The History of Christmas

History of Christmas

By Bob Funk, Sr.

If you’ve been to my home, ranch or business in December, you know Christmas is our favorite holiday to celebrate commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

While the Bible does not mention Jesus' exact birthday (Dec. 25 is observed according to the Gregorian calendar), there are several key clues. More importantly than the exact date itself, Christians celebrate Christmas to remember the incarnation, when Jesus became a man and entered human history. This event is aligned with Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

My team has gathered Christmas history and several ‘fun facts’ and I trust you can use them around the table as you gather with loved ones this month.

The First Christmas

The holiday was introduced in Constantinople in 379 AD. The original term for Christmas was "Christ's Mass".

Origins of Christmas

The origins of Christmas stem from both the pagan and Roman cultures. The Romans celebrated two holidays in the month of December. The ﬁrst was Saturnalia, which was a two-week festival honoring their god of agriculture Saturn. On December 25th, they celebrated the birth of Mithra, their sun god. Both celebrations were raucous, drunken parties.

Also in December, in which the darkest day of the year falls, the pagan cultures lit bonﬁres and candles to keep the darkness at bay. The Romans also incorporated this tradition into their own celebrations.

As Christianity spread across Europe, the Christian clergy were not able to curb the pagan customs and celebrations. Since no one knew Jesus’s date of birth, they adapted the pagan ritual into a celebration of His birthday.

Christmas Trees

As part of the solstice celebrations, the pagan cultures decorated their homes with greens in anticipation of the spring to come. Evergreen trees remained green during the coldest and darkest days, so they were thought to hold special powers. The Romans also decorated their temples with ﬁr trees during Saturnalia and decorated them with bits of metal. There are even records of the Greeks decorating trees in honor of their gods.

Interestingly, the ﬁrst trees brought into the pagan homes were hung from the ceiling, upside down.

The tree tradition we are accustomed to today hails from Northern Europe, where Germanic pagan tribes decorated evergreen trees in worship of the god Woden with candles and dried fruit. The tradition was incorporated into the Christian faith in Germany during the 1500’s. They decorated trees in their homes with sweets, lights, and toys.

Santa Clause

Inspired by St. Nicholas, this Christmas tradition has Christian roots, rather than pagan ones. Born in southern Turkey around 280, he was a bishop in the early Christian church and suffered persecution and imprisonment for his faith. Coming from a wealthy family, he was renowned for his generosity towards the poor and disenfranchised. The legends surrounding him abound, but the most famous is how he saved three daughters from being sold into slavery. There was no dowry to entice a man to marry them, so it was their father’s last resort. St. Nicholas is said to have tossed gold through an open window into the home, thus saving them from their fate. Legend has it that the gold landed in a sock drying by the ﬁre, so children started hanging stockings by their ﬁres in hopes St. Nicholas would toss gifts into them.

In honor of his passing, December 6th was declared St. Nicholas day. As time went on, each European culture adapted versions of St. Nicholas. In Swiss and German cultures, Christkind or Kris Kringle (Christ child) accompanied St. Nicholas to deliver presents to well-behaved children. Jultomten was a happy elf delivering gifts via a sleigh drawn by goats in Sweden. Then there was Father Christmas in England and Pere Noel in France. In the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lorraine, France, and parts of Germany, he was known as Sinter Klaas (Klaas, for the record, is a shortened version of the name Nicholas).

This is where the Americanized Santa Claus comes from.

Christmas In America

Christmas in early America was a mixed bag. Many with Puritan beliefs banned Christmas because of its pagan origins and the raucous nature of the celebrations. Other immigrants arriving from Europe continued with the customs of their homelands. The Dutch brought Sinter Klaas with them to New York in the 1600’s. The Germans brought their tree traditions in the 1700’s. Each celebrated their own way within their own communities.

It wasn’t until the early 1800’s that the American Christmas began to take shape.

Washington Irving wrote a series of stories of a wealthy English landowner who invites his workers to have dinner with him. Irving liked the idea of people of all backgrounds and social status coming together for a festive holiday. So, he told a tale that reminisced about old Christmas traditions that had been lost but were restored by this wealthy landowner.

Through Irving’s story, the idea began to take hold in the hearts of the American public.

In 1822, wrote An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas for his daughters. It’s now famously known as The Night Before Christmas. In it, the modern idea of Santa Claus as a jolly man ﬂying through the sky on a sleigh took hold. Later, in 1881, the artist Thomas Nast was hired to draw a depiction of Santa for a Coke-a-Cola advertisement. He created a rotund Santa with a wife named Mrs. Claus, surrounded by worker elves. After this, the image of Santa as a cheerful, fat, white-bearded man in a red suit became embedded in American culture.

A National Holiday

After the civil war, the country was looking for ways to look past difference and become united as a country. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant declared it a federal holiday. And while Christmas traditions have adapted with time, Washington Irving richly deserves the point that the Christmas celebration is about unity, giving to loved ones and shared experiences. It’s become a time of year where we wish others well, donate to our favorite

charities, and give presents with a joyful spirit.

Ways to Celebrate

Christmas is a central feast in Christianity and is celebrated with a variety of religious and secular traditions, including:

• Exchanging gifts

• Decorating Christmas trees

• Attending church

• Sharing meals with family and friends

• Waiting for Santa Claus

• Lighting the Christ Candle in the Advent wreath

• Roman Catholic churches celebrating the ﬁrst Christmas mass at midnight

• Protestant churches holding Christmas candlelight services late on the evening of December 24

Express Companies/Funk Company/Funk Family Traditions

• Christmas Parties

• End-of-Year Bonus Gifts

• Express Clydesdales featured in one of America’s Christmas Parades

• Attend a church service

• All-family dinner on Christmas eve

• Give, Give, Give

• Bonus: Grandpa Funk use to run around the house in the evening while ringing actual sleigh bells. This certainly got the kids attention and became a family tradition for a time.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Friends, family, colleagues,

In this Christmas season, my prayer is for you to be richly blessed wherever you are and following whatever Christmas traditions bring you happiness, joy, shared time with loved ones and the remembrance of our Lord Jesus. From my family to yours, we wish you the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of holidays! As ‘bonus’ Christmas history, I leave you with the Christmas story as told by Apostle Luke.

Luke 1:26-35

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."