The History, Origins and Evolution of Christmas - Part 1

Let me just start by saying, I love Christmas. It’s genuinely my favourite time of the year. For us, it starts sometime in late November (yes, November. Don’t panic) when we put up our Christmas tree and our Christmas lights. It’s a whole family affair, we’ll put on Santa hats, Christmas music, drink mulled wine and all have a good time. My kids love it. It’s almost as much fun as Christmas itself.

For those of you screaming “BUT IT’S NOVEMBER!” I’d ask you to take a few deep breaths, towel yourself down, maybe have a cup of tea and a mince pie, and allow me to explain, over a series of posts leading up to that big arbitrary date of December 25th, why it really doesn’t matter.

Origins of Christmas

So what even is Christmas? Why do we even bother? Obviously, for some, it’s a Christian religious festival celebrating the birth of Jesus and all the various Christian denominations do this slightly differently. However, long long before that, mid-winter meant party time. For those that know me, know I live about ten minutes from Stonehenge which has a long history and significance around the summer and winter solstice but if you travel about three miles to the north, you’ll come to a village called Durrington which (among other things) is famous for the Durrington Walls archaeological site where it’s thought the original builders of Stonehenge lived. Evidence has been found at Durrington Walls of major feasting around the solstice, with remains of large fires and lots of animal bones, some with meat still attached. If Stonehenge did indeed act as a calendar for neolithic humans, it’s unsurprising that the winter solstice would be a time for celebration. With the birth of agriculture and farming, for the first time, human beings were enjoying a sense of abundance and a semblance of food security. The winter solstice marked the time of mid-winter where the days would begin to get lighter and springtime would be in sight. The darkest parts of winter would be over and surely a renewed sense of hope would be spreading.

Fast-forward a few millennia, you’d find the Romans celebrating Saturnalia, a festival in honour of the god Saturn around the winter solstice. Saturnalia would typically begin around December 17th and would involve a week or so of debauchery. It would involve all social classes and even include role reversals where slaves would be given license to mock their masters. The overall celebratory mood and suspension of normal moral codes meant that all kinds of behaviour, including drinking, gluttony and unrestrained sexual freedom was common.

Saturnalia acted as a safety valve for society, releasing all of the social pressures that had built up over the year. The poet Martial even reserved the publication of his most “spicy” works for the week of Saturnalia, the nature of the festival making such content permissible. Things became so wild, that when Christianity began to spread, Emperor Theodosius I issued the “Theodosian decrees” between 389 and 391 AD, banning all pagan activities. It’s perhaps no surprise that in the Christian nativity, Mary is depicted as a virgin in an attempt to move away from the old pagan sense of excess.

Further north, Germanic and Scandinavian cultures had their own winter festival called Yule, which like Saturnalia, revolved around the winter solstice and involved merriment and wild celebration. However, by the 4th century AD, Christianity was firmly entrenched across much of Europe and these mid-winter festivals were so much a part of life that the church needed to find something to replace them. The birth of Christ became the obvious choice, even though there’s nowhere in the Bible that states Jesus was born on the 25th December or even December at all. For many in Europe, Epiphany is the most important celebratory date, where Jesus Christ was said to be revealed as the son of God to the three wise men (or Magi), typically celebrated on January 6th.

However, whichever reason was chosen, the drinking, feasting, gambling, singing, dancing, sex parties and general merrymaking of a good old-fashioned mid-winter festival continued, much to the dismay and blushes of the more pious members of society. It was about time the fun stopped.

In the 17th century, England was briefly a republic ruled by parliament and Oliver Cromwell. The infamously severe and deeply conservative Puritan-led parliament banned Christmas outright in 1647, knowing that Christmas had its pagan roots and no strict biblical basis. They wanted Christmas to be a day of piety and sober reflection. Anyone caught celebrating Christmas in any overt way could be punished. The ban was lifted when the monarchy was restored in 1660 but it took some time for Christmas to become openly celebrated once more.

The Puritan’s disapproval of Christmas spread even to America where the anti-Christmas sentiment lasted even longer. Christmas was banned in Boston between 1659-1681 and anyone caught celebrating would be fined or worse. Even so, during this time, there’s evidence to say that people still celebrated Christmas but in a much more confined and reserved way and while the Puritans’ attempt to ban Christmas ultimately failed, the era cast a long shadow with Christmas falling out of fashion in English-speaking countries for some time. What was needed, was a revival…

Charles Dickens and A Victorian Revival

It’s often a misconception that Charles Dickens, with the publication of his novella A Christmas Carol, invented Christmas as we know it. That isn’t strictly true, but I think it’s very clear that Dickens, along with various other factors, led to its revival and ultimately, what Christmas has become in English-speaking countries today.

A Christmas Carol was published in 1843 but let’s start a little before that. In 1800, Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III of England, decorated a large Yew tree with candles and sweets for a children’s party at Windsor Castle, based on a tradition she loved from her home country of Germany. From then, it became a tradition amongst the royal family and other wealthy families to decorate a tree at Christmas. This practice wasn’t adopted widely just yet, but highlights that in the first half of the nineteenth century in England, most people were at least still aware of Christmas even if it wasn’t celebrated widely. In 19th-century Germany, things were quite different. Christmas celebrations had already evolved with the rise of the middle class, shifting from more religious public observances towards a private, family-centric affair focused on traditions like the decorated Christmas tree and gift-giving on Christmas Eve. With the merging of the German and English royal families and the industrial revolution resulting in a growing English middle-class, by the time A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, Christmas in Victorian England was already starting to look different.

A Christmas Carol, a novella about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation after a series of ghostly visits on Christmas Eve, was an instant hit. It carried a powerful message that Christmas should be a time of kindness, generosity, and most importantly, family. Despite the Germanic influence, at this point Christmas celebrations in England were still quite stale with most workers not even getting the day off (Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit was expected to work on Christmas day, for example) and even when it was celebrated, it tended to be a more reserved, grown-up affair (perhaps with fewer sex parties).

A Christmas Carol redefined Christmas as a season of compassion. One historian noted that Dickens “sought to reform the conscience of Christmas” and turn a formerly rowdy celebration into a more wholesome family holiday. This was helped by the fact that by the middle of the nineteenth century, the birth rate in England, stood at around 35-37 live births per 1000 people (compared to around 11 now), coupled with a growing middle class, meant that there were lots of children and families around.

Just a few years later in 1848, this trend of a family-friendly Christmas was helped again when an image of Queen Victoria sitting around a decorated Christmas tree with her children and German born husband, Prince Albert, circulated in Illustrated London News, popularizing the Christmas tree tradition even further and putting her children right along beside her in the celebrations. By the time of Dickens’ death in 1870, Christmas was totally entrenched as a beloved annual holiday in Britain and America.

But, Santa?

So, by the middle of the nineteenth century, Christmas is finally starting to look a bit like what we know it to be now. But how do we get from Queen Victoria and Ebeneezer Scrooge to Santa and his flying reindeer, mince pies and Mariah Carey? Well, for that, you’ll just have to read my next post…

Merry Novembermas!

Alex