Dec. 20, 2011
People are testy this time of year. It's not nec-essarily the stress of gift buying, party preparations, or making sure the turkey doesn't burn. It's the increasing politicization of the season.
Hearing a cheery "Happy Holidays" can send some people into orbit and into a lecture about Christ being the reason for the season. The secular or non-Christian person might cringe at hearing Merry Christmas. It's too bad that so many people get bent out of shape over these things in our increasingly politically correct culture.
The truth is, there were Christmas-like holiday celebrations well before the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem manger. In fact, most ancient human societies celebrated some sort of festival that marked the end of one year and the beginning of another. As the sun sinks ever lower in the sky and the days reach their shortest period of the year, ancient cultures used this time — at least those in the northern hemisphere — to celebrate and begin anew.
The celebration that most Americans know as Christmas is related to the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia. This was a weeklong festival that began around Dec. 17 and was marked by parties, visits to friends, and the giving of gifts, especially candles to signify the returning light after the winter solstice. Ever-greens were popular decorations around the home. It was the most anticipated time of the year.
During the Saturnalia, business came to a halt. Certain restrictions were relaxed and the social order inverted. Within the family, a Lord of Misrule was chosen. This person presided over the holiday revelries, which often included drunkenness and practical jokes.
Slaves did not have to work and were treated as equals. They were allowed to wear their masters' clothing, and be waited on at mealtime. These role reversals were related to the idea that the sun would soon reverse its course thus lengthening the light of day.
In the fourth century, Christianity adopted the Saturnalia hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. It largely worked. After the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity after 312 A.D., its leaders succeeded in converting large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate pagan festivals, including the Saturnalia.
The problem was that Saturnalia wasn't very Christian, so bishops simply named Saturnalia's last day, Dec. 25, Jesus' birthday.
The Christian reform movements of the 16th century brought some changes to the celebration of Christmas. Because of its pagan origins, one group, the Puritans (called thus for their desire to purify the Christian faith) banned the holiday. They found no scriptural justification for its celebration, and they disliked the waste, extravagance, disorder, and immorality associated with it. They also saw Christmas — or, more properly, Christ's mass — as a Roman Catholic ceremony. The ban was lifted in 1681, but for more than a century afterward its celebration was decidedly subdued and sometimes frowned upon.
In the early American South, however, Christmas retained much of its ancient tradition for irreverence, disorder and indulgence. Many plantation owners allowed slaves a few more freedoms than were normal, including a cessation of work, feasting and alcohol. Slaves who had been hired out for the year were often allowed to return home and visit their families, but only for about a week as Jan. 1 began anew the slave hire season.
Christmas as we know it today began its modern evolution when it became a federal holiday in 1870. The harsh Puritan view had relaxed, and Amer-icans fashioned the day into one of commercialism and nostalgia, helping to lessen the religious tension between newly arriving Catholic immigrants and their Puritan-Protestant neighbors.
So, next time someone says Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays, perhaps a hearty "Io Saturnalia!" might offer the oppor-tunity to come together in the spirit of the season and discourse on the history of this most celebrated time of year.
R. Matthew Poteat is an assistant professor of history in the Virginia Community College System. Email him at rmpoteat@gmail.com
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