Happy Yule!

I started this blag over three years ago, and that first December I reminded everyone that there's no such thing as Christmas. I'd like to return to the theme briefly, as this is the week when a heck of a lot of people imagine they're celebrating Baby Jesus's birthday.

Of course, that's not true. We can even, for the moment, discount the fact that there is no real evidence at all that "Jesus" was a real person. If you choose to believe in the Gospel story of the birth of Jesus, then you can't believe that he was born on December 25th.

The earliest known mention of December as the time of Jesus's birth comes from the Chronographiai of Sextus Julius Africanus, written in the early 3rd century. In my previous post, I had misphrased that a bit, as Africanus only mentions December, not December 25th specifically. Early Christians had celebrated Jesus's birth on January 6th, now known as Epiphany. The earliest reference to Christmas falling on December 25th is in the Chronography of 354, which was a calendar of events in Rome. Elsewhere, Christmas continued to be celebrated at different times.

Some scholars maintain that a winter date is implausible, because the gospel narratives have shepherds out in the fields watching sheep. There is some disagreement on this, as some maintain that sheep wouldn't be out on pasture in winter, while others disagree. But whichever way you look at it, the idea that Jesus was born on December 25th only started to circulate over 300 years after he supposedly lived.

**

It must have been awfully convenient for the church that Jesus was born so close to the winter solstice. That's sarcasm, by the way. All around the world, some of the biggest feast days of the year were the equinoxes and solstices. The winter solstice was a popular celebration with both the Germanic cultures of Europe and the Romans, for whom Saturnalia was the most popular festival of them all.

During Saturnalia, celebrated in honor of Saturn, citizens would eat and drink copiously. Most people would wear a special cap called a pileus. Coincidentally, if you dyed a pileus red and put a jingle bell on it, can you guess what it would look like?

Another important Saturnalia custom was the giving of presents. The poet Martial dedicated book 14 of his Epigrams entirely to Saturnalia presents.

Intriguingly, there is a suggestion that Santa Claus is based on, of all people, Odin.

**

So, as most of the Western world gathers together in late December, they're celebrating Saturnalia. When, again, Christian conservatives scream about "keeping Christ in Christmas", they might be better advised to get their Christ out of our Saturnalia.

Happy Yule!