Pagan Christmas

Pagan Christmas

It is traditional that the media be filled with pseudo historical nonsense about the pagan elements of Christmas at this time of year. But atheists who claim to be “working for a more rational world” really should be more careful than harried journalists when presenting the “real history” of the season. Unfortunately, they almost never are.

As I have noted here before, the media loves giving dubious background stories on traditions and festivals. At Christmas, it fills column inches or provides clickable online copy in what is usually a quiet news period. And the “pagan origins of Christmas” story almost writes itself, given that the poor saps who are given this thankless task each year just have to recycle elements of the dozens of previous versions from other years.

As a result, we get the same claims repeated endlessly, with the usual level of historical research put into them that we would expect for this low level journalistic chore; i.e. pretty much none. It would not be too hard for these poor journalists to work out that most of the claims about pagan origins of Christmas and its customs are nonsense – after all, there are excellent resources available on the internet which do this in some detail. But journalists assigned to this kind of task are not likely to go against the grain and debunk the standard pieces of this type and most of their readers do not like debunkings anyway. So each “pagan Christmas” article echoes the previous ones, like an endless succession of ghosts of Christmas past.

Atheist activists, on the other hand, are meant to check things carefully. For example, Seth Andrews, the atheist broadcaster who is host of the website, podcast, and online community “The Thinking Atheist”, begins his podcast and heads his website by imploring his audience to “Assume nothing. Question everything. And start thinking.” A voiceover on his podcast and YouTube channel declares their aims as “Rejecting Faith. Pursuing Knowledge. And working together for a more rational world.” Noble and stirring stuff.

Unfortunately, when Andrews recently ventured into the history behind Christmas, – in a podcast/video called “What Christians (Probably) Don’t Know About Christmas” – the result was a mangled mish-mash of confused myths, pseudo history and total nonsense. But it was driven by a burning desired to show Christians that their cherished Christmas traditions were all, in fact, wickedly pagan.

Normally I would go through each of Andrews’ claims and compare them to what the actual evidence shows, but – as I have already noted – these claims have been ably debunked elsewhere. Most usefully, Classics scholars Peter Gainsford and Spencer Alexander McDaniel have both written several articles showing how almost all of the “pagan Christmas” claims Andrews and others like him parrot are mostly nonsense. So I will simply link to their articles here and then refer back to them as I analyse Andrews’ bungled assertions.

To begin with, Spencer Alexander McDaniel’s Tales of Times Forgotten blog has a very detailed analysis on the subject which shows that, in fact, most elements of Christmas claimed as “pagan” actually are not:

Just How Pagan is Christmas Really?

Given that the claim that Christmas is essentially just the Roman festival of Saturnalia rebadged, McDaniel has recently added another useful article detailing what we know about Saturnalia and highlighting that it had little influence on Christmas:

How Was Saturnalia Celebrated in Ancient Rome?

Peter Gainsford’s always useful and thorough blog, Kiwi Hellenist, tackles the other main set of “pagan Christmas” claims: the idea that we are just celebrating pagan Yule, showing that there is little in modern Christmas that we can say is actually from Germanic paganism either:

Concerning Yule

A lot of nonsense also gets claimed about pagan origins of more specific elements, so McDaniel tackles the ones about Santa Claus:

The Long, Strange, Fascinating History of Santa Claus

and Christmas trees:

The Origins of the Christmas Tree

It should be noted for the benefit of the easily confused that neither of these gentlemen are in any way “Christian apologists”. Both are Classics scholars and both are, like me, just as happy to debunk Christian bad history as any other. Gainsford’s most recent post – The Christmas Stories: Matthew vs. Luke – is a good summary of the problems with trying to create one narrative out of the two very different stories in the gospels’ Infancy Narratives, despite the desperate efforts to do so by Biblical conservatives. Similarly, McDaniel’s articles on early Christianity are even-handed and equally hard on both Christian and non-Christian claims about history that are unfounded. Yes, many of the arguments and evidence both Gainsford and McDaniel present above can also be found on Christian sites debunking the “pagan origins of Christmas”. This does not mean these are somehow “Christian arguments”. It just means that Christians are not always wrong about absolutely everything.

This is more than can be said for Seth Andrews, who seems to be going for some kind of award for how much he can get totally wrong on this topic in just over an hour.

Andrews, like many American atheist activists, started out as a fundamentalist Christian and spent ten years as a Christian radio host. And it shows. He has the breezy self-assurance and warm but confident delivery of that kind of preacher. Unfortunately, he also has the believer-turned-unbeliever’s zeal for leaping on anything that makes his former faith look bad, with the fundamentalist’s tendency to accept anything that affirms his beliefs as true, without critical analysis or careful fact-checking. So, in this case, the result is a chaotic mess of utter pseudo historical gibberish.

Thankfully, the first half of this disaster focuses mainly on the problems with any Biblical literalist attempt at harmonising the contradictory gLuke and gMatt accounts of Jesus’ birth that Gainsford analyses with greater precision and perceptiveness in the article already noted above. But then Andrews gets onto the “pagan Christmas” stuff and the festival of nonsense begins.

He notes, correctly, that Christmas falls on what the Romans considered to be the winter solstice – December 25. The actual astronomical solstice is December 21/22, but idiosyncrasies of the Roman calendar meant it was celebrated a few days later. What Andrews proceeds to get wrong is why Christmas ended up on the same day as the Roman solstice:

Ancient Rome celebrated the solstice around the 25th of December. In fact, it said December 25th was the birthday of Mithra – this invincible Persian sun god Mithra. And it’s true that Mithraism and Christianity have a lot of suspicious commonalities.

Mithra is at least 4 000 years old. That legend has changed and shaped its way from Persia and the Greeks and the Babylonians and the Mesopotamians and beyond.

(30.39 – 31.06)

The claim that Christmas was originally the festival of the birth of Mithras is a myth beloved by atheist activists, despite the fact it is totally groundless – the esteemed Mithraic scholar Roger Beck refers to it with grumpy exasperation as “the hoariest of ‘facts’”. I have already detailed why this claim is nonsense – see The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism for full details.

As usual, Andrews is oblivious to modern Mithraic scholarship and so wrongly conflates the Roman god Mithras with his quite distinct and different Persian namesake Mithra. Apart from a name and a hat, the two have almost nothing in common with each other. Less typically, Andrews claims a remarkable and totally imaginary lineage for his Mithra, that somehow includes Greek, Babylonian and Mesopotamian Mithraic cults, despite none of these cultures worshipping Mithra/Mithras at all. More pertinently, however, the problem is he claims that December 25 was a Mithraic feast of the god’s birth, despite there being absolutely no evidence for this. But he warms to the theme of these supposed Mithras/Jesus “suspicious commonalities”:

Mithra like Jesus was considered the “light of the world”. Mithra was a heavenly father who received his minions into their heavenly mansions. Does that sound familiar?

Mithra was honoured at this great big feast that was held in the month of
December and the centrepiece of the party was a sacrifice, probably a bull. And the people ate bread and they drank holy water at some point – they think that was wine. All of this revolving around the god who was the sun. Now if that sounds a little bit like the Biblical Last Supper I think there might be some correlations to be drawn there.

(31.07- 31.47)

Any “correlations” drawn here might be useful if these claims were true, but they largely are not. There is no evidence that Mithras was ever called “the light of the world” or “heavenly father”. Mithraism did have a father figure who was a sun god, but that was Sol, not Mithras himself. The claim Mithras “received his minions into their heavenly mansions” is also baseless, as is the stuff about some “great big feast that was held in the month of December”. Mithraic cult ceremonies possibly did occasionally involve the sacrifice of bulls and sacrificed animals were usually then eaten. But Mithraic feasts seem to have more commonly involved bread and wine (not “holy water”), largely because they were staple foods at all meals in the Mediterranean world. Any “correlations” with the gospel’s last supper accounts are minimal and simply a matter of common culture.

But Andrews goes on:

The ancient Romans (especially in the upper classes) they often would celebrate the birthday of Mithra. The big party was Saturnalia, in honour of Saturn, the god of agriculture.


All right we’re tracking … I’ve thrown out a few gods we’ve got Mithra the sun, we get Saturn … agriculture. Now because the sun is bringing the warmer weather these mostly pagan people wanted to appease the god of agriculture, Saturn, so they would have a bountiful harvest.

(31.48 – 32.22)

So now, by an awkward segue about the sun and harvest, Andrews moves from the erroneous claim about “Mithra” having some feast in December to an actual Roman feast in December – Saturnalia. This clearly was a feast of Saturn and Saturn was, among other things, a god of agriculture. But, like most ancient gods, he was not just the god of agriculture and ancient religion tended not to have single gods “of” single things anyway. So Saturn was a deity of generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation and of the passing of time. As McDaniel’s article shows, we can only glean a little from the sources about Saturnalia, but nothing indicates any connection between it and agriculture or anything to do with “a bountiful harvest”.

Andrews continues:

The festival of Saturnalia actually started as a one day thing and it eventually extended to a full week, which began on December the 17th ending December the 24th/25th, okay?

(32.23 – 32.34)

Unfortunately for Andrews, this is not “okay” because it is nonsense. Saturnalia was originally on December 17. By the first century AD it had become a week-long celebration, with Augustus trying to limit it to three days from December 17 to 20. But Caligula extended it again to five days, from December 17 to 22. So even if we take the longest period in which it was celebrated, that still only gets us to … December 23. This means Andrews has to add a few more days with his “December the 24th/25th” to try to weasel his way around the fact that Saturnalia does not encompass December 25 in any of its manifestations.

And during Saturnalia everything else ground to a halt nobody really did anything else. They wouldn’t work all businesses were closed down the courts of law were suspended social activities pretty much non-existent outside the big party everything and everybody revolved around the festival.

(32.35 – 32.52)

This is largely true, though also largely irrelevant. Modern Christmas does not involve a shut down of business for the duration of a week long festival – far from it, given it is a frenzy of commercial activity. The traditional Christian period of celebration was the Twelve Days of Christmas, but this went from December 25 to January 8 and, while it was punctuated with other feast days, also did not involve any cessation of all other activity.

But Andrews soon gets back to his supposed parallels:

And the Roman pagans would decorate their houses with wreaths and greenery. Green plants like the evergreen … they had a special meaning for people who lived in the harshness of winter. All the trees, the grass and everything else, all the plants, the harvest, everything died except for the evergreens. And it was believed that evergreens would keep away the forces of darkness, which is ghosts evil spirits even sickness and disease.

And so families would adorn their homes inside and outside with pine and spruce and fir trees. They’d put evergreen boughs and they’d hang them over the door. These trees and plants were very special things
they didn’t die during the coldest time of the year and they kind of served as a reminder of the green plants and all the lush greenery that would again grow when the sun god returned with the warmer weather so people would literally deck the halls with boughs of holly like the song says. By the way the plant holly that was the symbol of the pagan king of winter.

(32.53 – 33.57)

Which all sounds very significant except for the fact that it is, once again, all nonsense. Or rather, there is no evidence supporting any of this. Absolutely none of the (very scanty) references we have to Saturnalia make any mention of decorating homes with any evergreen boughs and wreaths. They may have, since decorating your home before having friends come over is fairly timeless and decorating with bare sticks did not become fashionable décor until the 1960s. But the claim the Romans did do this is based on no evidence and so the heavy implication that this is the origin of our Christmas decorations is pure nonsense. Those decorations have their origin in northern Europe, and are simply because evergreens look nice in winter rather than any deep pagan associations. As the apocryphal butcher once probably did not say to Sigmund Freud, “sometimes a sausage is just a sausage”.

But on he goes:

Saturnalia – singing, dancing, feasting, socialising, gambling. And exchange of gifts took place between family and friends. Gifts – that’s another piece of the pagan puzzle. And to signify the return of Mithra – the sun, the light of the sun – they would light these wax taper candles and they were gifted to other people who would then light the candles. The Christmas candle finds its roots among the ancient worshippers of the sun god, Mithra.

(33.58 – 34.29)

This is another jumble of nonsense. There was no December festival of Mithras and the very new god Mithras had nothing to do with the festival of the very ancient god Saturn anyway. Somehow Andrews imagines Saturnalia is also a Mithraic festival, which is totally wrong. What he does not seem to realise is Mithraism was a new religion: one that arose in Rome out of astrological speculations in the first century AD, though it adopted the name Mithras and some trappings from the earlier Persian god’s cult to avoid the charge of being an novel superstitio and make itself suitably venerable and respectable (see David Ulansey The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World on how Roman Mithraism began and why it is not the same cult as its distant Persian cousin). The cult of Saturn, on the other hand, was ancient. In fact, it is possible that it was the most ancient of all the Roman cults and was a native Italian deity, worshipped as Satre by the Etruscans, later identified with the Greek god Cronos and eventually supplanted as the chief god in Rome by Jupiter.

So the idea that the very new god Mithras was somehow an intrinsic part of the venerable festival of the very old god Saturn is total gibberish. Andrews also appears totally unaware that the Mithraic cult was a mystery religion, with its rites closely guarded secrets held in private by a small and select group of devotees. The idea that Mithras was the centre of some public spectacle shared by all is totally contrary to everything we know about Mithraism; and our knowledge is minimal precisely because Mithraism was not a large, popular, open and public cult. Nothing Andrews claims here makes the slightest bit of historical sense.

Yes, gifts were exchanged at Saturnalia – mainly votive clay figures and, as Andrews says, candles. But this custom has no connection at all with our tradition of Christmas presents. As McDaniels’ article shows, this gift giving tradition died out in Late Antiquity and was unknown for centuries. Gift giving does not come back into any midwinter festival until the fifteenth century, as part of the feast of St Nicolaus. But that’s Dec 6, not Dec 25. The St Nicolaus tradition only became subsumed into the traditions around Dec 25 in very recent times, largely in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century secularisation (and commercialisation) of earlier Christmas traditions. So our gift giving is not “pagan” in origin and any earlier pagan gift giving is coincidental, not derivative.

Similarly the idea that a Roman midwinter festival involved candles and so any later Christian uses of candles at Christmas must have a pagan Roman origin is pretty obviously absurd. We may see candles as largely ceremonial or atmospheric, but that is because we have electricity. In any period where candles and lamps were the only way you could keep the party going past the very early midwinter sunset, candles are an obvious necessity. The association of Christmas and candles is due to this practicality, not some mystical “pagan” origin.

Andrews now pushes onto that great source of pseudo historical silliness – the Vikings:

The Scandinavian Vikings also had their sun god – a god named Balder – and the evergreen was the special plant of that particular deity. But around the fourth century western Christian churches were starting to settle into celebrations of their own Christmas holiday and of course they decided December 25th made a lot of sense. It’s strategic.

(34.58 – 35.19)

As I have explained in my Mithras- Christmas article, early Christians had a variety of dates for celebrations of Jesus’ birth, including April 19, May 20, Nov 17 and April 2. But in Rome they settled on December 25 and the influence of the Roman church meant this became the standard in the western Church generally. But while the fact this coincided with the Roman date of the solstice (but not Saturnalia) was likely a factor, the reasoning was actually mainly purely Christian. The idea that Jesus was executed on the same day as his conception means he was thought to have died on March 25, which means his birth must be nine months later on … Dec 25. So the date Christianity settled on has something to do with the solstice, but no, it’s not a case of straight appropriation. These things are rarely that simple.

Our first reference to this line of reasoning and December 25 as the right date for Christmas actually pre-dates the fourth century by 200 years. Hippolytus of Rome makes this case way back in c. 205. So the simplistic claim that the Christians “stole” the date simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Not that Andrews seems very interested in scrutiny of evidence. He prefers glib clichés. For example:

Now, this is a lot like what the Catholic Church did with Halloween. Halloween was essentially a Celtic tradition involving the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and treats – very pagan. And the Church was coming in going “Well, we can’t have all this paganism, but people sure like the holiday’, so the Catholic Church sort of redressed it and made it All Saints Day, All Saints Eve or Halloween, changed the date, stamped a brand of ownership on it and said “Aha! Now we, the Catholic Church, own the holiday!’

Christianity did much of the same thing with the festival of Saturnalia in the month of December.

(35.20 – 36.02)

Just as Christmas is usually preceded by annual lazy journalism about “the pagan origins of Christmas”, Halloween is marked by similar cut-and-paste nonsense in popular media. These claims have a long pedigree, going back to nineteenth century folklorists’ obsession with “finding” supposed pagan origins for anything traditional and, originally, Puritan Christians’ similar obsession with denouncing anything deemed “unbiblical” as Papist idolatry derived ultimately from paganism and, therefore, Satan. So Andrews is reverting to his fundamentalist Christian roots here and parroting stuff that is a mainstay of Christian tracts to this day – such as this hilarious example from Jack T. Chick.

The tangle of nonsense Andrews parrots above may need a future article here to fully debunk, but suffice it to say for now that modern historians of folklore have rejected these claims comprehensively. Ronald Hutton’s excellent book Stations Of The Sun (Oxford: 1996) is a good thorough debunking by a leading scholar (Edit – I have now written a detailed debunking of Andrew’s garbled stuff about Halloween above – see “Is Halloween Pagan?”).

Andrews’ confusions continue:

Now the pagans and Christians kind of co-existed at first. They didn’t always get along, they were not always on good terms, but they mingled together and they kind of lived around each other. And then, all of a sudden, in 323 CE Rome adopts Christianity as its official religion. This is 323 CE. So all these party favours and all the traditions of Saturnalia, well, they took those and kind of changed them up and they attached them to the Christ story as the culture continued its religious evolution.

(36.03 – 36.37)

This is mainly just a summary of his earlier errors, but he stresses the date of “323 CE” as when Rome “adopts Christianity as its official religion”. As we have recently seen with Dawkins, it seems atheist activists have a remarkable ability to bungle this date. Dawkins mistakenly thinks this was done by Constantine via the Edict of Milan in 313, though he even gets the year wrong and gives it as 312. Here Andrews thinks it happened in 323, though where he gets this date from I have no idea. Did he think this adoption of Christianity happened at the Council of Nicaea? Given that this council was in 325 and not 323, it is very hard to tell. The source of his bungle aside, Christianity actually became the Roman state religion with Theodosius’ Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD, which is 57 years after 323 – so his claim is a bit like asserting the American Declaration of Independence was made in 1719 or World War Two began in 1882. Why can none of these people get this simple fact right?

Onwards to the supposed pagan origins of Christmas trees:

It took a while for this particular tradition to catch on, at least in its current form. It was 16th century Germany credited with the Christmas tree tradition that we are familiar with today. A lot of people still wary of Christmas trees. Queen Victoria finally validated the Christmas tree tradition – this was 1846. She and Prince Albert were depicted in the Illustrated London News … this drawing of them and their family … they’re standing with the children and they’re standing around a Christmas
tree.

Now before this Christmas trees were still considered somewhat pagan, but Queen Victoria was really popular and after this image went out it became accepted in the public milieu. This was not the case in the early Americas; in fact even in the mid 1840s Americans were largely offended by Christmas trees for being far too pagan. The second governor of the New England Puritans, a guy named William Bradford, he called the trees “pagan mockery” and people were actually penalised. I guess this was considered a form of blasphemy if they attempted to celebrate Christmas with evergreens. But of course public perception soon gave way and the Christmas tree was popularised in the United States.

(36.38 – 38.01

Here, at least, Andrews manages to not say anything that is actually wrong. The problem here is, rather, that he implies that Bradford and later Christian conservatives were right in their claims that Christmas trees were pagan. But they were not. Christmas trees have a post-pagan and wholly Christian folk origin. Once again, the Puritans considered anything insufficiently “Biblical” to be “papist” and so ultimately “pagan”. But they were usually wrong. Andrews is simply following in their footsteps.

Next, mistletoe. Back to those Vikings:

If you’ve ever kissed under the mistletoe you might be surprised to learn that you are engaging in a tradition that dates back thousands of years. Ancient cultures used to think that mistletoe had magical healing powers the Greeks would use mistletoe for everything from menstrual cramps to ulcers they even used it to try to cure or prevent epilepsy. But around the first century CE it was the druids the Celtic priests they came to see mistletoe as a symbol of vigour and life and even reproductive potency in fact the druids would engage in treatments whatever those were for humans and animals who were having problems with fertility.

(38.04 – 38.48)

It is very clear that mistletoe was, like many plants, considered by ancient European cultures to have potential magical properties. But there is no evidence that the much later custom of kissing under mistletoe – first attested in England in the sixteenth century – has anything to do with this. Mistletoe is a traditional Christmas decoration for the same reason fir, holly and ivy are: because it is an evergreen and so more decorative than … bare sticks (see above about late 1960s décor).

Andrews then does a kind of retelling of the Norse story of the death of Baldur thanks to Loki’s trickery and a dart of mistletoe, though he adds some embroidery to try to tie it to the much later Christmas custom:

[Baldur’s] mother Frigg declared mistletoe a symbol of love and she vowed that she would kiss anybody who ever passed underneath it.

(40.41 – 40.50)

This is total garbage – nothing like this is found in any version of the Baldur story and where Andrews got this crap from I have no idea. It does not even make sense: why would Frigg declare the plant that caused the death of her son “a symbol of love”? There is no connection between the Christmas tradition about mistletoe and the Baldur story.

Next, Christmas carols get the Andrews treatment:

It’s believed that our modern day Christmas carols have nothing to do with the birth or life of Christ. Thousands of years ago throughout Europe the pagans would sing songs they would dance around these stone circles possibly to ward off evil spirits and appease the good ones. They used to sing all year: winter, spring, summer, fall – every season. But it was the December tradition that’s the one that stuck.

By the way the word carol possibly derived from a Latin word ‘choraula’ that means ‘circular dance’. But the dancing part of Christmas carols really didn’t last long – it was the singing that stuck. The origins of the Christmas carol are cloaked in a cloud of mystery but it makes sense right that Christianity would latch itself on to yet another pagan tradition. I will let you go down that rabbit hole if you feel so inclined.

(41.27 – 42.22)

There is no “rabbit hole” to go down. Christmas carols have nothing to do with pagans dancing around stone circles and are simply what the term says – carols, sung at Christmas. A carol was a song sung while dancing. Or rather, it was a way of accompanying a dance, usually a circular dance, with music if you did not have any instruments. In the Middle Ages, carols could be and were sung and danced to at any time of year. The words were adapted to the occasion, so you could have wedding carols, harvest carols, Easter carols and, of course, Christmas carols. Other forms of carolling died out, but the Christmas ones survived because of the popularity and conservatism of traditions around Christmas. Again, there is nothing pagan here. Andrews also seems to think that stone circles must have something to do with pre-Christian “paganism”. They are actually Neolithic, which means those pre-Christian pagans had nothing to do with them and had even less idea of what they were all about than we do. We have no evidence of them dancing around them singing carols.

And, finally, Santa:

Santa’s origin story actually harkens back to the land of the Vikings in Scandinavia and northern Europe, specifically the god Odin. Norse tradition says that Odin would appear during the winter solstice celebrations for something called the ‘Wild Hunt’ or the ‘Wild Ride’ and Odin would be at the front of this long line of parading gods in the sky. And they’re swooping around Odin mounted on a flying eight-legged horse; the legendary beast Sleipnir. Now this is the horse that’s arguably most famous for being the beast that Odin rode into Ragnarok, which is the great battle at the end of the world. Odin, an imposing almost terrifying spectre hooded and cloaked and boasting a big white beard, a god of the north he was, Odin, he could strike great fear among the mortals.

And yet it’s also said that Odin had a soft side – he loved a good party. And so this ghost parade – ‘Wild Hunt’ or the ‘Wild Ride’ – it would swoop over villages and homes and they would terrify people who were wandering around. But also Odin would drop toys and candy – it says that some of the children in villages would leave out straw for Sleipnir the horse and, as a reward, Odin would show his gratitude. He would slip down their chimneys and the fire holes in their roofs and he would leave gifts and rewards, according to legend. We can see how the Odin story has informed our Santa legend of today.

(42.32 – 44.11)

Almost none of this is true – see the “Appendix: Santa Claus and Odin” in McDaniel’s long article on the actual origins of Santa. None of the “wild hunt” traditions involve Odin bestowing gifts on children and there was no tradition of leaving out straw for his horse. Again, this is all speculative crap made up by a succession of journalists doing bad research from equally bad secondary sources.

But, despite his admonitions about how we should “Assume nothing. Question everything. And start thinking.” and his assurance his goal is for us all to be “working together for a more rational world”, Andrews seems to have simply cobbled together a grab-bag of nonsense he found lying around on the internet and accepted it all without the slightest question, let alone any fact-checking. An earlier video on his YouTube channel (11 Dec 2018) indicates that at least one of his “sources” for his pseudo historical gibberish is none other than … “Aron Ra” – another serial offender when it comes to garbled bad history. These people just smugly reinforce each others’ total ignorance.

Andrews thus manages to bungle pretty much every claim he makes. And he is not alone – atheists online parrot this stuff and variants of it without the slightest hint of critical analysis or fact checking. Keep in mind that this guy has 300,000+ subscribers on YouTube alone. People actually pay attention to his nonsense.

Once again, it seems anything that is sufficiently anti-Christian in tenor is accepted as dogma by these people. Which makes their (justified) scorn for Christians indulging their own confirmation bias … crisply ironic.

Happy Christmas to everyone.

61 thoughts on “Pagan Christmas

  1. Thank you for the hard work you’re doing. The regular roll-around of the Christmas and Easter filler articles on “did you know this amazing fact that undercuts the Christian narrative?” are as much part of the entire traditions surrounding the holidays today as anything else, but it’s always nice to see someone trying to put some facts out there. What irritates me is not so much the neo-pagans with their “actually Hallowe’en is a pagan holiday” as the badly digested knowledge of the origins of many Christian elements from people who should know better. What has me hitting my head off the desk is that bit about “they drank holy water (some people think wine was meant” which is the kind of Protestant ignorance about “well this is kinda vaguely Christian but it’s not part of my tradition so I don’t bother finding out what this Catholic nonsense is”. Five minutes on Wikipedia would have told him the difference between holy water and sacramental wine, but that would be too much to ask. Honest ignorance is never as bad as a little knowledge.

    The bit about evergreens and harsh winters made me go “hang on, isn’t Rome in central Italy and shouldn’t that be a mild climate?” and it looks (again, five minutes on Wikipedia) that during this period from “approximately 250 BC to AD 400” had unusually warm weather in Europe so they would have had mild winters and not everything except evergreens dying – the Roman Warm Period.

    The Christmas candles sounds like a confused notion of the Advent candles (again, from the second or third-hand version of “this is what those Catholics do” Protestantism he sounds to come from) but again “wow, people lighting candles at night because that’s when it’s dark, how unusual!” as the explanation is laughable.

    When you’re reaching for “candles are associated with Christmas because, uh, night tends to be dark” then you should know you’ve gone too far.

    Anyway, have a good time of it and see you next year!

    13
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    1. I too had to chuckle at the “drinking holy water” reference, especially since he is referencing “the Biblical Last Supper”. So is there a reference to them “drinking holy water” in the gospel accounts of the Last Supper? I must have missed that. You’re right that Protestants seem to have a strangely sketchy grasp of anything Catholic or Orthodox. I have come across evangelicals who seem to think Catholics wash in holy water, wear rosary beads around their necks and even think priests are married to nuns.

      16
      1. Well, the female pope was not married to a nun, i am quite sure about that..

        Don’t remember that you wrote about that probable myth. In case not, you might want to consider it

        1. The Pope Joan myth still pops up online occasionally. But this site is about atheist bad history, not bad history generally. I’ve yet to see a prominent atheist give the Pope Joan story credence, though nothing would surprise me.

          22
  2. A great read as usual! I’m saving the references to Saint Nicolaus history for a Christmas Day treat.

    The author’s ignorance and generally complete lack of historical imagination, the ability to think into previous ways of life is exemplified by his reference to lighting candles. Most mediaeval families would hardly know what a candle was: candles were for the rich ( and even then their use was carefully monitored as they were very expensive and in short supply, hence the custom of giving candles to churches). Most people in the North used rush lights, mainly home made , which were as they say, a reasonably cheap combustible dipped in animal fat. Further down the affluence scale it was the firelight, and once that was banked for night safety : darkness. ( see the Millers Tale for consequences).

    I don’t think the Roman Mediterranean world knew candles , although I suppose they would not leave much archeological trace. The main source of artificial light would be oil lamps, ranging from the humble clay single light to the grand metal multiple candlebra of what we are now enjoined to term ‘high status households.’

    I hope you and all those you care for have a very happy celebration, whatever you care to call it.

    1
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    1. Studies in Ancient Technology, by R. J. Forbes, says candles seem to have originated in Italy and date back to the Etruscans, so they would have been well known in the Roman Empire. But he says that in medieval times candles were mostly found in churches until well into the High Middle Ages.

  3. “most of the claims about pagan origins of Christmas and its customs are nonsense”
    Plus as so often there is the question: why should atheist me care? The only rational conclusion we can draw is that christianity and its customs are flexible. Can a door be opened wider?

    “What Christians (Probably) Don’t Know About Christmas”
    This title alone is more than sufficient reason for me to not watch. Besides the sheer arrogance (christians are not by definition dumb, Mr. Andrews), suppose they do know. Then what? Why should they abandon this tradition or even adapt it?
    Hey, Mr. Andrews, I got news for you. Santa Claus doesn’t live on the Northpole. The Dutch got it wrong too – Sinterklaas doesn’t live in Spain. The original St. Nicolas lived in Myra – nowadays Turkey. There are no reindeers in that country, never been. I bet it you still will have Happy Holidays. We Dutch will keep on celebrating Sinterklaas everyday. Though only last very few years we are getting cured of the colonial hangover called Black Pete.

    For those who, unlike me, are interested: Dutch historian of Antiquity has written many blogposts on these subjects. They largely tell the same; McDaniel’s article containted nothing new for me (though I may have missed a few details). So if you can read Dutch you may want to visit De Mainzer Beobachter.
    It’s sad that pushback remains necessary.

    “But that’s Dec 6”
    Last decades it has become the evening of 5 december; Sinterklaas is supposed to leave for Spain on 6th.

    “Which makes their (justified) scorn for Christians indulging their own confirmation bias … crisply ironic.”
    I think it’s worse. Even Andrews’ points that aren’t nonsensical do nothing to criticize christianity.

    1. “Even Andrews’ points that aren’t nonsensical do nothing to criticize christianity.”

      This. For example, Christians who have been influenced by C. S. Lewis (which would be a lot of evangelicals, including me back in the day) would be quite happy with the idea that earlier customs had been taken up and Christianized, even that they had been a kind of divine revelation all along, the meaning of which was now made clear. It’s mostly groups like Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses that make a big deal out of these “pagan influences” for recruiting purposes, and they’re regarded as cults. Mainstream Christianity has accommodated itself to the idea (whatever its historical merits).

      1. In The Netherlands Zwarte Piet became the servant of Sinterklaas around 1839 when LPC van den Bergh wrote about him. Later ao J Alberdingk Thijm remembered the caricature from his youth. If you think that this has nothing to do with the Dutch having a colonial empire you’re pretty naive. Note that I’m pointing out a correlation, not a causation.
        To’N does not explain how the North-African “Moorish slave” became black (Moors aren’t) and why this happened in the 19th Century. This alone demonstrates that modern Zwarte Piet is not medieval, only has some medieval origins (which I don’t contradict anyway). To’N knows very well that cultural essentialism is false; the meaning of symbols changes over time. The freed “Moorish slave” is very different from the black servant anno 2011 (not a typo). Since then Dutch racists and other right-wingers have turned Black Pete into a symbol of white supremacy, who totally not coincidentally also praise the Dutch colonial past. His conclusion is a non-sequitur.
        You see, I have actually spoken Dutch supporters of Black Pete. Some of them have shouted insults and/or thrown stuff at me. Also I have spoken Afro-Dutch on the topic. But hey, if you think someone living at the other side of the planet can evaluate the relation Zwarte Piet to racism better than me living amidst of this all, go ahead.
        If someone thinks that’s woke, thanks for the compliment.

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        1. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2016.1193039

          read the conclusion.

          “Oddly enough, Zwarte Piet is a figure without an intrinsic meaning, as nobody seems to know for sure how he originated. This lack of clarity about the figure’s provenance leads to a whole host of origin narratives giving meaning to Zwarte Piet, who is thus ‘essentialized’”

          In other words, everyone with an ideological dog in this fight is “sure” that their origin story is the “right” one. If some of them are white supremacist arseholes, I’m afraid that doesn’t instantly transform your version into the “correct” one. And “Moors” were being depicted as black in European art for centuries before the nineteenth century. Go look at some paintings of the Three Wise Men, especially Gaspar (variously a Moor, an African or an Indian king). Or of St Maurice. Or one of the knights of the Round Table, Sir Morien. All black.

          But I’m beginning to think I might have to put any comment that uses the stupid word “woke” straight into the trash.

    2. Nice comment except for one part. Black Pete has nothing to do with colonialism. You might want to actually research the history of black Pete and not parrot woke history.

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    3. Though only last very few years we are getting cured of the colonial hangover called Black Pete.

      Zwarte Piet has his origins in the popular medieval saints’ lives recorded in the thirteenth century Legenda Aurea. That pre-dates anything “colonial” by centuries. The medieval legend was that St Nicolaus freed a “Moorish” slave from the “Sultan of Babylon” and they remained friends and companions afterwards. Modern American cultural imperialism means that any and every form of so-called “black face” has to be condemned because of particularly American cultural associations that it has. This is perhaps a good reason for Americans to reject “black face” but not a good reason for them to impose their sorry history on everyone else. Zwarte Piet is medieval, not “colonial” and not racist in any modern sense.

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  4. Tom Holland makes much the same points as yourself in his article today:

    https://unherd.com/2020/12/the-myth-of-pagan-christmas/

    He fingers Calvin’s English followers as the originators of the idea that the Roman Catholic Church had taken over a pagan midwinter festival; once in power the Puritans even banned Christmas between 1644 and the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It seems strangely appropriate that Seth Andrews, who seems to have been brought up in a similarly extreme branch of Protestantism should be repeating the same calumnies as the Puritans of four centuries ago.

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    1. Yes, this is why I note that in his comments about Halloween, Andrews is perpetuating an old Protestant trope. He has not gone very far from his fundamentalist roots.

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  5. Once again, many thanks for the outstanding work you’re doing, Tim.
    This post was a delightful read.

    Merry Christmas! 🙂

    Octavo Kalendas Januarii. Luna decima.
    Innumeris transactis saeculis a creatione mundi, quando in principio Deus creavit caelum et terram et hominem formavit ad imaginem suam; permultis etiam saeculis, ex quo post diluvium Altissimus in nubibus arcum posuerat, signum fœderis et pacis;
    a migratione Abrahae, patris nostri in fide, de Ur Chaldaeorum saeculo vigesimo primo;
    ab egressu populi Israel de Aegypto, Moyse duce, saeculo decimo tertio;
    ab unctione David in regem, anno circiter millesimo;
    hebdomada sexagesima quinta, juxta Danielis prophetiam;
    Olympiade centesima nonagesima quarta;
    ab Urbe condita anno septingentesimo quinquagesimo secundo;
    anno imperii Caesaris Octaviani Augusti quadragesimo secundo; toto orbe in pace composito,
    Jesus Christus, aeternus Deus aeternique Patris Filius, mundum volens adventu suo piissimo consecrare, de Spiritu Sancto conceptus, novemque post conceptionem decursis mensibus, in Bethlehem Judae nascitur ex Maria Virgine factus homo: Nativitas Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum carnem.

    English translation:

    The Twenty-fifth Day of December. The tenth moon.
    When ages beyond number had run their course
    from the creation of the world, when God in the beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in his own likeness;
    when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace;
    in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith,
    came out of Ur of the Chaldees;
    in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt;
    around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;
    in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;
    in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
    in the year seven hundred and fifty-two
    since the foundation of the City of Rome;
    in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace,
    Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
    desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence,
    was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since his conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man:
    The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

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  6. Hey Tim, could you add another paragraph or two about bread and wine being staples throughout the Mediterranean with some discussion of sources and whatnot, or at least add a ref for further reading on just that topic? Would be very helpful.

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    1. I’m not sure how that paragraph would read or what sources it would cite. It’s not like what I say is remotely obscure or controversial. Bread was the staple of the ancient world. In fact, it was the most common food eaten by most people daily throughout most of history. In the gospels Jesus is depicted referring to “our daily bread” in the “Lord’s Prayer”. In English, “bread” can refer to the specific foodstuff or used generically to refer to food generally, because for most people it was their main source of nutrition. And wine was consumed in vast quantities in the ancient world, though usually watered down for daily consumption.

      Were you not aware of this?

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  7. The idea that Jesus was executed on the same day as his conception means he was thought to have died on March 25, which means his birth must be nine months later on … Dec 25.

    TIL! Or maybe I had heard it before and forgotten. In any case, it makes a lot of sense.

    Re: relating Jesus to Baldur, I’d heard that the Christian influence actually mostly went the other way, with later Christian writers turning Baldur into more of a Christ figure when they start recording the earlier Norse myths (or possibly adding him in wholesale). (And of course they all leave out the real truth of Baldur, that he was part of the great demon Bel which was torn apart by YVHV when he became the most powerful diety. And some day soon he’ll revive and fight with all the other pieces of Bel to try to regain the full demonic power…)

    1. I’ve also heard that the fact that the father of John the Baptist, Zachariah, was serving in the temple and belonged to the priestly order of Abiah, once can county approximately the time of conception of John the Baptist. And then go on from there and see that one possible date for the birth of John was around late June. And then compare account of Luke about John the Baptist to the narrative of Mary and arrive to the date of late December for the nativity of Jesus.

      1. Unless any ancient Christian writer made this calculation and used it to arrive at Dec 25, I can’t see the relevance here. Though anyone today trying to use this has to get around the fact that the whole “nativity of John” element in gLuke is most likely theological embroidery, not history.

  8. Informative article (right down to the bit about bare sticks in the 1960s :- ) and a pleasure to read, as always.
    Lets hope Mr. Andrews and his ilk are visited and taught some edifying lessons by the Ghost of Christmas Past.

    A happy Christmas to you, too!

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  9. There’s one point you and the others you’ve cited haven’t addressed. During the 19th century when many modern Christmas customs emerged, people studied ancient Roman writings in school. So the idea of adults giving gifts to each other might have stemmed from people trying to revive Saturnalia customs based on stuff they read in Latin class. I realize that might be far fetched, but I have to wonder in general the extent to which Romantic people adapting Germanic and Celtic paganism and Neoclassical people adapting Greco-Roman pagan ideas affected our customs in general.

    1. As McDaniel’s article explains, the gift giving tradition emerged much earlier than the nineteenth century and is based on the feast of St Nicholas. So no, it’s not a nineteenth century revival of anything to do with Saturnalia.

    2. @WildlyS: “the idea of adults giving gifts to each other”
      does not stem from the 19th Century, at least not in The Netherlands. Check the entry Sinterklaas at English Wikipedia. The exact origins of this celebration is rather obscure, because the Low Lands (with the exception of Flanders) were obscure and irrelevant in the grand schemes of things. However its Dutch development since the Reformation is pretty well documented. Saturnalia never pops up.

  10. Hi Tim,
    I appreciated your article, highly-informative as always. I’d like to ask a few question on the topic. What do you think about the calculation hypothesis based on the conception and nativity of John the Baptist (which could be well-grounded after the discovery of the qumran calendar text on the period of temple service of Abijah’s priestly family, the same of Zechariah’s)?
    I know that the alternate dates of Jesus’ birth in April and May are found in Stromata, but I’d never read about November 17. How was this calculated?
    Are the ancient roman Sol Indigete and the new Sol Invictus the same deity or they are completely different?
    Last, are there any written sources about the Mithraic rituals (like Macrobius for the Saturnalia) or all we have are archaeological remains in the Mithraeums?
    I hope I didn’t annoy you with all these questions. Thanks in advance.
    Ps Sorry for my poor English, my mothertongue is Italian.

    1. What do you think about the calculation hypothesis based on the conception and nativity of John the Baptist

      If you mean do I think that calculation gives an actual date of the birth of Jesus, I don’t. That whole section of gLuke is unlikely to be historical.

      I know that the alternate dates of Jesus’ birth in April and May are found in Stromata, but I’d never read about November 17. How was this calculated?

      Clement apparently calculated that Jesus was born on November 17 in 3 BC. I’ve seen this very precise date given many times, though I’ve yet to track down the exact citation in Clement’s works.

      Are the ancient roman Sol Indigete and the new Sol Invictus the same deity or they are completely different?

      They seem to be “different” in the way that the various cultic manifestations of the old gods differed. Thus Iupiter Optimus et Maximus was the same god and yet different to Iupiter Tonans or Iupiter Uxellinus. Sol Invictus was clearly different enough in some aspects to have his own distinct cult and temples and to be declared to be the ultimate god of the state. Exactly how all this worked and how he differed from the old Sol is not clear – we just don’t know enough.

      Last, are there any written sources about the Mithraic rituals (like Macrobius for the Saturnalia) or all we have are archaeological remains in the Mithraeums?

      We have no surviving Mithraic texts beyond some short inscriptions. All of our limited knowledge on the rituals comes from passing references in other writings, including Christian ones. See Manfred Clauss’ The Roman Cult of Mithras (1990) for a summary and analysis of what we have.

      1. Thank you very much for your answers, Tim. I’m sorry if my first question was unclear, as I said I’m not a native English speaker. However, I understand that the story found in the Gospel of Luke concerning Zechariah and Elizabeth is not historical, but I wondered if there were some early Christian writer who used the period of Zechariah’s priestly family temple service to determine Jesus’ birthday (six months after John’s birthday). Apparently, there weren’t, so I understand why this hypothesis is just a speculation. Thank you for clarifying that to me.
        Have some good holidays (in Italy we have a strict lockdown, so I’m spending my time reading and… drinking. Hope you’re doing more exciting and useful things down there…).
        Looking forward to new articles netx year.
        Carmelo.

        1. I wondered if there were some early Christian writer who used the period of Zechariah’s priestly family temple service to determine Jesus’ birthday

          Not that I’m aware of, no.

          Good luck with the pandemic. We have it more or less under control here in Australia.

          1. Hi Tim!
            In his Stromata, Clement of Alexandria calculates the date of the birth of Christ, based on the number of days and weeks in the prophecies at the end of the book of Daniel. He doesn’t mention the date in the text, but he concludes by saying Christ was born X number of years and Y number of days (I don’t have the text right now to verify) before Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ death, which leads to November 17 of year -4.
            I don’t remember the exact reference in the Stromata, but I only read the 3 first books, and book 3 is only on marriage, so it has to be in books 1-2.

      2. Expanding on what Cornelius said, Clement calculates Christ’s birth-date in his deeply exhausting twenty-first chapter of Book 1 of the Stromata. “From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, a hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days.”

        1. Commodus died on December 31, 192 AD, so Clement thought that Jesus had been born on November 17, 2 BC. Thank you very much for the quote and reference, Gregory!

  11. Hi Tim!
    I read that some medieval writers reinterpreted Christ being born on December 25 as linked to his circumcision, 8 days later, on January 1st, which would be the first day of the first year of the new Christian era. (Now don’t tell me Christ wasn’t actually born in Year 0 of our calendar: I already know that, it’s the origin of the tradition I am interested in, not it’s historicity.)

    I heard about this idea only recently and didn’t have time to do any more research on it. Have you heard about it? Do you know who were the authors that made this connection.

    1. There’s no “year 0”; there’s 1 BCE, then 1 CE. Some early Christian dates (at least year-dates) for the Messiah’s birth put it in the 41st year of Augustus (counted from 43 BCE)/ 28 years after the death of Cleopatra (30 BCE) – Tertullian, “An Answer to the the Jews” Book 8; Irenaeus (only mentions year of Augustus), “Against Heresies” Book 3, Chapter 21.3. Clement of Alexandra also puts the birth-year as 2 BCE, putting his birthday on November 17/18th, or “194 years, one month, 13 days before the death of Commodus” (=31st Dec, 192 CE), “The Stromata” Book 1, Chapter 21 (can’t remember how 2nd/3rd century authors considered how long a month was). As for dating it based on His circumcision; as the traditional date for this is 1st Jan (see even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision_of_Jesus), and circumcision taking place on the 8th day after birth, then yes, that’s easy to calculate as 25th December. However is the date of His circumcision based on His supposed birthday, or His birthday based on His supposed circumcision? Couldn’t find the answer to that.

  12. Thank you again, Tim.

    I don’t really know why people want to insist that Christians had to depend on non-Christians for their festivals. Were Christians incapable of inventing their own?

    Look at the popular American festival, Thanksgiving. Do these people try to explain Thanksgiving in relation to the traditions of non-American peoples?

    Not that I’ve seen.

    If Americans can invent a tradition based off a single event of great significance to their history, then obviously Christians are capable of inventing a tradition based on a single event that is important to their history.

    We’re human beings, it’s one of the things we do.

    Anyway, regards, Merry Christmas, and best wishes for the year to come.

    1. I don’t really know why people want to insist that Christians had to depend on non-Christians for their festivals. Were Christians incapable of inventing their own?

      Exactly. Or were they incapable of making up new “traditions”. People do it all the time. Most families I know who have young children include the “Elf on the Shelf” as part of their Christmas. Someone in the future could use the “logic” of the “pagan Christmas” claims to conclude this must be an ancient and clearly pagan ceremony. After all, it isn’t “Biblical”, has no clear Christian meaning and involves elves and magic. What could be more obviously pagan? Except they’d be dead wrong – this ancient tradition dates back to … 2005. And is basically the marketing campaign for a toy and a book.

      New traditions can arise. They can even have elements of older traditions in them (e.g. one of Santa’s elves). And they can very quickly become widespread and even give the impression of being very old. These things happen all the time – not everything is ancient and pagan.

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  13. Fortunately for us all The Thinking Atheist is not a historian. But, I sure enjoy listening and watching his videos/pods. Conformation bias must be at the forefront of our education.

  14. I’d suggest creating a joke article next year about the pagan origins of christmas crackers, but best not to, as people would take it seriously.

    “TIL that Julius Caesar like to write bad puns on pieces of papyrus and hide them in scrolls called crakeria, tied at each end. He would make his slaves tear the crakeria in two, with the winner reading the puns aloud and being forced to wear a paper hat. Your ‘CHRISTmas cracker’ is really a pagan roman tradition. MIND. BLOWN.”

    No, let’s not. It would go viral.

  15. Hi Tim. I should have said another entertaining article – enjoyable reading for the Christmas holidays. I am not sure if the first version of this post made it through the ether but have revised it in light of some fresh comments.
    The passage concerned is taken from Clement’s first Stromateis I chapter 21 sections 145 – 146. (For those with Greek I quote the whole passage below). The passage is abstracted from a chronological section inspired by a similar passage in Tatian’ Oratio though at greater length. It is at times very compressed and I have often wondered if the whole section may be indebted to Clement’s notebooks; it is not the most stimulating passage of Clement’s works, and not infrequently is just a series of dates. It seems that Clement assumes that Jesus was about thirty at the time of his baptism (Luke 3 vv. 1 – 3) and takes Luke’s chronology at face value. (145.2) It is unclear which census Clement is referring to; there was no known universal census during the reign of Augustus. It also seems probable that Clement is dating Augustus’ principate from the battle of Actium (31 BCE) rather than the conferring of the title Augustus by the Senate in 27BCE. Clement is not consistent about the length of Augustus’ reign; at section 144 he gives a length of 43 years – though a little further on he cites an alternate source for a reign of 46 years. The 28th year of Augustus’ reign is under Clement’s computation 3 or 1 BCE – this cannot be the census of 6CE – only eight years before Augustus’ death, and the evidence for an earlier census is highly speculative, to put it charitably – and probably Luke’s device to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. This passage is also subject to the fact that unless numbers were written as words (i.e. such as τῷ ὀγδόῳ καὶ εἰκοστῷ ἔτει) Greek numbers were written as letters of the alphabet – i.e.α᾽ one, β᾽ two, γ᾽ three etc.) and thus easily subject to corruption in the transmission of manuscripts.
    Clement dates the birth of Jesus to the 28th year of the reign of Augustus (3 or 1 BCE?) on the 25th day of the month Pachon. Pachon is the 9th month of the ancient Egyptian/Greek calendar lasting from 9th May to June 7th. (Clement would have been familiar with the Egyptian calendar as the Stromateis were written in Alexandria.) Clement gives no evidence for citing the month – and though he adds that some with further enquiries added the day, again without giving any sources. This may well be the earliest appearance of the 25th as the day of Jesus’ birth. Clement also seems to assign a year to the ministry of Jesus on the basis of Isaiah 61 v. 1 – 2 – freely quoted by Clement from the LXX – “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” It is somewhat frustrating that Clement gives no background or references for his choice of date. It has also been argued that the span from the birth of Jesus to the death of Commodus, which Clement alleges, is 194 years one month thirteen days which would give a date in November. The problem with this is that it conflicts with the date given later in the text for the month Pachon and Clement never mentions the Egyptian/Greek calendar months of November. In addition, the figure given in the same passage for the span from the fall of Jerusalem to the death of Commodus is 122 years 10 months 13 days; the editor of the Sources Chrétiennes editon notes, in a footnote, about this date: les modernes comptent 122 ans 3 mois 23 jours – a seven months difference. It may not be entirely coincidental that the difference between Pachon and Khoiak is around seven months, and that Clement’s arithmetic, or that of his sources, is at fault. I suspect that Clement may have been unaware of the conflict and it highlights the problem with numbers in ancient texts. As Clement leaves the reader free to do his own calculations for the date from the birth of Jesus to the death of Commodus, I would stick with the 28th year of Augustus, whenever Clement reckoned that occurred, on the 25th day of Pachon.
    Section 146 is an alternative chronology derived from the followers of Basilides, an early Gnostic, who lived in Alexandrian in the third and fourth decades of the 2nd century CE. It is tied to the baptism of Jesus, and they date the passion of Jesus to Phamenoth (7th month) or Pharmuthi (8th month), a year later than the baptism.

    Derek Spears

    1. I can’t see any reason to do so. I don’t need the money and sites cluttered up with stupid ads for weight loss scams etc. look absolutely terrible. So, no.

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  16. I’ll be honest, as an atheist, for the longest time I believed that Christmas was pagan in origin? Why? Because I would hear it everywhere. It’s strange that although America is the most religious developed country, its education system, media, and intellectual sphere has a strong anti-religion bias that likes to paint religion as a “superstitious, primitive, folk ideology”. This is why I would constantly hear remarks that Christmas is just “paganism revamped” and that Saturnalia is the “original Christmas” that Christians appropriated because Christianity “steals” from better ideologies. These people really wanted to paint the picture that Christianity is an irrational fusion of primitive beliefs.

    So I appreciate this post. I actually never knew any of this, which shows just how well the media succeeded in painting their picture. I guess I could excuse myself because I’m not an anti-theist and never criticized religion, but this is unacceptable for Andrews. If he really wants to present himself as a rationalist, he should at least do the bare minimum research. It couldn’t be anymore ironic that his pagan views of Christianity come from zealous protestants Christians just like he was.

  17. Hallo Tim,
    Did you see the latest contribution of the ‘religion for breakfast’ you tube channel with the title : Did Christmas copy the sun god’s birthday? It is excellent – as always. He also has older episodes concerning saturnalia and Mithras. Maybe a candidate for a trophee for spreading the thruth instead of spreading false narratives. Zalig Kerstmis.

  18. Trivial error: the Twelve Days of Christmas ends on January 5th, not January 8th.

    January 5th was my grandmother’s birthday aka ‘old Christmas Day’, due to the change from Julian to Gregorian calendar.

  19. Personally, I don’t get any Santa Claus origin story that doesn’t mention Saint Nick. Have these people never heard the Christmas songs explicitly mentioning Saint Nicholas and made the connection there was a guy of that name who died a long time ago? I don’t even get why people would ignore that. Like, not even dismiss or try to debunk it but ignore it.

    1. Every Dutchie at least has some vague idea how Sint Nicholas became Sinterklaas became Santa Claus. Heck, the name Claus is directly derived from Nicholaas.
      What you write is all the more remarkable because St. Nicholas of Myra is not as well attested as Jesus of Nazareth.

  20. What are your thoughts on the Oxford Handbook of Christmas? Do you think it accurately tells the history and origins of Christmas and the various traditions associated with it?

  21. Small correction to your maths. If Saturnalia was December 17th and celebrations under Caligula lasted 5 days in total, that only takes you to the 21st, not the 22nd

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