Midwinter
Festivals
So why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th,
if it isn't the actual birthday of Jesus? The answer
is that the celebration goes back much further than
that.
Midwinter has always been a time to hold rituals.
When it's dark and cold and you haven't got electric
lights or central heating you need something to keep
you going.
In the book "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe"
C S Lewis takes us to Narnia, a mythical land that is
gripped by evil. In Narnia it is always winter and never
Christmas and the children who explore this dark world
can't think of anything worse. Winter needs Christmas,
and mid-winter festivals were around a long time before
Christmas.
The Romans had a mid-winter festival called Saturnalia,
and a lot of what Saturnalia was about we would recognise
today. It was the time of the year for being merry and
exchanging gifts. It was a time to over-eat and get
drunk. Another mid-winter festival around at the time
of the first Christians was called the Feast of the
Unconquered Sun. This was the main festival of a rival
religion to Christianity and it drew many revellers.
Early Christians didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Birthdays themselves were considered pagan. But by about
350 AD there was pressure to name a feast day to Jesus:
a mass of Christ, and it was a classic case of if you
can't beat then join them and the date of December 25th
was chosen. It was a day people were already partying
so the Church decided to give them something to party
about. So Christ's mass or Christmas was born.
