The man who invented Christmas

In a few hours, a big part of the world will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ in an abundance of lights, gifts and festive food! But for the first 300 years of Christianity, December 25th meant nothing. The first official mention of it, as the birth day of Jesus, appears in a Roman document, centuries after his death. There is no evidence that this day has anything to do with the actual birthday that we are celebrating. On the contrary. The nativity scene with the newborn sheep next to baby Jesus in the manger, indicates that it was spring time, rather than winter.

Actually it was Pope Julius I (bishop of Rome from 337 till 352) who chose that date (we could say that he invented Christmas but history reserved that title for someone else). Many historians agree that he had no reason to pick that day other than to overshadow older celebrations that referred to different religions or pagan traditions.

Celebrating the birthday of Mithras, the sun god of the Persians, Yule, the pagan celebration of the winter solstice or Saturnalia, the ancient Roman festival in honour of the god Saturn, were overtaken by Christianity and the celebration of Christmas.

As Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, it absorbed and redefined ancient traditions, rituals and practices that preexisted for ages. Over the centuries it spread to the biggest part of the western world but it was not really popular or even accepted in many turns of the history.

At the end of the 19th century Charles Dickens wrote the novel "A Christmas Carol" and changed radically the way we perceive and celebrate Christmas. It was this novel that labeled him as "the man who invented Christmas".