Every year, without fail, we find endless articles, memes and claims on social media about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christmas. As with Halloween and Easter, anti-theist activists find themselves in furious agreement with neo-pagans and even some evangelical Christians that the date and virtually all the main customs and traditions of Christmas are actually pagan. Pop history articles and books are full of these breathlessly confident claims. Except, in fact, very little about Christmas is ancient, less still is pre-Christian and almost nothing about it is pagan.

The idea that Christmas and its traditions are pagan in origin is one of those pervasive ideas that “everyone knows”. It is repeated endlessly in news articles, seasonal filler segments on TV, online pop history and, of course, memes. So many anti-theistic social media accounts present a succession of smug memes “reminding” Christians and everyone else that Christmas was actually a pagan festival hijacked by Christianity. The date of 25 December, the giving of gifts, feasting and drinking, the Christmas Tree, holly, mistletoe and even Santa Claus, we are assured, all have pagan origins. Atheist luminaries like Seth Andrews and “Aron Ra” go into gleeful detail “informing” their viewers and listeners about the pagan origins of all these things, in presentations that are noticably heavy on assertions but light on evidence and totally free of any reference to scholarship. You would think these last elements would ring alarm bells for their audiences of supposed “sceptics”, but it seems most just accept this message without question. After all, “everyone knows” this is all true, right? Except, when it comes to history, what “everyone knows” often turns out to be mostly or even entirely wrong.

So what is the actual history behind the origins of these things and how many of them, if any, actually have pagan origins? The answer is: suprisingly few. But in this article we will take each of them in turn and look at what the actual evidence and scholarship can tell us.

The Date of Christmas

• Roman Saturnalia?
• The Birth of Mithras?
• Brumalia?
• Yule?
• Sol Invictus?
• The Calculation Thesis
• Conclusions

Christmas Traditions

• Gift Giving
• Feasting
• Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe
• Yule Logs
• Christmas Trees
• Santa Claus
• Conclusions

The Date of Christmas

A remarkable number of these “pagan Christmas” ideas are ultimately Christian in origin. This is because much of the Protestant tradition adopted the Sola scriptura (“by scripture alone”) position – unless a doctrine or practice could be found in or based on something in the Bible, it was to be rejected. So many Catholic doctrines and traditions which they saw as being without Biblical foundation were abandoned in Protestant areas. Unfortunately some of these traditions, feast days and practices, as well as folk traditions associated with them, were very popular; particularly ones that involved feasting and fun. So sometimes reformers and puritans had to go to great lengths to convince people they were a bad idea.

Christmas was certainly one example of something well-established and very popular that the reformers had to preach against. One argument was that December 25th as the date of Jesus’ birth has no basis in scripture and that the gospels even prove it could not be the correct date. In an argument we still hear repeated today, even by non-Christians, Jesus could not have been born then because this date is in the middle of winter and shepherds would not have been in the fields with their sheep, as the gospels detail. In fact, this element is only found in one of the two gospels that give an account of Jesus’ birth – see Luke 2:8-20).

Of course, critical scholars are highly sceptical about whether this or any of the elements in the two highly contradictory “Infancy Narratives” of gLuke and gMatthew can be seen as historical. But even if we leave that to one side, the claim about shepherds here is actually wrong. The hills of Judea are fairly arid most of the year, but November and December see the highest rainfall in the region, which means it is a period of good pasture. So shepherds to this day still pasture their sheep there in December, and there is good evidence they have long done so.

Of course, this does not mean the traditional date of Christmas does have a foundation in the gospels, just that this particular objection is based on a false premise. In fact, the two Infancy Narratives give no time of year for their stories and – notoriously – contradict each other on the year Jesus was born, with a ten year gap between the historical refererence points in the gMatthew story (Herod the Great – died 4 BC) and the ones in gLuke (the census of P. Sulplicius Quirinius, held in AD 6-7). So finding a specific date in these stories is pretty much impossible.

Which raises the question: where did the 25 December date come from? If multiple pop history articles, newspaper pieces and atheist memes can be believed, the Christians simply stole a pagan feast day and rebadged it. Simple. But which pagan feast? Here things get confusing, because multiple differing answers are given in these popular sources and the stories told about them are highly inconsistent.

Roman Saturnalia?

The pagan festival perhaps nominated most often as the origin of the date of Christmas is the Roman festival of Saturnalia. This was, we are regularly informed, the origin of both the date and the traditions we associate with Christmas. On the traditions see below. But what was the date of Saturnalia? Was it December 25th?

Well, no. Saturnalia was a very ancient Roman festival. Saturn was one of the earliest Italian gods and even the Romans were unclear about the origin or even the meaning of many of his rites and traditions. He was associated with an ancient golden age and his festival in December was definitely very popular, continuing to be celebrated into at least the sixth century; so two centuries after the Roman Empire’s conversion to Christianity. But Saturnalia fell on 17 December, not 25 December. Macrobius’ book Saturnalia – a fictional symposium held by group of nobles on the feast – states it originally “lasted but one day, and was held only on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January” (Saturnalia, I.10.18). So that is December 17th.

Because it was a fun festival, people kept the party going for several days after the 17th, and at its most extended it went all the way to a final day of celebration called Sigillaria. But that was 23 December, so we are still short of the 25th. Augustus tried to rein the festival in and limit it to three days, from the 17th to the 20th (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I.10.23), and Caligula, who loved a party, extended it again to four days (Suetonius, Caligula, 17). But even in its most extended form, it never got to December 25th. However you cut it, Saturnalia was near Christmas, but it does not work as the origin for its date. 

The Birth of Mithras?

Again, plenty of pop history and memes assure us that December 25th was the birthday of the Roman god Mithras and this is definitely the origin of the date of Christmas. Mithras is one of a number of gods who, it is often claimed, had their birth celebrated on December 25th, including Horus, Attis, Tammuz, Dionysus and others. Unfortuately, if anyone bothers to check these claims, no evidence for them can be found. They can be traced through a range of highly unreliable modern sources, from comedian Bill Maher, through the notorious online conspiracy documentary Zeitgeist (2007) and the crackpot Jesus Mythicist writer “Acharya S” and ultimately to the largely imaginary claims of Kersey Graves in his 1875 work of esoterica The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors: or Christianity Before Christ.

But this is all nonsense. Far from being born of a virgin on December 25th, Roman sources and depictions have Mithras leaping fully formed from a rock – the so-called petra genetrix – and give no date at all for this event.

Despite being repeated endlessly by popular sources, Mithraic scholar Roger Beck refers to the claim Mithras’ borth was celebrated on December 25th with some exasperation as “the hoariest of ‘facts'”(Roger Beck, “Merkelbach’s Mithras”, Phoenix 41.3, 1987, p.296-316, also p. 299, n. 12). There are simply no references at all to Mithras being born on December 25th or any celebrations of his birth on that date.

Brumalia?

A less common claim is that the date of Christmas derives from the ancient Roman festival of Brumalia. This fell, we are told, on the winter solstice – so traditionally that is December 25th – and went for a full 24 days. Unfortunately for these claimants, there are no references to this festival in any pre-Christian sources and all references to it are quite late and all are Eastern Roman. This seems to be a later festival that began in the eastern half of the Empire well after both Christianity and Christmas had been adopted by the Romans. In his comprehensive book Roman Festivals in the Greek East From the Early Empire to the Middle Byzantine Era (Cambridge, 2015), Fritz Graf is categorical about this, stating “the Brumalia are attested only in Byzantium” (p. 201). Byzantine churchmen certainly disapproved of this festival and some believed it was ancient. John the Lydian (c. 490-565) seems to have thought so, but there are no references to it before his. Given that the pre-Christian period is the one where we have the most extensive evidence of ancient festivals, it does not make sense that we have no references to this one earlier than the sixth century if it was ancient and widespread, as is sometimes claimed. This is why scholars conclude it was a later development.

Some try to claim evidence of earlier attestation by citing various references to the “Bruma” and claiming these are pre-sixth century references to Brumalia. But these refer to the date of the start of the winter season – on November 24th – or are a general term for winter overall. That this “Bruma” and the solstice are not the same date is made clear by Varro;

‘Bruma’ is so named, because then the day is brevissimus ‘shortest’: the ‘solstitium’, because on that day the sol ‘sun’ seems sistere ‘to halt,’ on which it is nearest to us. When the sun has arrived midway between the bruma and the solstitium, it is called the aequinoctium ‘equinox’, because the day becomes aequus ‘equal’ to the nox ‘night’. (On the Latin Language, VI.8)

Both his etymology and his astronomy are pretty dubious here, but this passage makes it clear that the “Bruma” fell before the winter solstice and marked the beginning of the winter season. Fritz Graf’s discussion notes evidence, mainly in Tertullian (On Idolatory, X.3 and XIV.6), that there was a celebration on this earlier Bruma, but shows the date for this was November 24th, not December 25th, or it perhaps ran until December 23rd (see Graf, p. 203-5). This aside, it seems the more general use of the word “Bruma” to refer to the season of winter is what gave the later Byzantine festival of Brumalia its name. There was no Brumalia early enough to give its date or dates to Christmas and the earlier Bruma fell on the wrong dates.

Yule?

Given that the name Yule is a synonym for Christmas to this day, the claim that there was a pagan festival called Yule and that this is the origin of the date of Christmas seems to make sense to many people, despite the fact this is often claimed along with some of the other pagan origins claims above, which actually makes no sense at all. That aside, here we are on some slightly more solid ground regading a possible (but not certain) December 25th date for Yule.

Classicist Peter Gainsford details in a very useful online article (KiwiHellenist, “Concerning Yule”, 18 December 2018) that our earliest mention of any “Yule” is in a Gothic calendar of saints’ days from the 500s. This text mentions fruma jiuleis, which Gainsford reads as “the beginning of Yule” and says this falls in November or December, though not on a specific date. This is not certain, however, and Gothic language scholar David Landau notes many linguistic problems with reading jiuleis as a cognate with various Germanic words for Yule and thinks it is probably not connected at all (see “The Source of the Gothic Month Name jiuleis and its Cognates”, Namenkundliche Informationen, 95-6, 2009, pp. 239-248). Gainsford disputes this, but what both agree is this reference is very much in a Christian context. It also does not indicate any particular date and seems to refer to the start of a season.

The next reference to what appears to be Yule is in Bede’s On the Reckoning of Time, from around AD 730. In Chapter 15 he lists the traditional Anglo-Saxon month names starting with “The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli … ” and then ending with ” … December, Giuli, the same name by which January is called.” So “Giuli” seems to span both December and January and be a name for the winter season generally. But more importantly, Bede goes on to say “They [the pagan Anglo-Saxons] began the year on the 8th kalends of January [25 December], when we celebrate the birth of the Lord”. Similarly, the Old English Martyrology from the late 800s refers to December 25th as þone ærestan geohheldæg (the first day of Yule) and says, like Bede, that both December and January are called “Yule”, but that December is called ærra geola (before Yule) and January is called æftera geola (after Yule). So while the word “Yule” is used to refer to the whole winter season, these two Anglo-Saxon references place Yule proper was on the central date – December 25th.

But there is later evidence which complicates this. The Icelandic collection of sagas of the Swedish and Norwegian kings called Heimskringla includes the text Hákonar saga góða (The Saga of Hákon the Good – c. 920–961)”. It describes how King Hákon moved the date of Yule:

King Hákon was a confirmed Christian when he arrived in Norway. But since the land was altogether heathen and much idolatry prevailed, …. He had it established in the laws that the Yule celebration was to take place at the same time as is the custom with the Christians. And at that time everyone was to have ale for the celebration from a measure of grain, or else pay fines, and had to keep the holidays while the ale lasted. Before that, Yule was celebrated on midwinter night, and for the duration of three nights. (trans. Lee M. Hollander)

The first issue here is when this account says Yule originally fell (“midwinter night”) and when Hákon moved it to (“at the same time as is the custom with the Christians”). The latter was clearly December 25th, which means this “midwinter night” must have fallen on some other date. Samuel Laing’s 1889 translation, which is widely available online, gives this as “(Dec. 14)” in a parenthesis. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes’ 2011 translation puts it at “(12 January)” (see Heimskringla. Vol. 1. The Beginnings to Óláfr Tryggvason, Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 2011, pp 97-98). Whichever it was, it was clearly not December 25th.

So the second issue here is the late date of this text and what it might mean. The Heimskringla is usually attributed to the medieval Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturluson (c. 1179-1241), though this has been disputed as the text never claims he is the author. Even if true, we know Sturluson reworked or drew on earlier texts and sources when producing his versions of the sagas. So is this account of King Hákon moving the date of Yule historical and how do we square it with the Anglo-Saxon evidence already noted, which explicitly places Yule on December 25th?

It could be that the Heimskringla author is completely mistaken. If so, it seems an odd element to include in the saga if it has no basis. Alternatively, the date of Yule proper could have been celebrated on different dates within the broader midwinter season in different places and/or in different periods across the Germanic world. So perhaps it was traditionally on December 25th in pagan Anglo-Saxon England and on January 12th or December 14th in pre-Christian Norway. A third possibility is that the Heimskringla account is accurate and something similar happened centuries earlier in Anglo-Saxon England, with the pagan date being moved to coincide with the Christian one. Bede was writing about 130 years after the first conversion of the Anglo-Saxons and the Old English Martyrology is over a century later still. So that gives a lot of time in which the pagan and Christian feasts could come together on December 25th, with Bede and the later writer simply assuming the pagan feast had always been on this date.

So was Yule on December 25th? The very best we can say is “maybe”. Even if it was, however, this does not mean we have finally found the pagan origin of the date of Christmas – one stolen from the Germanic and Norse pagans of the far north. This is because, as we will see, Christians were already marking the birth of their Christ on December 25th way back in the third century, long before they came into any significant contact with Germanic paganism. Both the Christians who converted Anglo-Saxon England and the Christians of King Hákon’s time were already celebrating Christmas on this date. So the Germanic/Norse Yule is not the origin of the date and if it did, perhaps, co-incide with it this was just that – coincidence.

Sol Invictus?

The evidence indicates that the date of December 25th was adopted by Christians relatively early and in the Mediterranean region, so much later contact with any Germanic date of Yule cannot be the date’s point of origin. But one of the few contenters for a pagan origin of the date that actually rests on evidence rather than assertion may seem to fit this bill. There actually is evidence of a celebration of the sun god Sol – under his title Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) – on this date by the Romans, in the Mediterranean and fairly early. So is this the origin of the date of Christmas?

The key evidence cited is the “Calendar of Philocalus”; one of several calendrical texts and regnal lists collected in the four century almananc known as The Chronograph of 354. The Philocan Calendar is significant here because its entry for December 25th reads “N.INVICTI.CM.XXX.” which is usually transcribed as “N = Natalis (“birthday/nativity” or “dedication date”) INVICTI = “Of the unconquered one” CM = circenses missus (“games ordered”). XXX = 30″ or “Thirty games were ordered for the birthday (?) of the unconquered one”.  

This single reference is the point of origin for the claim December 25th is the birthday of Mithras, noted above, because Mithras was one of a number of gods given the title “Invictus” (Unconquered). But modern scholars agree that here the title refers to Sol, the Roman sun god, not Mithras. Sol was regularly depicted traversing the sky in a chariot and so was associated with the popular sport of chariot racing. The massive Circus Maximus in Rome was the site of chariot races for up to 150,000 spectators and it included the city’s main temple to Sol in its complex. So it would make sense that chariot races would be held to celebrate the birth of the Sun God on December 25th, which was the winter solstice and the date that marked the lengthening of the days of the year.

This is why in the nineteenth century some prominent German Protestant scholars what is known as the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule or “History of Religions School” argued this was the origin of the date of Christmas. This was an influential school of thought in the nineteenth century that saw Christianity as one ancient religion among many and sought to understand it in its ancient religious context. The scholars of this school tended to assume a high level of syncretism and borrowing of earlier pagan elements by Christianity; to the extent that its scholars often went to great and often fanciful lengths to “find” pagan influences and parallels, even when they really were not there. This school of thought had a huge impact on later religious studies and is the orgin of many of the pop history claims about “pagan origins” still in circulation today.

In this case, the main early proponent of the idea Christianity borrowed the Feast of Sol Invictus and turned it into Christmas was Hermann Usener. In 1889 work Das Weihnachtsfest he cited the Chronograph of 354 text and two other sources to support this idea. The first was a passage from twelfth century Syriac Orthodox writer Dionysius bar Salibi who was a bishop in what is now south-easter Turkey. In his Commentary on the Four Gospels, bar Salibi states that “in the month of January, the Lord was born on the same day on which we celebrate the Epiphany (January 6th)”, since this was the date of Jesus’ birth according to bar Salibi’s eastern Christian tradition. But he goes on to explain why other Christians hold he was born on December 25th:

The reason why the aforesaid solemnity was transferred by the Fathers from the 6th of January to the 25th of December, they say was this. It was traditional for the pagans to celebrate the birth of the sun on this very day, the 25th of December; to further enhance the celebration of the day, they used to light fires: to which rites they were accustomed to invite and admit even Christian people. When, therefore, the Doctors noticed that the Christians were inclined to that custom, they devised a plan and established on that day the feast of [his birth]; but on the 6th of January they ordered that the Epiphany be celebrated.

In addition, Usener noted an anonymous fourth century sermon titled “On the Solstices and the Equinoxes”, often wrongly attributed to John Chrysostom. This sermon tries to tie key elements in the lives of Jesus and John the Baptist to the astronomical turning points of the year. This sermon notes:

[T]he Lord was born on 25th December in the winter. …. They also call [this date] ‘Birthday of the Invictus’. But who is invictus [unconquered] if not our Lord, who suffered death and then conquered it? Or when they call it ‘Birthday of the Sun’ – well, Christ is the sun of righteousness that the prophet Malachi spoke of.

Taking these references with the “Calendar of Philocalus”, Usener argued that December 25th was an established festival of the birthday of Sol Invictus, celebrated by chariot races, and usurped by Christianity as the birthday of Jesus Christ, thus the date of Christmas.

But there are multiple problems with this argument.

The Dionysius bar Salibi text is very late, dating a full 850 years after any festival of Sol Invictus over in far off Rome. Bar Salibi also has a polemical axe to grind. The date of Christmas was a point of contention between the Eastern and Western traditions of Christianity and Bar Salibi considers January 6th to be the correct and original date. So his association of the December 25th alternative with a pagan festival is an attempt to denigrate and discredit it.

The “On the Solstices and Equinoxes” at least dates to the right period to be more reliable. But it does not actually state that this “Birthday of the Sun” was appropriated by Christians. It just notes that the date had that pagan designation, and then gives it a Christian exegetical spin.

So does the “Calendar of Philocalus” actually refer to an ancient pagan festival of Sol Invictus that the Christians appropriated? Unfortunately for Usener’s thesis and all the pop history sources that have repeated it, it does not seem so. On the contrary, it appears this December 25th solar feast was actually very new and possibly not very significant at all.

The modern historian who is the leading scholar of the Roman solar cult, Steven Hijmans, has literally written the book on the Roman sun god Sol. His two volume work Sol: Image and Meaning of the Sun in Roman Art and Religion (Brill, Vol. 1 2022, Vol. 2 2024) collects the relevant material on the Roman worship of Sol and shows the evidence for various very ancient feast days for this deity. These fell on August 8-9, August 28, October 19-22 and December 11. Hijmans shows strong evidence that these were the ancient, significant and well-established feast days for the cult of Sol. In an article specifically on the relationship between the date of Christmas and the Sol Invictus reference in the “Philocalus” document, Hijmans observes:

One must conclude that in the early fourth century A.D. anyone surveying the festivities in honour of Sol would identify the period from October 19 to October 22 as far more important than December 25 and the festival of August as far older. (Steven Hijmans, “Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas”, Mouseion, Series III, Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 377-98, p. 386)

This is because, with the exception of the “Calendar of Philocalus” and perhaps the “On the Solstices” sermon, there are no references to a feast of Sol on this date. This indicates this was a less significant and probably a very newly established feast. So when was this rather new feast established? The short answer is we do not really know. But it is very possible that the word “natalis” in the “Calendar of Philocalus” does not refer to a birthday but to the anniversay of the establishment of a temple. Michele Salzman makes a strong case that this new feast was the date of the establishment of a temple to Sol by the emperor Aurelian, who attributed his victory in the war against Zenobia of Palmyra and his reuniting of the fracturing Roman Empire to the patronage of the solar deity (see Michele Renee Salzmann, “Aurelian and the Cult of the Unconquered Sun: The Institutionalisation of Christmas, Solar Worship and the Imperial Cult”, in Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-Roman Period, eds. Oren Tal and Zvi Weiss, Brepols, 2017, pp. 37-51, p. 41). It should be noted that Salzmann disagrees with Hijmans that the December 25th Sol Invictus feast was not important, noting 30 chariot races is a significant number. But she agrees and reinforces the idea the festival was relatively new – most likely dating no earlier than 274 AD.

And this is significant because we have references to Christians noting December 25th as the birth of Jesus well BEFORE 274 AD. Which means the idea they simply usurped the Sol Invictus festival for their Christmas date really does not work.

The Calculation Thesis

If we do the rather obvious thing and actually turn to Christian sources to find what they say about the date of Jesus’ birth, we find they had a great interest in the dates of key events in his life and the symbolic and comological significance of these dates. As early as the second century we find lively discussion and various calculations of these important events and their dates. We also find a variety of conclusions and a great deal of disagreement and debate. This is because the gospels – the main sources of information about Jesus’ life – are not very detailed regarding dates and years, and actually contain confusing and sometimes contradictory information. So reconciling these issues and working out when things happened in Jesus’ life became a major scholarly puzzle for early Christian writers and this sacred chronography became an important element in Christian writings in this period.

One of the few precise date references the Christian chronographers had to work with is found in John 19:14, which states Jesus was executed on “the day of Preparation of the Passover”, which was also a Friday. From this and other gospel references several of these scholars fitted the lunar Jewish calendar to the solar Roman calendar and calculated that Jesus died on March 25th in 29 AD. Other dates and years were proposed by other Christian scholars (and still are), but March 25th had a cosmological significance because it was the traditional date of the spring equinox, making it a propitious date for what Christians regarded as the turning point in cosmic history.

We then find an increasing acceptance of March 25th as also being the date of Jesus’ conception; so to this day this is the date of the Feast of the Annunciation, or “Lady Day”, in virtually all Christian liturgical traditions. Not only was this date the traditional spring equinox, it was also regarded as the date of God’s creation of the world, giving it multiple layers of tradition and significance. It appears this date was arrived at via a long standing idea that holy men lived perfect and therefore highly symmetical lives – being born and dying on the same date. In addition to this, there was a very early Christian tradition, based largely on references in the Gospel of Luke’s accounts of the conception and birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus, that Jesus was born in winter, meaning his conception was in the previous spring.

Recent work by Thomas C. Schmidt has strengthened the argument first made by Ferdinand Piper in 1856 and then in more detail by Louis Duchesene in 1889 that, for Jesus, it was thought his symmetrical life meant he was conceived and died on the same date. Schmidt makes a detailed study of the use of the word “genesis” among contemporaries of the influential chronographer Hippolytus of Rome, finding that, when referring to a person, it meant “conception” and not “birth” (see “Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ ‘Canon’ and ‘Chronicon’” Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 69, No. 5, 2015 , pp. 542-563). Further, Schmidt notes that Hippolytus’ Chronicon appears to place the birth of Christ exactly nine months after the anniversary of the creation of the world, i.e. March 25th. This would indicate that the idea he was conceived on March 25th, and so was born after a perfect nine month gestation on December 25th, was something that developed in the western Christian tradition very early on – at least by the first decades of the third century.

Hippolytus’ Chronicon dates to 235 AD and there is a possible (though sometimes disputed) even clearer reference in Hippolytus’ Commentary on Daniel (c. 202-211 AD):

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, a Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls. (Commentary on Daniel, IV.23.3)

Schmidt makes a strong case for the authenticity of this passge (see Schmidt, Commentary on Daniel, 2010, particularly his Appendix 1), but even if it is not genuine, the other evidence that he, Hijmans and, more recently, Philipp Nothaft have mustered (see Philipp Nothaft, “Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the ‘Calculation Theory'”, Questions Liturgiques, 94, 2013, pp. 247-65) means the previous scholarly generation’s objections to this Calculation Thesis have lost almost all of their vigor.

So the weight of evidence indicates that the date of March 25th for Jesus’ conception and, therefore, the date of December 25th as the date of his birth was arrived at by western Christian writers as early as the first decades of the third century. It is probably not coincidental that these dates fitted neatly with traditional cosmology, with his conception on the spring equinox and his birth on the winter solstice.

Conclusions

So if we look at the claims made about how the date of Christmas was arrived at, we find many commonly repeated explantions simply do not fit the evidence at all. There is no evidence that the birth of Mithras or that of Horus or a range of other pagan gods was ever celebrated on December 25th, despite various memes and pop histories claiming this. Other claims may seem initially plausible, but do not actually make sense. Yule may (or may not) have fallen on December 25th in the Germanic traditions of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England or Viking Scandinavia. But given Christians had been celebrating Christmas on that date for centuries before they converted those regions, the claim they appropriated the date from the locals when they did so simply does not work.

The Roman festivals of Saturnalia, Brumalia and the Bruma all fall in roughly the right part of the year, but the dates of none of them fit the glib claim they were appropriated for the date of Christmas. And we do have one lone reference to a feast of Sol Invictus on December 25th, but this is clearly a new festival that dates no earlier than 274 AD. Given that we have Christian references to Jesus being born on December 25th at least as early as 235 AD, possibly as early as 211 AD and perhaps developing even earlier, this pagan feast day cannot be the origin of the date either.

So the most likely reading of the evidence is Christians arrived at the date via their chronological analysis of the gospel traditions and the fact their calculations had his birth fall on the traditional winter solstice appears to be why this particular date stuck. Despite plenty of confident claims to the contrary, the solstice was a significant date in the Roman cycle of the year, but not a religious one. The idea that Christmas is a stolen pagan feast day simply does not fit the evidence.

Christmas Traditions

So if the date of Christmas is not actually derived from anything pagan, what about our various Christmas customs and traditions? Again, every year we can read a plethora of articles about the origins of Christmas customs assuring us that everything from gift giving to Christmas trees “actually have a pagan origin”. So how much of this is true?

There are several problems here. Firstly, it is actually very difficult to trace the origin of a custom. The best we can usually do is work out when it first appears and try to discern its possible origin from context. Despite what journalists assure us in these seasonal “origins” articles, most elements of our “traditional Christmas” are actually quite recent: usually dating back no further than the Victorian Era.

Secondly, the logic of these claims assumes that anything traditional is very old, anything very old is pre-Christian and anything pre-Christian is religious in origin and so “pagan”. There are three large leaps of assumption at play here. As already noted, most of our Christmas traditions are not very old at all, let alone ancient. Further, even the genuinely old traditions are not necessarily pre-Christian. The idea that all old traditions developed before Christianity and then no further traditions appeared makes absolutely no sense. Finally, even in the few cases where we can trace a tradition back to something genuinely pre-Christian, ascribing actual “pagan” significance to it is very difficult.

Much of what we find in pop history about the “pagan origins” of our traditions simply repeat claims that, as we will see, are dubious at best or often simply made up. And things which may look both ancient and possibly “pagan” usually are not. In a thousand years people may well read plausible-sounding claims that the “Elf on the Shelf” tradition is ancient and pagan in origin, with lots of references to the pre-Christian folklore of elves. But we know the origin of this popular modern tradition – it was a marketing campaign for a 2005 American picture book. Our future pop folklorist would be wrong. We have to beware superficial similarities and glib associations and pay attention to the evidence.

Gift Giving

Giving gifts is a part of a wide range of traditions across the world and it is one Christmas custom that, in various forms, is actually very old. But is our Christmas gift tradition pre-Christian in origin? It is often claimed it is, by simply noting various pre-Christian midwinter gift traditions, but parallels are not necessarily signs of derivation.

The Roman Saturnalia certainly did have a gift giving element. Its final day, Sigillaria, was the main day for this tradition and the main gifts given then were the small pottery or wax figurines – “little statuettes” – that gave the day its name. These were usually cheap decorations that people gave to each other on December 23rd to mark the end of Saturnalia and which were used to decorate houses. In the conversation that makes up his fifth century book Saturnalia, Macrobius has one of his speakers, Praetextatus, claim these figurines were a substitute for what had originally been human sacrifices. Another participant, Evangelus, mocks this, saying they have no ancient religious significance and are simply “meant to amuse infants who haven’t yet learned to walk” (I.11.1). So it seems attributing deep but highly dubious, ancient, religious origins to simple midwinter customs is something the Romans did share with us.

Other gifts were given in a Saturnalia custom that is more like our Christmas presents. These could be small but useful items or valuable gifts. But they were often joke gifts. So the poet Catullus mentions how his friend Calvus gave him a collection of works by a poet Catullus hated, just for a laugh (Carmina, 14). Suetonius tells of how the emperor Augustus gave both valuable presents as well as joke gifts, such as “hair cloth, sponges, pokers and tongs, and other such things under misleading names of double meaning.” (Augustus, 75). The poet Martial wrote a whole series of short poems to accompany Saturnalia gifts, including ones for writing tablets, a set of dice, nuts, a board game, a hairpin, a hunting knife, a parasol, candles, a broad-brimmed hat, a sausage, a pig, and a parrot; which gives us an idea of the variety of gifts people gave.

Most pop histories simply state that this Roman gift giving is the origin of our Christmas gift traditions. Unfortunately, the evidence does not fit this simple linear progression. Saturnalia continued to be celebrated long after the Roman Empire became prodominantly Christian, well into the sixth or even seventh centuries, after which references to it fade away. So did its gift giving tradition survive it? That is not clear, but there is no solid evidence it did.

Our Christmas gift giving cannot be traced back further than the Middle Ages and rather than being a simple continuation of the Roman practice, it appears various Christian feast days in winter became associated with gift traditions of their own. In many parts of southern Europe the main day for gifts even today is not Christmas Day, but the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th. This is because this was thought to be the day the Magi visited the infant Jesus, bringing gifts of frankincense, and myrrh (Matthew 2:11). In parts of Italy it is the eve of Saint Lucia’s Day, December 13th, when the saint brings good children gifts and leaves bad ones coal.

We have references to gift giving at Yule in a few of the Norse sagas, but the examples are of Christian kings doing so, therefore seem to reflect an already established medieval Christian tradition. In medieval England gifts were most often exchanged on New Year’s Day rather than Christmas Day, and could include clothes, food or sums of money. For example, in 1357 the account books of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, include a gift of two shillings and sixpence to a teenager in her service, the future poet Geoffrey Chaucer, “for necessaries at Christmas”.

But the origin of our modern Christmas gift tradition seems to be the Feast of Saint Nicholas, on December 6th. Nicholas had been a fourth century bishop in Myrna in what is now Turkey. In 1087 his remains were transfered to Italy and the church in Bari where his relics were enshrined became the focus of a Europe-wide cult. By the later Middle Ages his cult emphasised stories of generosity, kindness and help for the poor and for children. Giving gifts to children on his feast day became popular and spread across Europe, with it becoming the main gift giving day of the Christmas season in several places, especially the Low Countries. There the feast day of “Sinterklaas” took on a range of customs about putting toys and treats in childrens’ shoes on the eve of his feast.

“Sinterklaas” was transported to the United States by Dutch migrants where he became “Santa Claus”. His gift giving traditions became more elaborate and more commercialised and, gradually and much more recently, moved from December 6th to Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. So it is Saint Nicholas Day and its customs that is the origin of our gift giving. Earlier, pre-Christian, Roman customs around Saturnalia may have lingered to give this idea to medieval practices at this time of year. Or they may just be parallels that are not actually connected at all. Gift giving is a very common human practice, after all.

Feasting

Like gift giving, feasting and partying are fairly common human practices to celebrate various occasions and seasons of the year. So, again, Saturnalia was a time when the Romans let their hair down, ate and drank and engaged in a bit of fun. Saturnalia was more of a carnival than our Christmas, with lots of emphasis on practical jokes, public revelry, open drunkeness and wearing party clothes usually reserved for home while out in the streets.

There was no particular food or dishes associated with Saturnalia, but the (contrary to modern popular belief) usually fairly staid and conservative Romans allowed themselves to eat and drink to excess if they could afford to. These feasts involved games and jokes usually involving reversal of the usual order of things. So a Saturnalia princeps could be elected, often a slave or a lower ranking family member, and they had to give humorous orders to senior household members for everyone’s amusement. Joke gifts and practical jokes were also common. The Saturnalia princeps game is sometimes claimed to be the origin of the later medieval Christmas traditions of the Lord of Misrule or the Boy Bishop. This is potentially possible, but it is hard to establish a genuine line of derivation from the pagan Roman practice to the medieval Christians ones. It is also very possible that these are simply parallels: similarly hierarchical societies developing similar fun traditions to let off steam for one day a year.

Feasting was also a key element of the pre-Christian Germanic celebration of Yule. One element of this – the eating of wild boar or pork – does seem to have been common at Yule and may have had an originally pagan significance. Of course, once again, the evidence here is later medieval saga material and so needs to be handled with care. There is certainly a saga tradition that in pre-Christian times a boar called the Sonargöltr or “herd-boar/lead-boar” was sacrificed on the eve of Yule. Oaths were also taken by laying hands on the bristles of the boar before the sacrifice. In the thirteenth century Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks (“The Saga of  of Hervör and Heidrek”) refers to this custom:

And they would sacrifice a boar in the sonarblót. On Yule Eve the sonargöltr was led into the hall before the king; then people laid their hands on its bristles and made vows. (Ch. 10)

A similar reference is found in Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar. The animals sacrificed at these blóts were usually eaten and this custom may have some connection to modern Christmas traditions where pork and ham is eaten. That said, while most animals were slaughtered in late autumn in northern Europe, pigs could be kept into the winter thanks to autumn falls of acorns and so would be a pracitcal source of meat for a midwinter feast. So these traditions of feasting on pork and ham may have nothing to do with anything potentially pagan reflected in the saga traditions. The fifteenth century Boar’s Head Carol and residual traditions of serving a roast boar’s head at Queen’s College Oxford on December 14th may have ancient origins or may just be medieval. Unfortunately, the story that the Queens College tradition derives from an incident when a fourteenth century student was attacked by a boar and killed it with his copy of Aristotle appears to be a later myth.

Another pagan Yule feasting story is found in the Heimskringla, again in the Hákonar saga góða involves the Christian Hákon being unable to avoid eating some of the horse meat from a Yule sacrifice at Mærin and so forced himself to eat some horse liver and drink Yule oaths without making the sign of the cross over them. I have yet to see anyone try to claim eating horse meat at Yule is connected to any modern Christmas traditions, however.

So how “pagan” is eating and drinking at Christmas? There is no doubt pagans did do some feasting at midwinter and there is a possibility our eating ham and pork at Christmas is a dim echo of Germanic sacrifices at Yule. But midwinter is also a logical time for people to stay indoors, eat and drink. The weather is colder, even in southern Europe. It is also a time when there are few major agricultural tasks, other than repairing tools and waiting for spring. A feast around the solstice simply makes sense and people in all cultures like eating and drinking to mark festivals. So, “pagan”? Not particularly, no.

Holly, Ivy and Mistletoe

The seasonal “origins of Christmas customs” articles tend to be in agreement that the traditional use of holly, ivy and mistletoe as Christmas decorations has its origins in pre-Christian times and emphasise any “pagan” associations they can find for these plants.

Holly, we are assured was “sacred to the druids” – a group that are regularly invoked in these “pagan origins” claims, despite the fact that what we know about them from ancient sources could be written on a very small piece of paper. Suffice it to say, none of those ancient sources make any mention of the sacredness of holly. Ivy, we are also informed, was sacred to the druids or various pagan traditions. It is sometimes claimed that ivy was the feminine equivalent to holly for these pagans, which is another fascintating detail that is found precisely nowhere in any ancient source. These claims appear to be simply recent inventions that then just get repeated endlessly.

The most common claim is that the Romans merrily decorated their homes with holly, ivy and mistletoe and hung up wreaths at Saturnalia and this is the origin of our customary decorations. Unfortunately, if we search the various references to Saturnalia customs in Roman sources, there are absolutely no references to holly, ivy, mistletoe or wreaths. Modern Christmas wreaths were originally Advent wreaths – a decorated circle with four candles, with one lit on each of the fasting Sundays before Christmas. So, it is a completely Christian tradition, with – again – no sign of any pagan origin.

This leaves us with mistletoe, and here the “pagan origins” articles at least have a couple of pre-Christian references they can utilise, with a bit of work. Unlike the holly claims, we actually do have an ancient source linking the ancient Celtic priestly class of druids to misteltoe. In his first century AD encyclopedia, the Natural History, Pliny the Elder writes about mistletoe:

[W]e must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant by the Gauls. The Druids—for that is the name they give to their magicians – held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the oak. …  is gathered with rites replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, …. Having made all due preparation for the sacrifice and a banquet beneath the trees, they bring thither two white bulls, the horns of which are bound then for the first time. Clad in a white robe the priest ascends the tree, and cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle, which is received by others in a white cloak. They then immolate the victims, offering up their prayers that God will render this gift of his propitious to those to whom he has so granted it. It is the belief with them that the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons. (Natural History, XVI.95)

So, if any of this is accurate (and with Pliny that is far from certain), here at least we have some evidence of a pagan association with mistletoe. But what has this got to do with midwinter decorations or an origin of our Christmas traditions regarding mistletoe? Well, nothing. It is not enough to gesture to some ancient pagan belief about mistletoe and then decide that this means our use of it is pagan in origin. There is no actual evidence here of any connection.

The best known Christmas tradition regarding mistletoe is the one where anyone under a mistletoe decoration can be kissed. Various “pagan origins” articles simply note the druids story from Pliny above as though this is somehow an explanation of this tradition. Others go further to note the story of the death of Baldr, referred to in some Old Norse poetry and told in fuller form in the thirteenth century Prose Edda by Snorri Sturlason.

In this story the goddess Frigga asks everything on earth to swear an oath not to harm her son Baldr. She does not bother to make mistletoe swear the oath, since she does not see how it could harm her son. Learning this, the mischievous god Loki takes a piece of mistletoe and gets Baldr’s blind brother Hǫðr to throw it at Baldr, who dies as a result. Frigga then asks all things to weep for Baldr to release him from the world of the dead, but Loki, disguised as a giantess called Þǫkt, refuses. So Baldr remains dead (see “Of Baldr’s death and Hermóðr’s journey to Hel” in The Uppsala Edda, ed. Heimir Pálsson, trans. Anthony Faulkes, Viking Society for Northern Research, University College London, 2012, pp 75-79).

Again, here we have a (probably) pagan tradition regarding mistletoe. But what we do not have is any connection to midwinter, Yule, Christmas or kissing. Thus some of the “pagan origins” articles contrive a way to make a connnection, and so the notoriously unreliable History.com site breezily assures its readers of a happy ending to the story:

 According to one sunnier version of the myth, the gods were able to resurrect Baldur from the dead. Delighted, Frigg then declared mistletoe a symbol of love and vowed to plant a kiss on all those who passed beneath it. (“Why Do We Kiss Under the Mistletoe?”)

What this account fails to mention is that this “sunnier version” is found nowhere in any source text and seems to be a very recent, modern addition to get the story to somehow fit the Christmas tradition. In fact, the tradition does not seem to be very old at all. The first references to it date back no earlier than the late 1700s. It is first mentioned in a song from the 1784 comic opera Two to One by George Colman the Younger. The lyrics read:

“What all the men, Jem, John, and Joe, Cry, / ‘What good luck has sent ye?’ / And kiss beneath the mistletoe, / The girl not turn’d of twenty.”

In 1719 the English apothecary wrote a book gloriously titled A Dissertation Concerning Mistletoe a Most Wonderful Specifick Remedy for the Cure of Convulsive Distempers, which goes into great detail about the folklore and herbal uses surrounding the plant, yet makes no mention of any kissing tradition associated with it. So the idea this tradition had some ancient pagan origin has no basis in evidence and it appears to have developed in the mid 1700s as a way for men to kiss girls at Christmas parties. So that aspect of Christmas, it seems, has not changed much.

In the end, the use of holly, ivy and mistletoe as traditional Christmas decorations most likely has an origin that is simply practical. In Europe in midwinter, most plants lose their leaves. These traditional decorative plants are the exception: all of them are evergreens and holly has red berries in winter. So they are the obvious choice for decoration at a midwinter feast. No magic involved.

Yule Logs

Yule logs tend to be a traditional element of Christmas more referred to and included in imagery than actually practiced these days. It was a tradition of finding and dragging a large log to the home, making sure it was one sufficiently large to burn from Christmas Eve and through the following day. In other iterations it was burned incrementally each day from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night. In various versions of the tradition, the cutting, dragging and lighting of the Yule Log was acommpanied by drinking and singing and the log was sometimes sprinkled with wine or spirits. Sometimes a fragment of the log was kept and used the next year to light the next Yule Log, though in variants on this custom it was simply kept for luck or used to light fires on particularly stormy nights. In still other versions its ashes were used to sprinkle over the fields.

This all looks and feels rather “pagan” and so it is usually claimed that it is a traditional (if now largely unpracticed) Christmas custom with deep pagan roots. Back in 1777 the English antiquarian declared the custom to be pagan in origin, but had to use a lot of speculative language to do so. Noting Bede’s eighth century references to pagan Yule falling on December 25th he says:

The Yule-Clog [sic] therefore hath probably been a Part of those Ceremonies which were perform’d that Night’s Ceremonies. It seems to have been used, as an Emblem of the return of the Sun, and the lengthening of the Days. For as both December and January were called Guili or Yule, upon Account of the Sun’s Returning, and the Increase of the Days; so, I am apt to believe, the Log has had the Name of the Yule-Log, from its being burnt as an Emblem of the returning Sun, and the Increase of its Light and Heat. This was probably the Reason of the custom among the Heathen Saxons. (Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1725, 155-56)

This means Bourke does not actually find any ancient references to Yule Logs, so he assumes them and reads them into Bede. All this really tells us is assuming “pagan origins” for Christmas traditions has been going on for centuries. The earliest English reference to the Yule Log tradition is found in a poem by Robert Herrick, “Ceremonies for Christmasse”, dating to the 1620s or 1630s. There he calls it the “Christmas log”, but he is clearly noting a version of the tradition:

Come, bring with a noise,/ My merrie, merrie boyes,/ The Christmas log to the firing;/ …. With the last year’s brand/ Light the new block, And/ For good successe in his spending,/ On your Psaltries play,/ That sweet luck may / Come while the Log is a-teending.

It is often stated that there is a much earlier, German reference to the Yule Log tradition dating all the way back to 1184. However Peter Gainsford has tracked this back to its source – an edict for the privilages of the parish priest of Ahlen in Westphalia and found it simply says a tree is to be provided to the priest “at the Nativity of the Lord to be brought for his own fire at the festival” (arborem in Nativitate Domini ad festivum ignem suum adducendam esse – see Gainsford, “Concerning Yule”). So this does not seem to be a reference to the Yule Log custom and appears to simply be a utilitarian provision of firewood for the local priest.

Ronald Hutton notes fairly early scepticism about the ancient origins of the custom, pointing to Alexander Tille’s observation in 1889 that Herrick is the earliest reference to it in Britain (Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Oxford, 1996, pp. 99-104). Tille notes some medieval German references to the provision of firewood at Christmas, which he (and Hutton) thinks may be the origin of the tradition, though these too seem largely utilitarian rather than ritual (see Tille, Yule and Christmas: Their Place in the Germanic Year, 1889, p. 91 ff). Hutton also notes that later references show that by the nineteenth century versions of the Yule Log tradition was found “in France, the Italian Alps, and Serbia, but also was found in most parts of Europe”. He believes the tradition began in medieval Germany, pointing to the fact that all iterations of it “by the nineteenth century ringed Germany”.

So, once again, while claims this was an ancient and “pagan” custom, there is little evidence to support either idea. The Yule Log customs appear to be local variants on traditions that began as a purely practical aspect of a midwinter festival: making sure there is a big enough log to keep everyone warm for the duration.

Christmas Trees

Decorated Christmas trees are so ubiquitous in modern Christmas traditions that they have become the de facto symbol of the season. And they are among the Christmas customs most usually declared to be pagan in origin, with confident pronouncements that they, variously, have their origins in Celtic tradition, Germanic Yule customs or, yet again, Roman Saturnalia. After all, many ask, what has putting up a tree in our home and hanging decorations on it got to do with the birth of Christ? Clearly, it is assumed, this has to be a pagan tradition.

Some Christians are among those who are most insistent on this pagan origin, even declaring it to be so ancient and so pagan that these wicked trees are explicitly condemned in the Bible. The text cited here is Jeremiah 10:2-4 and it is often given in the King James Version for that extra old world zing:

Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.or the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

The prophet goes on to warn “they are altogether brutish and foolish: the stock is a doctrine of vanities.” If anyone bothers to read this passage in context, however, it is clearly not about setting up a decorated tree. The whole text is a condemnation of idols and there reference here is to taking timber, shaping an idol out of wood and decorating that with silver and gold. There is no pagan Christmas tree to be found here.

Another commonly repeated story of the origin of the Christmas tree attributes it to Saint Boniface (c. 675 – 754). In this version, the missionary saint fells an oak sacred to Odin as a sign of his power over the old gods and finds an evergreen tree standing behind it (or one miraculously grew in its place). So Boniface declares:

“This little tree, a young child of the forest, shall be your holy tree tonight. It is the wood of peace… It is the sign of an endless life, for its leaves are ever green. See how it points upward to heaven.”

And this, the story claims, is the origin of the Christmas tree. This is a neat story and, as usual with such stories, it has been made up very recently. The story of Boniface felling the sacred oak is one that dates back to not long after his time and can be found in Willibald’s Life of Saint Boniface from circa 760 AD. But the Christmas tree element is not found there and there is nothing in that or similar accounts that associates the pagan oak tree with midwinter or Yule. Roger Pearse has tracked that ending of the story and the “quote” from the saint back to a n 1891 short story by Henry van Dyke called “The Oak of Geismar”, first published in Scribner’s Magazine, vol. 10, July-December (1891), pp. 681-7 (see Pearse, “A modern myth: St Boniface and the Christmas Tree”). The story was a hit and later published in expanded form as a novel The First Christmas Tree: A Story of the Forest in 1897.

So while this story is still repeated, mainly by Catholic publications, as the very Christian origin of the Christmas tree, it has also given rise to the idea that Boniface “stole” the custom from the pagans he converted. So it is claimed the sacred oak he cut down was the original Christmas tree, despite being an oak and not associated with midwinter, Yule or Christmas time in any way.

Most claims of the “pagan origins” of the Christmas tree do not even bother with an origin story or any references to sources at all. We are simply informed that these trees were set up by pagans at midwinter and decorated and that this is the origin of our custom. This is despite the fact our few references to Saturnalia or Yule or any other midwinter festivals have absolutely no references to any such thing. It is a claim that has strength and currency purely out of endless repetition.

Once again, however, it seems this custom is relatively recent, not ancient and not pagan in any way. The earliest evidence for Christmas trees comes from forestry regulations from the Rhineland cities of Sundhoffen and Bergheim dating to the 1300s. These put limits on people collecting fir trees or branches in the period around Christmas (see László Lukács, “Der Christbaum in den oberrheinischen Städten des 16./17. Jahrhunderts”, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 59, 2014, pp. 337-349). We then get similar laws, in the 1400s and also from the upper Rhine region, limiting the number and size of trees people could take from forests at Christmas. A couple of these specifically refer to them being used as decorated poles, probably much like maypoles. Finally, in the 1500s we get descriptions of decorated trees or poles set up in public squares in cities in Lativia and Estonia.

By 1657 the practice had moved to private homes and was common enough for Protestant theologian Johann Konrad Dannhauer to condemn Christmas trees as “trifles” and described them as “decorated with dolls and sugar”. Exactly why the custom began is not clear. It could just be an extension of using evergreen branches as midwinter decorations. Or it could be that medieval Christmas Eve productions of “The Play of Adam”, with a “tree of paradise” as its central prop (usually a fir decorated with apples) inspired the custom (see David Bertaina, “Trees and Decorations”, in The Oxford Handbook of Christmas, ed. Timothy Larsen, pp. 265-276). What we do know is that the earliest clear references to Christmas trees date to the Early Modern Period and the claims of ancient, pre-Christian origins are fanciful.

Christmas trees did not become the ubiquitous international custom they are today until the 1800s, after Queen Victoria made this previously German and northern European custom fashionable across the English-speaking world. It seems that because it is so common today, people assume it must have always been a traditional Christmas custom and so must be ancient and have “pagan” roots. But there is simply no evidence this is the case.

Most of the claims of “pagan” origins for Christmas trees are simply vague assertions. The few people who try to make more specific claims can be highly creative. The idea that a decorated pine tree carried to the Temple of Cybele in Rome is the origin of the custom does not really work, given this was done on March 22. When people attempt to claim Cato the Elder’s instructions to cut oak poles for the cultivation of grape vines at midwinter in his second century BC farming manual De Agri Cultra is somehow related to Christmas trees, creativity is giving way to desperation. Christmas trees are a medieval Christian custom, not an ancient pagan one.

Santa Claus

Even greater creativity is required to get a “pagan” origin for Santa Claus, given that the figure is literally a Christian saint. As already mentioned, Nicholas was a fourth century bishop of Myrna in Asia Minor whose cult became popular in the Middle Ages and was associated with kindness to children and gift giving. His feast day of December 6th was the original day for gifts and that tradition has only moved to Christmas Day or Christmas Eve very recently. The non-religous figure of Santa Claus is mostly a nineteenth century invention, derived from Dutch-American traditions about Sinterklaas, who was derived from Saint Nicholas.

In Britain there was a personification of Christmas called Father Christmas who first appears in plays and songs in the fifteenth century, where he is called “Sir Christemas” or, later, “Old Christmas” . He also appears in seventeenth century pamphlets debating the Puritan disapproval of Christmas.

As the increasingly commercialised American Santa Claus figure became more well known, “Father Christmas” and “Santa Claus” began to merge and today British people usually use the two names interchangably for the same figure. None of this is obscure or hard to trace in relevant sources, but this has not stopped attempts at claiming Santa Claus has a “pagan” origin.

This usually takes the form of claims that the Germanic god Odin is the “real” origin of Santa. So we are told that in pre-Christian times Odin was seen as a kindly, red-robed, white-bearded figure who left gifts for children, who rode through the air and who was associated with reindeer. The eight reindeer that pull Santa’s sleigh are supposedly derived from Odin’s eight legged horse Sleipnir.

Except none of this is supported by evidence. Far from being a kindly gift-giver with a soft spot for small children, the pagan Odin figure was a rather terrifying and alien deity, associated with wild magic and battle. There is no ancient tradition of him giving gifts to children – that is simply made up. There are no references in any early source where Odin wears red. Of the dozens of poetic names for the god that we have in Old Norse sources, the only ones that refer to what he wears refer to his hat (Síðhǫttr – “broad hat”), his cloak (Loðungr – “shaggy cloak wearer”) and his being masked (Grímnir – “masked one”). Similarly, these titles refer to his beard as long (Langbarðr, Síðskeggr – “long beard”) and grey (Hárbarðr – grey beard), but never white.

He was said to ride the eight legged horse Sleipnir, but was not associated with reindeer. And the detail that Santa’s sleigh is pulled by eight reindeer is not a very old element anyway – it was invented in 1823 by Clement Clarke Moore for his poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”. Literally the only connection between Odin and Christmas time is in one of those many poetic titles we find in Old Norse literature. In the skaldic poem Háleygjatal he is called Jólnir – “Yuler” or “He who Yules”. Why he is called this in this one poem is not clear, but it does not mean he is somehow the origin of Santa Claus.

The other attempted way of connecting Santa with Odin is to note that Odin was thought to lead the Wild Hunt – a chase through the air by supernatural beings on wild stormy nights. Though how this terrifying and dreaded apparition is in any way connected with jolly Santa in his flying sleigh is never explained. Once again, this is simply a desperate stretch. Santa is derived from traditions about a Christian saint and is not “pagan” in any way.

Conclusions

So, when critically examined, virtually none of the claimed “pagan origins” of Christmas traditions stand up to scrutiny. Most are simply not founded on any evidence at all and are merely asserted as being pagan with no sources or support provided. Others seem very ancient and pre-Christian at first glance, but do not have any ancient roots at all. Many are actually quite modern. Only a few may have pre-Christian roots, but this is largely speculation. And that is about as good as we can get.

The “pagan origins” idea remains commonly accepted, largely because it is repeated without question so often. It is also strongly held by many people because it has deep cultural roots – Protestant reformers have been claiming it since the sixteenth century as a way of discrediting “unbiblical” folk traditions. So, unfortunately, we are likely to see it repeated endlessly every year, because simple explanations tend to be remembered more than long historical debunkings. But the fact remains that these claims are almost completely nonsense.

Online Resources

For anyone who wants to push back against these claims, there is a range of well-researched online material that could be useful. Dr Andrew Mark Henry’s video on the origin of the date of Christmas is an excellent summary of the complex evidence on this subject:

His summary of the origins and history of the Christmas tree is also very useful:

For a long and very detailed discussion of the complex evidence for the Calculation Thesis, see my interview with Dr Philipp Nothaft on the origin of the date of Christmas:

Old Norse scholar Dr Jack Crawford gives an excellent critical analysis of the claim Santa Claus is based on Odin:

References and Further Reading

Roger Beck, “Merkelbach’s Mithras”, Phoenix 41.3, 1987, p.296-316

David Bertaina, “Trees and Decorations”, in The Oxford Handbook of Christmas, ed. Timothy Larsen, (Oxford, 2020), pp. 265-276

Peter Gainsford, “Concerning Yule”, (KiwiHellenist, 18 December 2018)

Fritz Graf, Roman Festivals in the Greek East From the Early Empire to the Middle Byzantine Era (Cambridge, 2015)

Steven Hijmans, Sol: Image and Meaning of the Sun in Roman Art and Religion (Brill, Vol. 1 2022, Vol. 2 2024) 

Steven Hijmans, “Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas”, Mouseion, Series III, Vol. 3, 2003, pp. 377-98

Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, 1996)

László Lukács, “Der Christbaum in den oberrheinischen Städten des 16./17. Jahrhunderts”, Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 59, 2014, pp. 337-349

Spencer McDaniel, “No, Santa Claus Is Not Inspired by Odin” (Tales of Times Forgotten, 27 December 2021)

Spencer McDaniel, “How Was Saturnalia Celebrated in Ancient Rome?” (Tales of Times Forgotten, 18 December 2020)

Philipp Nothaft, “Early Christian Chronology and the Origins of the Christmas Date: In Defense of the ‘Calculation Theory’”, Questions Liturgiques, 94, 2013, pp. 247-65.

Roger Pearse, “A modern myth: St Boniface and the Christmas Tree” 6 December, 2021.

Michele Renee Salzmann, “Aurelian and the Cult of the Unconquered Sun: The Institutionalisation of Christmas, Solar Worship and the Imperial Cult”, in Expressions of Cult in the Southern Levant in the Greco-Roman Period, eds. Oren Tal and Zvi Weiss, Brepols, 2017, pp. 37-51.

Thomas C. Schmidt, “Calculating December 25 as the Birth of Jesus in Hippolytus’ ‘Canon’ and ‘Chronicon’” Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 69, No. 5, 2015 , pp. 542-563.