Are pagan festivals the reason we celebrate Christmas on 25 December?
It’s widely claimed that Christians adapted ancient Roman holidays — and borrowed 25 December — in an effort to make Christmas more palatable to pagans. But what if the the evidence points in the opposite direction: that pagans adjusted their feasts to rival the popularity of Christmas?
Every December, a familiar claim resurfaces: that Christmas was originally a pagan holiday — and Christians later claimed 25 December for themselves to help pagan converts feel more comfortable celebrating a Christian feast.
But what if the opposite is true? What if Christmas was already well established — and pagan festivals were strategically moved to the 25 December in an attempt to piggyback on its popularity?
I’ve previously discussed the alleged pagan origins of Christmas, but not examined in depth the claim about rebadged pagan holidays — the two major contenders of which are Sol Invictus and Saturnalia.
So, let’s take a closer look at the evidence.
Sol Invictus — the “Unconquered Sun” — was the official sun god of the late Roman Empire.
Sol had been worshipped in Rome for centuries, but his cult remained minor, with observances scattered across the year — most notably with an annual sacrifice on August 9. It was only in the late third century, under Emperor Aurelian, that Sol was elevated to a supreme deity and came to be associated with 25 December. Even then, celebrations on that date were largely confined to the city of Rome.
By the time 25 December became more widely recognised as Sol Invictus’ feast day, there is strong evidence that Christians had already been celebrating Christmas on that date for decades. In a sermon preached in 386 AD, for example, St John Chrysostom described celebrating Christmas on December 25 as a “long-standing tradition.” Most Christian calendars of that period corroborate his statement.
We also know that as Christianity spread, Roman authorities increasingly viewed it as a threat to social cohesion and established patterns of worship. As such, the evidence suggests that pagan rulers ultimately cemented 25 December as the feast day of Sol Invictus in response to the growing popularity of Christmas, not the other way around.
Saturnalia — the ancient Roman holiday for the god Saturn — is the other festival often cited as a pagan precursor to Christmas, since it took place in December and involved feasting and gift-giving. However, the resemblances are superficial at best.
Saturnalia was originally held on 17 December. In time, it was extended until 19 December, and then until 23 December — but never 25 December, the date on which Christians celebrated Christmas. The simple fact is that there were so many Roman festivals throughout the year that any new Christian holiday was bound to fall near a pagan celebration. In other words, Saturnalia’s proximity to Christmas was incidental.
More importantly, the customs associated with Saturnalia were anything but Christian. Lucian of Samosata, writing in the second century, famously personified Saturn to describe the festival’s diabolical antics:
During my week, the serious is barred. No business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games and dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping of tremulous hands, and occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water, such are the functions over which I preside.
Think what you will of Christmas, but Saturnalia bears little resemblance to it. The chaotic celebrations of this Roman feast — crowning a “king of the slaves,” turning social hierarchies upside down, getting drunk and gambling, singing in the nude, dunking people in freezing water — are as far from the meaning of Christmas as one can possibly imagine.
The only similarities of note are the sharing of food and the exchanging of gifts — points that popular sites like Wikipedia and Britannica like to emphasise while downplaying the incongruence of Christmas with Saturnalia’s more bizarre customs.
So where did 25 December as the date for Christmas originate? As I explained in my previous article on the alleged pagan origins of Christmas:
December 25th is exactly nine months after March 25th — the date that Tertullian calculated for Christ’s crucifixion. Since the fourth or fifth century, March 25th is also when the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated — marking when Jesus was conceived in Mary by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the early church believed that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day, making December 25th his birthday.
And the rest is history. By AD 336, the Chronograph of 354 records Christmas being observed on 25 December, confirming the date in early Christian practice.
However, there is another point to consider.
The claim that Christians rebadged festivals like Sol Invictus or Saturnalia to make Christmas more palatable to pagans collapses under an even simpler test: no early Christian source ever says this.
Surely, if Christians had sanitised pagan holidays to make Christmas more appealing to the masses, they would have said so. Yet the Church Fathers never make this claim. In their sermons, calendars and correspondence, they consistently make theological arguments for 25 December as the date of Christ’s birth, and don’t even mention an incidental link to Saturnalia or Sol Invictus.
At best, it appears that the connection between Christmas and those early pagan feasts is indeed only incidental.
Moreover, if one did borrow from the other, the direction is unmistakable: Christmas was already firmly established on 25 December long before Sol Invictus was celebrated on that date throughout the Roman Empire, while Saturnalia never coincided with it at all.
Far from co-opting pagan holidays, Christmas was so influential that Roman authorities apparently made their own attempts to displace the popular Christian celebration.
They failed, while Christmas endured — and 20 centuries later, we are still celebrating the birth of the Christ child whose influence transformed the Empire and civilised our world.
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Kurt Mahlburg has studied architecture and theology among other interests of philosophy, history, surf, the outdoors and travel. He spent several years in Indonesia and has worked as a young adults pastor. He is now a teacher, a freelance writer, the Features Editor of the Canberra Declaration and contributes regularly at Caldron Pool & other online publications. He hosts his own blog ‘Cross + Culture’ at KurtMahlburg.blog. Follow Kurt on 𝕏.
Check out Kurt Mahlburg’s new book Cross and Culture: Can Jesus Save the West?
