Is Christmas a Pagan Holiday?

Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25? Was the celebration of Jesus’ birth originally a pagan celebration of the winter solstice? Today, Stephen Nichols discusses the history of Christmas and the festival of Saturnalia.

NATHAN W. BINGHAM: This week, we're joined by the president of Reformation Bible College, Dr. Stephen Nichols. So Dr. Nichols, is Christmas a pagan holiday?

DR. STEPHEN NICHOLS: So, this idea that Christmas is a pagan holiday stems from a Roman practice of celebrating what is the winter solstice. They called it the Feast of Saturnalia, and it was celebrated towards the end of our calendar year, so anywhere from mid-November through the end of December. It did seem to get brought into a focus around the middle of December. Sometimes it was celebrated on December 23 and around there. So, there is that Roman practice. On the Christian side of celebrating Christmas, what we see is as early as the 200s the celebration of Christmas, going back to the annunciation of the angel coming to Mary, and that was dated in the Hebrew calendar the fourteenth of Nisan, which would be right around March 25. So then nine months, and Jesus is born on December the twenty-fifth. So, around the 200s, the Christians started celebrating Christmas.

The key moment here, though, is when Constantine comes on the scene. And with Constantine and the so-called Christianizing of the Roman Empire, a number of these Roman feasts were given Christian meaning and given a Christian emphasis. So, from the 330s on, the practice in the Roman Empire was to celebrate not the winter solstice and Saturnalia, but to celebrate the coming of Christ into the world and the incarnation. One of the early church fathers, Chrysostom, right around 400, had a sermon on the nativity. And he said this: "Come, let us observe the feast. Truly wondrous is the whole chronicle of the nativity. For this day, the ancient slavery is ended. The devil confounded. The demons take to flight. The power of death is broken. Paradise is unlocked. The curse is taken away. Sin is removed from us. Error driven out. Truth has been brought back." Well, all we can say to that is, Merry Christmas.