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Most of the world’s Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25. In truth, the exact day is not known. “We don’t even know the exact year,” the experts agree. The reason for the vague tradition is that birthdays just weren’t celebrated around the turn of the century. They wouldn’t have mattered. Therefore, the origin of the Christmas party must be elsewhere.
The investigation of Christmas leads to one of the most difficult areas of the historical investigation of the church. The sources are unsatisfactory, but a plausible scenario can still be reconstructed, says church historian Martin Wallraff of the University of Munich. To explore the Christmas tradition, it is not necessary to go back to the birth of Jesus. «This is a product of the GreekRoman World that arose in the Mediterranean region between the 3rd and 4th centuries ». Conversely, this means: Christianity lived for a long time without a Christmas festival.
Official imperial cult
The area of Roman At that time, the empire was characterized by a cult of the sun, which made its breakthrough under the Emperor Aurelian. “We know from Aurelian that he built a temple in honor of the sun in Rome and organized games, so that the cult of the sun became the official cult of the empire,” says the historian of the church of Bonn Wolfram Kinzig. Since then, the symbolism of the sun has also been found on coins and medals.
“The climax of the sun worship was the day of the invincible sun god, Sol invictus, on December 25,” Kinzig explains. According to the ideas of the time, it was the day of the winter solstice that displaced the darkness.
New astrological considerations were responsible for the growing popularity of light, Kinzig says. The teaching of the stars was extremely attractive to the general public and intellectuals.
Christ as the sun
Christmas is said to have developed out of this “solar religion” only slightly later in Christianity. “Because even among Christians, interest in astronomical festivals and solar festivals increased,” says Wallraff. However, this interest in the sun was interpreted in a Christian way, as the birth of Jesus.
Kinzig also confirms that solar symbolism increasingly infiltrated Christianity. The assumption at the time: Christ was the sun. “This is our sun, the true sun, which with the abundance of its light lights the brightest royal fires in the world and the stars that shine in the sky,” he says in a sermon by Bishop Zeno of Verona at the end of the 4th century.
The overlapping of the festivals in honor of the Sol invictus and the birth of Christ, Christmas, later led to the thesis that the celebrations were deliberately placed on this date to displace the older pagan festival. “This thesis is still being done today,” says the professor at the University of Bonn.
Christmas tree from the 16th century
From Rome, the Christmas feast was exported to some extent around 380 AD “It was also introduced into Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire at that time,” said the theologian.
However, Christmas today only developed over time. Kinzig mentions the ox and the donkey, which are an integral part of the Christmas story. “Animals were more common, especially in late ancient art,” says the expert. Later, in the Middle Ages, there was a custom to perform so-called mystery games. “It was a kind of spiritual theater, from which today’s births emerged.”
There is also evidence of the 16th century Christmas tree. “It was often seen as a tree of paradise,” Kinzig explains, as December 24 was the day of remembrance for Adam and Eve. However, as a general custom, it did not spread until a good 300 years later, as did the gift-giving tradition.
