WHERE CHRISTMAS CAME FROM
Celebrating the turn of the year is an ancient custom. The Romans celebrated the SATURNALIA, the festival of Saturn, god of harvest, between December 17 and 23.
Long before the birth of Christ, the Jews celebrated an eight-day festival of Lights at the same season and it is believed that the Germanic People celebrate at midsummer and winter solstice the rebirth of the sun and honored the great fertility God's Wotan and Freyja, Donar(Thor) and Freyr.
Even after the Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be Rome's official imperial religion, the evocation of pre-Christian midwinter celebrations could not be entirely suppressed.
In the year 274 A.D, the Roman Emperor Aurelian had established an official cult of the sun-god MITHRAS, declaring his birthday December 25, a national holiday. The cult of Mithras, the Aryan god of light had spread from Persia through Asia Minor to Greece, Rome and as far as Germanic lands and Britain. Numerous ruins of his shrines still testify to the high regard in which this god was held, especially by the Roman Legions, as a bringer of fertility, peace and victory.
So it was a clever move when, in the year 354 A.D, the Christian Church under Pope Liberius co-opted the birthday of MITHRAS and declared December 25 to be the birthday of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Credit: Neue Zurcher Zeitung,
Anne-Sussane Rischke
December 25,1983