which case the correspondence between Christmas and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti is merely a coincidence) or because Christians were already celebrating December 25th as the birthdate of their god and the cult of Sol Invictus copied the date from them.

ABOVE: Photograph from Wikimedia Commons showing a Roman silver plate depicting the sun god Sol Invictus, whose birthday, according to the Chronography of 354, was celebrated on December 25th

There is only one ancient author of whom I am aware who ever claimed that Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th, and he was writing even later than the Chronography of 354: the Christian apologist, polemicist, and heresy-hunter Epiphanios of Salamis (lived c. 310 – c. 403 CE), who claims that Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th in his anti-heretical polemic Pinarion 51.22.3–13, which he most likely wrote in around the year 377 CE. Epiphanios writes, in my own translation from the Greek:

“And the Hellenes celebrate this day, and I mean the idolators, on the eighth before the Kalends of January [i.e., December 25th], which is called by the Romans ‘Saturnalia,’ by the Egyptians ‘Kronia,’ and by the Alexandrians ‘Kikellia.’”

At first, it may seem like this confirms that Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th, but don’t get too excited. Epiphanios’s claim is highly dubious, for two main reasons. The first reason is because the claim that Saturnalia was celebrated on December 25th is not attested in any earlier sources and Epiphanios was writing extremely late, in around 377 CE, roughly four decades after the death of Constantine I.

By the time he was writing this, Christianity was effectively the state religion of the Roman Empire. Furthermore, we know from other sources that various Christians at this time had already regarded December 25th as the birthdate of Jesus for well over a century. If people really were celebrating Saturnalia on December 25th at the time Epiphanios was writing in the late fourth century CE, then they were most likely doing it in imitation of Christians celebrating Christmas, rather than the other way around.

The second reason why we should treat Epiphanios’s claims with caution is because he was a bitter polemicist and he was more than happy to rely on unverified rumors if they suited his narrative. The Pinarion itself is mostly a scathing and wide-ranging attack on all Christian sects that Epiphanios regarded as heretical and it reports all kinds of salacious rumors about these sects’ supposed debauched activities.

Epiphanios himself argues at length in the same passage from which the quote I have just given is extracted that Jesus was born on January 6th, but, as I have already mentioned, we know that other Christians in Epiphanios’s time were already celebrating Christmas on December 25th. It is possible that Epiphanios’s claim that the “pagans” celebrated various holidays, including Saturnalia, on December 25th may be a deliberate attempt to link Christians who celebrated Christmas on December 25th, rather than January 6th, with “pagans.”

ABOVE: Fresco at the Gracanica monastery, near Lipljan, Kosovo, depicting how the artist imagined the early Christian heresy-hunter Epiphanios of Salamis might have looked (No one knows what he really looked like.)

Now, some might try to argue that, even if Christmas and Saturnalia did not really take place on the same day, Christians may have selected a date for Christmas that was close to Saturnalia in order to put it forward as a Christian alternative or replacement. This is more plausible, but still very unlikely. First and foremost, there are no ancient sources that say anything about anyone creating Christmas as an alternative to Saturnalia.

Furthermore, if Christians were trying to replace Saturnalia with Christmas, we would expect them to have tried harder to get people to stop celebrating Saturnalia and to celebrate Christmas instead. In fact, though, people continued celebrating Saturnalia alongside Christmas long after the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity.

The Chronography of 354, which lists Christmas on December 25th, also contained lavish illustrations for the month of December depicting activities associated with Saturnalia, which are known through later copies, and Epiphanios describes the Romans of his own time as celebrating it in the passage I quoted earlier.

For the most part, Christians seem to have been pretty much ok with this, since, by this time, Saturnalia was basically a secular holiday, rather than an explicitly pagan one. There were a few people who objected to the celebration of Saturnalia (such as Epiphanios, who saw it as a holiday for “idolators”), but the people just kept on celebrating.

Fascinatingly, Saturnalia even made it onto some Christian religious calendars, such as the one compiled by a man named Polemius Silvius in 448 CE. Polemius Silvius’s calendar lists Saturnalia as a holiday on December 17th with the name “feriae servorum,” which means “festival of the slaves.” The same calendar lists Christmas as an entirely separate holiday from Saturnalia on December 25th.

ABOVE: Illustration for the month of December from the Berberini Manuscript of the Chronography of 354, showing a man with a torch, a mask, and a table with dice—all things representing major Saturnalia traditions

Misconception #3: Christmas gift-giving originates from Saturnalia.

In the interview with “CBS This Morning” that I have been referencing, Davis says regarding Saturnalia:

“There’s a little discrepancy about it but there’s no question that the fact that it was celebrated in Rome as an important day with gift giving, candle lighting, and singing and decorating houses really cemented Christmas as December 25.”

Since he just rattled off a bunch of Christmas traditions with the implication that these traditions come from Saturnalia, I will address all of the traditions he just listed, starting with gift-giving.

There actually was a custom of gift-giving associated with Saturnalia. Gift-giving was also associated with Brumalia, which took place on December 25th. Unfortunately for the people who like to believe that Christmas is pagan, there is no evidence linking the ancient Roman custom of gift-giving at the winter solstice to the modern custom of gift-giving for Christmas. In fact, the tradition of giving presents for Christmas is actually a fairly recent development that has only really taken hold in the past two hundred years or so.

Before I get to that, though, let me clarify that the exchanging of gifts was definitely part of the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. The main gifts exchanged were wax candles (which I will discuss more in a moment) and figurines made from clay or wax known as sigillaria. These sigillaria are referenced in a number of ancient Roman writings. For instance, the Roman writer Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, who lived in the early fifth century CE, includes a discussion in Book One of his dialogue Saturnalia in which the characters debate the origins and significance of the sigillaria.

One character in Macrobius’s dialogue named Praetextatus argues that the sigillaria are of ancient pagan origin and that they are replacements for the human sacrifices that were once offered to appease the Roman deities. The character Evangelus mocks him for this, declaring in section 1.11.1, as translated by Robert A. Kaster:

“Or take the Sigillaria he just mentioned: the holiday and its clay figurines are meant to amuse infants who haven’t yet learned to walk, but he tries to make it a matter of religious duty, and because he’s held to be the Prince of the Pious, he even adds in some matters of sheer humbug—as if it were against divine law for us to disbelieve Praetextatus now and then.”

In addition to candles and cheap figurines, people also exchanged other kinds of gifts for Saturnalia. Prank gifts seem to have been popular. Catullus writes in Carmina 14—the same poem I mentioned earlier—that a friend named Calvus knowingly gave him a collection of poems by “the worst of all poets” in order to torture him.

The Roman writer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (lived c. 69 – after c. 122 CE) claims in his biography The Life of Augustus that the emperor Augustus took particular relish in giving people prank gifts for Saturnalia. He writes in section 75, as translated by J. C. Rolfe:

“Festivals and holidays he celebrated lavishly as a rule, but sometimes only in a spirit of fun. On the Saturnalia, and at any other time when he took it into his head, he would now give gifts of clothing or gold and silver; again coins of every device, including old pieces of the kings and foreign money; another time nothing but hair cloth, sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading names of double meaning.”

“He used also at a dinner party to put up for auction lottery-tickets for articles of most unequal value, and paintings of which only the back was shown, thus by the caprice of fortune disappointing or filling to the full the expectations of the purchasers, requiring however that all the guests should take part in the bidding and share the loss or gain.”

Gifts were often accompanied by verses, some of which have survived. In particular, the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis, who lived in the city of Augusta Bilbilis in Spain in the late first century CE, wrote a large number of poems meant to be attached to various Saturnalia gifts. These are included in the thirteenth and fourteenth books of his Epigrams.

Patrons would sometimes give their clients extra money in December so they could buy gifts to give people for Saturnalia.

ABOVE: Second-century CE Roman terra-cotta figurine of a bird, perhaps a duck. During Saturnalia, people would exchange miniature clay figurines called sigillaria.

All this sounds quite a bit like how we celebrate Christmas today, but, as far as I can tell, the ancient Roman custom of giving gifts for Saturnalia and the modern custom of giving gifts for Christmas are actually unrelated. The tradition of giving gifts for a holiday in December seems to have died out in late antiquity and it does not seem to have begun to remerge until around two centuries ago.

The custom of doing charity and almsgiving for Christmas is first attested in around the thirteenth century CE, around nine hundred years or so after the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity. As I discuss in this article I wrote in December 2019 about the origins of Santa Claus, the custom of parents giving their children presents in the name of Saint Nicholas in December seems to have originated in western Europe in around the fifteenth century.

Originally, parents gave their children presents on December 6th, the feast day of Saint Nicholas, not Christmas Day. Saint Nicholas only became associated with Christmas due to circumstances arising from the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. The figure of Santa Claus as we know him today is largely a product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although, as I discuss in the article I linked earlier, Santa does have ancient origins.

The custom of ordinary people giving presents to various friends and loved ones at Christmastime is an even more recent development that arose mainly in the nineteenth century as an elaboration on the already-existing traditions of doing charity for Christmas and parents leaving presents for their children in the name of Saint Nicholas.

ABOVE: The Feast of Saint Nicholas, painted between c. 1665 and c. 1668 by the Dutch Golden Age painter Jan Havickszoon Steen, depicting children receiving gifts for the feast day of Saint Nicholas. The little girl in the foreground has received a doll.

Misconception #4: Advent candles come from Saturnalia.

In the interview, Davis states that the ancient Romans would light candles for Saturnalia, seemingly implying that this is the origin of the modern tradition of lighting Advent candles in December. Even if this is not what Davis was implying, the claim that Advent candles come from ancient Roman paganism is very common.

This claim is still mostly wrong, but it is at least not totally ridiculous like some of the other claims that are often made about Christmas and paganism. It is well-attested that the ancient Romans did, in fact, light candles and torches during Saturnalia. Meanwhile, although the Advent wreath with candles as we are familiar with it today originated in Germany in around the sixteenth century, there is a more-or-less continuous tradition of lighting candles during the Christmas season going back to antiquity.

The ancient Romans did not normally use beeswax candles like the ones we are most familiar with today. Beeswax was prohibitively expensive, so instead most ancient Roman candles were usually made from tallow, which is made from animal fat. Wax candles were known as cerei in Latin and were used for special occasions, such as Saturnalia. Cerei were commonly exchanged during Saturnalia as gifts.

It is routinely claimed, both on the internet and even in scholarly writings, that people gave each other candles at Saturnalia to symbolize the return of the light after the winter solstice. I am 95% sure that this interpretation is wrong. For one thing, no ancient writer that I am aware of ever interprets the candles this way.

I am pretty sure that the real reason why people in ancient Rome gave each other candles for Saturnalia is because Saturnalia took place in late December when the nights were approaching their longest and, since the ancient Romans did not have electric lighting, candles and torches were useful because they could provide light during the long nights of winter.

ABOVE: Photograph from Flickr of modern reenactors celebrating Saturnalia carrying torches. The lighting of torches and candles was an important part of Saturnalia, but it probably has nothing to do with the modern tradition of lighting Advent candles for Christmas.

Today we are accustomed to thinking about candles as solely symbolic objects because we have electric lighting, so we have no use for candles other than as a symbol. In ancient Rome, though, candles were an item that held real utility. As I discuss in this article I wrote in September 2019, people in the ancient world did not have electric lighting, so life was very much dictated by the rising and setting of the sun.

When it was nighttime, the only way people could see was by lighting torches or candles. Lighting candles and torches during Saturnalia enabled people to stay up celebrating even after the sun went down. Candles, then, were a good gift to give someone for Saturnalia for the same reason why sunscreen would be a good gift to give someone for the Fourth of July.

If people in ancient Rome did interpret candles at Saturnalia as symbolizing the return of the light, this interpretation was probably a later, secondary development and not the original reason for the custom. I imagine that candles have traditionally been lit during Christmas for a very similar reason.

ABOVE: Photograph of an Advent wreath from Wikimedia Commons. The modern Advent wreath originated in Germany in around the sixteenth century, but there is a more-or-less continuous association of candles with Christmas going back to antiquity.

Misconception #5: Singing and decorating the house for Christmas come from Saturnalia.

In the interview, Davis mentions singing and decorating the house as customs that were associated with Saturnalia. He is probably right, but he is so unspecific on this point that him being right does not really mean anything. Sure, people probably sang and decorated their houses for Saturnalia, but these are activities that are associated with most holidays. There is no reason to suppose that the modern traditions of singing and decorating for Christmas must come from Saturnalia.

Misconception #6: Christmas trees originated from ancient Norse paganism.

In the interview from “CBS This Morning” that I referenced earlier, Davis is asked where Christmas trees come from. He responds by asserting that Christmas trees originate from an ancient pagan Norse custom in honor of the return of the sun. He says:

“This is another pagan tradition. Christmas is really about bringing out your inner pagan. […] In the Norse world, Germany, the, uh, the Scandinavian countries, where the winter was really serious and the solstice was really an important idea, they celebrated the return of life by celebrating an evergreen tree. When Christianity came in, they started to use the evergreen tree, the pagan symbol, as a symbol of the Tree of Paradise and they started to hang an apple on it, so little red balls on green trees—you get the picture here?”

This is mostly all wrong. For one thing, Germany was never a part of the “Norse world”—or at least not the “Norse world” in the strictest sense. I am assuming by “Norse” Davis really means “Germanic.” Furthermore, Christmas trees do not come from Scandinavia at all, but rather from western continental Europe, mainly Germany, so he is wrong to bring up the “Norse world” altogether.

I wrote a whole article debunking the idea that Christmas trees are derived from an ancient pagan tradition in December 2018. If you want to read all the details, you should read that article, but I will briefly summarize its contents here. Quite simply, there is no evidence of any kind of pre-Christian custom that involved people decorating evergreen trees for any kind of midwinter festival. The Romans certainly did not do this for Saturnalia and we have no evidence that the Norse did it for Yule.

In reality, Christmas trees are first attested in western Europe, mainly in Germany, in the sixteenth century. They most likely developed from the “Tree of Paradise,” a tree that was featured in late medieval mystery plays and represented the Tree of Knowledge of Good Evil from the Garden of Eden. Davis mentions the “Tree of Paradise” in the interview, but he assumes it was adapted from an earlier Norse custom, which we have no evidence of.

Christmas trees only first became common in the English-speaking world in the nineteenth century. Queen Victoria played an especially important role in popularizing the Christmas tree in the 1840s. It was widely publicized that Queen Victoria had multiple Christmas trees installed every year in Windsor Castle. In 1848, an illustration of Queen Victoria’s family gathered around the Christmas tree was even printed in an edition of The Illustrated London News.

Far from being a survival from ancient pre-Christian paganism, Christmas trees as we know them today are largely a product of the Victorian Era, which was only a little over a century ago. Like most modern Christmas traditions, Christmas trees are not nearly old enough to be pagan.

ABOVE: Queen Victoria greatly helped popularize the tradition of decorating Christmas trees in England in the 1840s. Shown here is an illustration of the royal family’s private Christmas tree from 1848, originally printed in The Illustrated London News.

Misconception #7: The custom of decorating for Christmas with mistletoe comes from the ancient pagan Druids.

Towards the end of the interview I have been referencing, Davis is asked where the tradition of decorating for Christmas with mistletoe comes from. He replies:

“Mistletoe… we can thank the Druids for that! The Druids believed that mistletoe was an all-powerful, healing item. It hung from the sacred oak. In fact, if you met somebody in the forest you gave them the sign of peace under the mistletoe so people started to hang mistletoe above their doorways as a symbol of peace. This was such a powerful symbol of paganism that English churches actually banned the use of it.”

There is some truth in here, but much of this is incorrect. It is entirely possible—perhaps even probable—that the Druids may have indeed held mistletoe in special reverence and used it for their rituals. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (lived 23 – 79 CE) records in his encyclopedia Natural History 19.95 that the Druids regarded the oak tree and the mistletoe plant as sacred above all other things. He goes on to state that the Druids had a rather strange ritual involving these plants, which he describes in detail. Pliny the Elder writes, as translated by John Bostock, H. T. Riley, and B. A. London:

“Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant by the Gauls. The Druids—for that is the name they give to their magicians— held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the robur.”

“Of itself the robur is selected by them to form whole groves, and they perform none of their religious rites without employing branches of it; so much so, that it is very probable that the priests themselves may have received their name from the Greek name for that tree. In fact, it is the notion with them that everything that grows on it has been sent immediately from heaven, and that the mistletoe upon it is a proof that the tree has been selected by God himself as an object of his especial favour.”

“The mistletoe, however, is but rarely found upon the robur; and when found, is gathered with rites replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, the day which is the beginning of their months and years, as also of their ages, which, with them, are but thirty years. This day they select because the moon, though not yet in the middle of her course, has already considerable power and influence; and they call her by a name which signifies, in their language, the all-healing.”

“Having made all due preparation for the sacrifice and a banquet beneath the trees, they bring thither two white bulls, the horns of which are bound then for the first time. Clad in a white robe the priest ascends the tree, and cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle, which is received by others in a white cloak. They then immolate the victims, offering up their prayers that God will render this gift of his propitious to those to whom he has so granted it. It is the belief with them that the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons. Such are the religious feelings which we find entertained towards trifling objects among nearly all nations.”

Unfortunately for proponents of the view that Christmas is pagan, there is really no good reason to associate anything from Pliny the Elder’s account with the modern tradition of decorating using mistletoe during the Christmas season.

First of all, we cannot be entirely sure that Pliny’s account of the Druids’ ritual of the oak and mistletoe is even accurate, since no other Roman writer mentions this ritual independent of Pliny and there is no archaeological evidence of this ritual. It is also important to note that, although Pliny the Elder did spend time in Gaul and Germania, he was not a native from either of those regions and he never lived among the Druids personally. Also, Pliny is not a neutral source on the subject of the Druids, since he portrays the Druids’ alleged reverence for oaks and mistletoe as a silly superstition demonstrating the strangeness and barbarity of the Druidic customs.

Second of all, Pliny never associates the ritual of the oak and the mistletoe with any midwinter festival, nor does he say anything about a tradition of “kissing under the mistletoe,” nor does he even say anything about Celtic peoples decorating their homes with mistletoe. He gives us literally no information that might link the Druids’ alleged reverence for mistletoe to the modern holiday of Christmas.

Third of all and finally, the modern custom of decorating with mistletoe for the Christmas season seems to have only become popular in around the eighteenth century or thereabouts. The custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is first attested in England in the sixteenth century. We just don’t have evidence that any of these traditions are old enough to be authentically pagan.

ABOVE: Imaginative modern illustration from 1815 portraying how the artist imagined an ancient Celtic Druid might have looked. This depiction is probably not a very historically accurate imagining.

Misconception #8: The Puritans tried to ban Christmas because they knew it was pagan.

In the interview, Davis says, “They knew all of these things, the date, the traditions, were pagan ideas. The Puritans banned Christmas for twenty years in America before the celebration became just too popular.” This statement is partly correct, but mostly wrong. The Puritans did indeed try to ban Christmas and there were (as I will discuss in a moment) some Puritans who believed that Christmas was of pagan origin, but that was not the primary reason why the Puritans tried to ban the holiday.

The main reason why the Puritans tried to ban Christmas was because they perceived the holiday as Catholic. Mind you, to the Puritans, the words “Catholic” and “pagan” meant basically the same thing. Most people today, though, probably do not think of Catholics as “pagans.”

The other reason why the Puritans tried to ban Christmas was because they perceived it as an immoral holiday. The pamphlet The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas, an allegorical defense of Christmas published in 1658 by Josiah King, presents Father Christmas, the personification of the holiday of Christmas, as a prisoner placed on trial for his life by the Puritan Commonwealth. The charges against him include encouraging “immoderate eating and drinking” and “wasting and spoiling, the making of Idlers, and incresing of Beggars.”

The Puritans’ concerns about the morality of Christmas were not entirely absurd. In the seventeenth century, Christmas was not the sentimental and family-friendly holiday we all know and love today. Indeed, for most of its history, Christmas was actually a riotous time of drinking, gambling, overeating, dancing, obscenity, and all-around debauchery.

It was only really in the nineteenth century that reformers managed to clean the holiday up and turn it into the beloved holiday we know today. Ironically, then, the way Christmas was historically celebrated was actually much closer to Saturnalia than the way it is celebrated today.

ABOVE: The King Drinks, painted between c. 1634 and c. 1640 by the Dutch painter David Teniers the Younger, depicting a Twelfth Night celebration. This gives you something of an impression of how Christmas was usually celebrated up until around the nineteenth century. It was a riotous time of drinking, gambling, overeating, dancing, obscenity, and all-around debauchery.

The “Lord of Misrule”—a real Christmas tradition of pagan origin

There are a few Christmas traditions that are genuinely of ancient pagan origin, but all of the ones that I have been able to verify are extremely old, extremely obscure, and virtually extinct today. For instance, one Christmas tradition that almost certainly derives from Saturnalia is the now thoroughly obscure tradition of the “Lord of Misrule.”

In ancient Rome, during the early Principate, it became common for people at Saturnalia celebrations to draw lots for the title of Saturnalicius princeps, which means “Ruler of the Saturnalia.” Whoever drew the title of Saturnalicius princeps would then give orders to everyone else who was taking part in the celebration. If the Saturnalicius princeps gave someone an order, they would be required to obey that order—no matter how silly or embarrassing it was. It was a game vaguely similar to the modern game of “Truth or Dare,” only it was the same person giving the dare every time and it didn’t have the “truth” part.

This tradition of the Saturnalicius princeps is very well-attested in non-Christian ancient Roman sources. The Greek writer Arrianos of Nikomedeia (lived c. 86 – c. 160 CE) attributes the following description of the tradition to his teacher, the philosopher Epiktetos, in his Discourses of Epiktetos 1.25.8–9. According to Arrianos, Epiktetos said these words (in my own translation from the Greek text):

“In the Saturnalia, an emperor is drawn by lot, since it is traditional to play this little game. He commands: ‘You, drink!’ ‘You, mix the wine!’ ‘You, sing!’ ‘You, go away!’ ‘You, come here!’ I obey him so that the game may not be broken through me. But, [suppose he says]: ‘You, undertake this so that you will be among evil people.’ Then I will not do it, and no one can force me to do it.”

Unfortunately, sometimes the tradition seems to have been used as an opportunity for bullying and harassment. The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (lived c. 56 – c. 120 CE) records in his Annals 13.15 how, when the emperor Nero was young, he drew the lot of Saturnalicius princeps and he used the occasion to humiliate his stepbrother Britannicus by ordering him to sing in front of the other celebrants. Tacitus writes, as translated by J. Jackson for the Loeb Classical Library:

“During the festivities of the Saturnalia, while his peers in age were varying their diversions by throwing dice for a king, the lot had fallen upon Nero. On the others he imposed various orders, not likely to put them to the blush: but, when he commanded Britannicus to rise, advance into the centre, and strike up a song — this, in the hope of turning into derision a boy who knew little of sober, much less of drunken, society — his victim firmly began a poem hinting at his expulsion from his father’s house and throne. His bearing awoke a pity the more obvious that night and revelry had banished dissimulation.”

Various forms of this tradition survived throughout the Middle Ages and remained very popular customs associated with various holidays during the Christmas season, including Christmas itself, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, News Years Day, and Epiphany.

In some parts of France, Switzerland, and Germany during the Middle Ages, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents on December 28th, a young boy from the village would be elected as “bishop for a day” and he would give orders in much the same manner as the Saturnalicius princeps had in ancient Rome. Meanwhile, in many towns in England during the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, people would have celebrations on Epiphany (January 6th) in which they would elect a “Lord of Misrule” who would give various orders to people to do silly or embarrassing things—once again, very much like the Saturnalicius princeps from ancient Rome.

The tradition of the “Lord of Misrule” survived in parts of England at least as late as the seventeenth century. The tradition seems to have mostly died out along with some of the other rowdier Christmas traditions around the time the Puritans banned Christmas in England under the Commonwealth of England (lasted 1649 – 1653). Today, the ancient Christmas tradition of the “Lord of Misrule” is almost unheard of, but it is hard to deny that the tradition, which is attested continuously from ancient times to the Early Modern Period, had a genuine pagan pedigree.

ABOVE: Illustration of a boy bishop attended by two boy canons from a manuscript from Bamberg, Germany, dating to the sixteenth century

The Yule boar—another real Christmas tradition of pagan origin

The Norse holiday of Yule has also left some faint traces on Christmas. For one thing, the name “Yule” itself, which was originally the name of a pagan Norse festival, has become fully synonymous with Christmas to such an extent that most people do not even realize it was once the name of an entirely different festival.

As the New Zealand classicist Peter Gainsford discusses in this post he wrote on his blog in December 2018, in medieval times, the pagan Norse had a tradition of sacrificing and feasting on a sacred boar for Yule. This tradition of the Yule boar is referenced in the Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, a work stitched together from several originally independent pre-Christian poems in the Old Norse language, most of which were most likely composed in around the tenth century CE.

The Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, in turn, has survived because, sometime in the thirteenth century CE, an anonymous Icelandic compiler included it in a collection of pre-Christian Old Norse poems known as the Poetic Edda. This collection is preserved through a single Icelandic manuscript known as the Codex Regius, which was produced sometime around 1270 CE or thereabouts.

In the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, the Norse custom of the Yule boar seems to have given rise to a custom of serving up a whole severed boar’s head for Christmas dinner, often with an apple in the boar’s mouth. This tradition is referenced in the “Boar’s Head Carol,” a Christmas carol composed partially in English and partially in Latin, dating to the fifteenth century.

Most people today do not serve up a whole boar’s head for Christmas dinner. It is, however, possible—perhaps even likely, although it is hard to say—that the modern tradition of serving ham for Christmas may have some connection to the Norse custom of the Yule boar.

ABOVE: Illustration from 1855 depicting a smiling man carrying in a severed boar’s head with an apple in its mouth for Christmas dinner. The serving of a severed boar’s head for Christmas dinner may be derived from the pagan Norse custom of sacrificing and eating a boar for Yule.

An association with ghosts and other frightening supernatural beings—another real Christmas tradition of pagan origin

One final aspect of modern Christmas that may be genuinely rooted in ancient paganism is the idea that Christmas is a time when ghosts and other frightening supernatural beings are able to run rampant. During the Middle Ages, the pagan Norse folk seem to have believed that Yule was a time when the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead was at its weakest. They therefore believed that it was common for undead beings (which are known in Old Norse as draugar) to return during Yule to haunt and terrorize the living.

One of the main medieval sources about Yule is the Icelandic Grettis Saga, which is thought to have been composed in around the early fourteenth century CE. By the time the saga was composed, people in Iceland were at least nominally Christian and they no longer worshipped the traditional deities openly. Nonetheless, there were still plenty of living folk memories of the time when the old deities had been worshipped.

In the Grettis Saga, chapters 32–33, there is a famous episode in which a shepherd named Glámr, who rejects Christianity and prefers heathenry, goes out into the snow on the eve of Yule and disappears. The townsfolk go out to look for him and find his body. They try to bring it back to the churchyard to bury it, but they find that they are unable to do so, so they bury it where they found it. Glámr, however, comes back as a revenant to terrorize the village.

The hero of the saga, an outlaw named Grettir Ásmundarson, tries to free the village from the supernatural predations of the revenant Glámr. He ultimately succeeds, but, before he passes, Glámr curses Grettir so that he will always be afraid of the dark. Thus, Grettir is haunted by the light of Glámr’s eyes and remains utterly terrified of the dark for the rest of his life.

The association of Yule/Christmas with frightening supernatural visitations is also attested in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which was originally composed in around the late fourteenth century. In the poem, a gigantic, frightening, otherworldly knight with green skin and green clothes marches into King Arthur’s court during a Christmas feast, holding an ax in one hand and a bough of holly in the other.

ABOVE: Illustration from the only surviving medieval manuscript of the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, showing the Green Knight marching into King Arthur’s court during a Christmas feast

The medieval notion of Yule/Christmas as a time when ghosts and other frightening supernatural entities are able to run rampant still exerts some influence on modern popular culture, but it is nowhere near as prominent today as it once was.

Probably the most noteworthy modern manifestation of this idea occurs in the classic horror novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, which was originally published in 1843 at a time when Christmas as we know it today was starting to take shape. In the novella, Dickens deliberately repurposes the old idea of Christmas as a time for ghostly visitations in order to serve a new moralistic purpose. His ghosts serve not merely to frighten, but rather to teach the main character of the story a lesson.

In Dickens’s novella, Ebenezer Scrooge is portrayed as a grouchy, unpleasant, and miserly old man who hates Christmas and only cares about money. On Christmas Eve, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his old business partner Jacob Marley, who is forced to wander the earth, bound in heavy iron chains—forever dragging around ledgers, padlocks, and cash boxes, which represent all the wicked and greedy things he did while he was alive. Afterwards, Scrooge is visited by three more spirits: the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the Ghost of Christmas Future. These spirits teach Scrooge the importance of generosity.

The story of Dickens’s novella is so familiar to modern readers that people often forget that it is actually a work of horror fiction. There are some scenes in the novella that are genuinely 100% nightmare fuel, such as the scene in Stave I when Scrooge encounters Bob Marley’s ghost, the scene at the end of Stave III when the Ghost of Christmas Present reveals to Scrooge the hideous personifications of Ignorance and Want, and the scene at the beginning of Stave IV when the Ghost of Christmas Future first appears.

It is primarily through retellings of A Christmas Carol that the old notion of Yule/Christmas as a time of dark supernatural terrors lives on the popular imagination.

ABOVE: Illustration by John Leech from the original 1843 edition of Charles Dickens’s novel A Christmas Carol, depicting the ghost of Jacob Marley visiting Ebenezer Scrooge

The origins of the idea that Christmas is of pagan origin

The question arises of why everyone seems to be so thoroughly convinced that Christmas is pagan, even though there is virtually no evidence linking any modern Christmas traditions to ancient paganism. There are actually two parts to this question. The first part is the question “How did the idea that Christmas is pagan arise?” The second part is “Why do people still believe that Christmas is pagan today, even though it isn’t?”

Ironically, the idea that Christmas is pagan actually comes from die-hard Protestant fundamentalists in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. In those centuries, many Protestants regarded holidays like Christmas and Easter as “popery” and therefore sought to discredit them by linking them with ancient paganism. The idea that Christmas might be pagan was advanced as early as 1648 in the work Certain Queries Touching the Rise and Observation of Christmas, written by the Puritan Joseph Heming. Later fundamentalist writers really took the idea and ran with it.

One particularly influential writer was Alexander Hislop (lived 1807 – 1865), a minister for the Free Church of Scotland who published a pamphlet in 1853 titled The Two Babylons. In this pamphlet, Hislop claimed that Roman Catholicism is really nothing more than re-branded Babylonian paganism and that all the holidays associated with Catholicism are actually ancient Babylonian religious festivals in honor of the heathen gods. Hislop was a zealot and a crank whose ideas had almost no factual basis whatsoever, but his work became extremely influential among Protestant fundamentalists.

Eventually, Hislop’s ideas began to circulate outside of fundamentalist circles. You may have seen memes online claiming that Easter was originally a festival in honor of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. This is an idea that originated with Alexander Hislop in The Two Babylons. There is absolutely no evidence to support it and, actually, if you trace the word Easter back to its etymology, it sounds less and less like Ishtar the further you trace it back. Nonetheless, the idea has ironically really taken hold among atheists and agnostics.

ABOVE: Title page of the seventh edition of the book The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop. Hislop was one of many influential Protestant fundamentalist writers who helped popularize the idea that holidays like Christmas and Easter are really pagan.

Why do people still believe this?

Nowadays, there are still plenty of die-hard Protestant fundamentalists out there denouncing Christmas because they think it is pagan, but most of people saying that Christmas is pagan are not die-hard Protestant fundamentalists. I think there are three major reasons why so many people today continue to believe that Christmas is pagan. The first reason is laziness. People notice that a lot of Christmas traditions are really weird and they think, “Huh. Christmas trees are really weird if you think about it and they don’t seem to fit with anything in Christian theology. I guess they must be pagan.”

This way of thinking is inherently lazy and rooted in all kinds of false assumptions. For one thing, just because a tradition does not clearly fit with a Christian teaching that we are familiar with today doesn’t mean that it did not fit with some Christian teaching that existed at some point in the past. For another thing, even if a holiday tradition does not align with any Christian teaching that ever existed, there are other sources it could have come from aside from ancient paganism.

Believe it or not, people in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period actually had ordinary folklore that was not always completely in line with the official church theology. Most of this folklore did not come from paganism, but rather arose on its own within a Christian context. Ordinary people’s lives in medieval and early modern times were not completely dominated by the church; they were capable of coming up with their own ideas.

The other reason why I think so many people are so convinced that Christmas is pagan is because lots of people like thinking that Christmas traditions are pagan. People like to imagine that, when they set up the Christmas tree, they are participating in a tradition that is thousands of years old. We live in a modern age where the world seems so utterly different from the world our ancestors lived in only a century ago. We are surrounded by computers, screens, cell phones, tablets, and all sorts of high-tech gadgets and gizmos.

The world of our ancestors is gone forever and, since our world seems (at least superficially) completely different from the world of the past, people feel like something has been lost. Thus, sometimes people like to pretend that there are some things that are eternal, that have survived from antiquity completely unchanged. Since Christmas is a holiday deeply rooted in tradition, people like to imagine that the Christmas traditions we know today are ancient, even more ancient than Christianity itself.

The sad truth, though, is that nothing ever lasts forever. Old traditions die and new ones replace them. That is just how the world works. Eventually, humanity itself will die out and the Earth will be destroyed. Then there will be no one to celebrate any kind of festival in midwinter at all.

The third and final reason why I think some people continue to believe that Christmas is pagan is because of anti-Christian sentiment. The idea that Christmas is pagan is especially popular among atheists and agnostics, who feel a tinge of glee telling Christians that their beloved holiday traditions are pagan. Ironically, it’s the atheists and agnostics who believe this who have been had; anytime someone claims that Christmas or Easter is pagan, they are, in fact, repeating age-old fundamentalist talking points.

Conclusion

The sad truth is, there is almost nothing pagan about how Christmas is celebrated today. Christmas gift-giving, Christmas trees, Advent wreaths with candles, and mistletoe decorations are all first attested far too recently to actually go back to pre-Christian antiquity. Some of these traditions, such as gift-giving, do resemble ancient Roman traditions, but, as far as I can tell, they are unrelated.

Pre-Christian pagan holidays such as Saturnalia and Yule have impacted Christmas a little, but most of the Christmas traditions that can genuinely be traced back to ancient paganism are long extinct. Unless your Christmas celebration involves electing a “Lord of Misrule” to give silly orders to everyone present or serving up a severed boar’s head, it probably isn’t really pagan.