Christmas arrives in three days. Merry Christmas!
Recently I wondered how much I knew about Christmastime. Turns out, not so much.
The greeting, "Merry Christmas," comes from Charles Dickens' "Christmas Carol," the story of old Scrooge who represented traditional England to the author who was a major revivalist of Christmas in the 1840s.
Early Christians certainly remembered the birth of Christ, but not the date. How did it end up on Dec. 25?
There are many theories. Here are three:
Early Christians refused to celebrate the Roman pagan holiday of Saturnalia, the winter solstice that occurred from Dec. 17-22. Their refusal to celebrate a big holiday might have led to persecution so they decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus instead.
Later, in AD 274, the Roman emperor Aurelian decreed a new holiday to replace Saturnalia: Solis Invicti, the birthday of the unconquerable sun. That occurred on Dec. 25. Christians conformed.
Finally, at some early point, the Annunciation, the angel's announcement to Mary that she was pregnant, was set on March 25. Dec. 25 comes nine months later, obviously.
So is Christmas a pagan holiday? No. But it had pagan roots.
Today we're in the final days of Advent. That's a month before Christmas. In olden days it was a vigil, a time of fasting and Bible reading ending on Christmas Eve.
I grew up with Advent calendars. Every day we opened a window on the cardboard calendar and read part of the Biblical Christmas story.
Christmas Day was a day of celebration, a day that signified God's gift to humankind. So gift-giving became a central part of the celebration. Wealth slowly grew after the Middle Ages and the commercial side of Christmas came into competition with the religious side. That was a concern way back in 1850 when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a popular story that complained about it.
Today, Christmas is the major retail event of the year. For many retailers, the year's profits come in December.
After Christmas Day came the Twelve Days of Christmas, now largely forgotten except for the carol describing gifts given by "my true love." Each day honored a saint. Epiphany, signifying the arrival of the Magi who gave gifts to the Christ child, was celebrated on the Twelfth Night (also known as "Christmastide").
This was the original day of gift-giving, but with industrialization and urbanization 12 days of feasts and celebrations was too much to ask of the new leaders of society, so that tradition died out.
But traces survive.
Many manger scenes and crèches add the Three Wise Men on Epiphany. Cakes were part of the celebrations so today, Germans still cook stollen, Italians cook panettone, and Mexicans cook the Rosca de Reyes. Often, a bean or pea is hidden in the cake and the person who receives it becomes celebrated in some way.
Before the arrival of sugar, cakes were sweetened using fruits. That's the source of the legendary Christmas fruit cake.
Here's an obscure fact about Epiphany: In England, religious skeptics had their own celebration and the one who got the bean became the Lord of Misrule. He or she presided over a night of revelry that I can't describe in this family-friendly history.
The Christmas season officially ended after Epiphany. Christmas trees and decorations were taken down on the next day.
The Christmas tree tradition came from Germany. They noted that the tree had a triangle form suggesting the Trinity. They decorated an evergreen tree with apples at first. So that established the three colors of Christmas: green, red and white (for snow).
St. Nicholas was a Christian bishop of Myra, a town in southwest Turkey today. He was wealthy, but had a good heart. The tradition is that there was a family so poor that the three daughters had no dowries and were doomed to become prostitutes. Not to embarrass them, Nicholas dropped three bags of gold coins down their chimney to save them from their fates.
On the last drop, some socks were hanging over the coals to dry and the bag landed in a sock. That is the source of Christmas stockings. Many stockings today still contain some chocolate gold coins.
Have a happy "holiday" (a term meant to include Hanukkah).
Jack Batson is a former member of the Fairfield City Council. Reach him by email at [email protected].