The History of Celebrating Christmas
Pagan solstice celebrations honoring the god Oden were popular among Germanic peoples. The Norse celebrated Yule, an agricultural feast, according to the Home Church Network Association. Romans enjoyed the feast of Saturnalia.
The Christian Church began celebrating Christ's birth three centuries following his death and resurrection. Pope Julius I chose December 25th to honor Christmas (Mass of Christ), known as the "Feast of the Nativity." However, the celebration was not commonly observed throughout Europe for another 400 years.
In the Middle Ages, people celebrated by partaking in drunken street revelry after attending church. The poor visited homes of the wealthy to demand food and drink. Christmas was a time to set wrongs right by giving the poor alms.
When English Puritan Oliver Cromwell came on the scene in 1645, he cancelled Christmas because it wasn't mentioned in the Bible and didn't meet his idea of a holy day. As a result, when the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts, the celebration of Christmas was illegal.
By the war of Independence, celebrations of the 12 days of Christmas were common. However, after the separation from England, European traditions were ignored. Christmas celebrations were no longer fashionable. December 25, 1789 was a working day for the new American Congress. Christmas didn't become a Federal holiday until 1870.
According to the Colonial Williamsburg holiday site, by the mid-eighteenth century, the southern colonies were celebrating Christmas on a grand scale with balls, parties, visits and lavish meals. In 1762, Thomas Jefferson called it a "day of greatest mirth and jollity."
The secular side of Christmas began to gain an even larger foothold by the twentieth century. Following World War II, the holiday conjured up as many images of toys and department-store Santas as it did church services for today's baby boomers. Neighborhoods awarded prizes to residents for colored light displays.
A fair amount of trivia surrounds this holiday. Christmas Celebrations says the first president to decorate a White House Christmas tree was Franklin Pierce. Electric lights appeared in 1895.
Christmas cards were invented in 1843, during the Victorian Era. Poinsettias date to the early 1800s, when Joel Poinsett introduced the plant from Mexico. The berries of another favorite, holly, are in fact poisonous.
Anyone receiving all the gifts mentioned in The Twelve Days of Christmas would get 364 presents.
Jingle Bells was written for Thanksgiving. Somehow, it caught on for Christmas. The world's most famous reindeer, Rudolph, appeared in a Montgomery Ward holiday promotion in the 1930s.
And what about Santa?
History.com tells us that 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, written in 1822, created our modern image of Santa. He first made it into American culture in 1773, when a newspaper reported that Dutch families in New York marked the anniversary of the death of St. Nicholas. The Dutch Sint Nikolaas was shortened to the nickname Sinter Klaas. Eventually, it became Santa Claus.
Sources:
Home Church Network Association site
Colonial Williamsburg holiday site
History.com site
Published by Vonda J. Sines
Vonda J. Sines has been a writer and an editor her entire adult life. She left a conventional 8-to-5 career to pursue her passion of writing from dawn to dusk. She has worked as a horse, dog and cat rescue... View profile
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