The season is now considered a Christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ but that is not how it started out. The
English term 'Christmas' (“mass on Christ’s day”) is of fairly recent
origin. The earlier term 'Yule' may have derived from the Germanic jōl or the Anglo-Saxon geōl, which referred to the feast of the winter solstice.
Christmas
originally had nothing to do with
Christianity and pre-dates Jesus Christ by hundreds of years. It is
based
on pagan fertility rites and practices. Many of our Christmas
traditions like decorating trees, singing carols and
giving presents, are rooted in the traditions of non-Christian
festivals. We don't observe Christmas on 25 December because it was
Jesus's birthday; no one really knows when he was born anyway. It's
more because this was the date the Romans
historically celebrated the (northern hemisphere) winter solstice. For
each hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest
period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the sun is at its
lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky. The
fact that Christmas was celebrated on the birthday of the unconquered
sun (dies solis invicti nati)
gave the season a solar background, connected with the kalends, a Roman
term for the first day of a month. On 1 January, the Roman New Year,
houses were decorated with
greenery and lights, and presents were given to children and the poor.
The current-day figure of the American red-clad Santa Claus was based on folklore traditions surrounding -
- Saint Nicholas, an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the city of Myra in Asia Minor [modern-day Demre, Turkey] during the time of the Roman Empire;
- The English figure of Father Christmas, the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. Although now known as a Christmas gift-bringer and typically considered to be synonymous with Santa Claus, he was originally part of a much older and unrelated English folkloric tradition. The recognisably modern figure of the English Father Christmas developed in the late Victorian period;
- The Dutch figure of Sinterklaas, a legendary figure based on Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children.
