12/17/2025
Oho! A post that calls for my expertise in fact!
Most of this is actually false. But it's passed around so often that it's hard to discern what's true and what's not. I can't blame anyone for that!
So first thing's first, here's a full list of *CHRISTIAN* holidays, in December alone:
Dec 6: St Nicholas Day
Dec 8: Immaculate Conception of Mary
Dec 12: Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe
16-25: Posadas Navidenas (Hispanic Christian)
21: Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle
24: Christmas Eve
25: Christmas Day
25: Feast of the Nativity
26: St. Stephen's Day
28: Holy Innocents Day
30: Holy Family Day
31: Watch Night
So as you can see, saying Happy Holidays is, if anything, MORE inclusive of Christianity than just saying "Merry Christmas!" Now on the Pagan stuff.
Misconception 1: Saturnalia
There really was an ancient Roman festival called Saturnalia; it was not celebrated on December 25, but roughly around December 17. As a result of the holiday's widespread popularity, by the first century BCE, it seems to have been expanded to about 7 days of celebration, starting on December 17 and ending on December 23.
Emperor Augustus (27 BCE- 14 CE) tried to shorten it to 3 days, but Caligula (37-41 CE) extended it to five day, from the 17th to the 21st. So the dates that Saturnalia was supposed to take place depended on which time period someone lived in, mostly.
There is no evidence in record anywhere that Saturnalia was ever celebrated on the 25th.
The main person who made this claim, Kenneth C Davis, is a non-academic writer who, according to his wikipedia page, doesn't even have a college degree. He is also wrong about why Saturnalia was celebrated - it was not a Solstice holiday, nor was it ever celebrated as such, but it was a religious holiday in honour of the agricultural god, Saturnus. During Saturnalia, instead of slaves serving meals to their masters, masters would serve meals to their slaves. Gambling was normally illegal, but was legalized for the holidays, and people would dress up in colorful clothes.
Misconception 2: Christmas Trees originated from Norse paganism.
This is mostly wrong. While we do have credible records of ancient Norse peoples decorating their houses with evergreens around the winter solstice, there are no records of them bringing entire trees in.
The earliest known reference to a Christmas tree is a depiction from one sculpture on a keystone located in Turckheim, France, dating to 1576. If we assume that the custom was probably around for a few decades before it was mentioned or depicted anywhere, that would indicate the very first probably appeared in western Europe sometime in the early 1500's.
However the Christmas Tree was not popularized widely until the eighteenth century, at first among very rich German Lutherans. The Lutherans helped spread the tradition of the Christmas tree to other parts of Europe and, by the late 1700s, the custom was in England and North America.
And as a result of Queen Victoria's enthusiasm for them, Christmas trees became all the rage among affluent English and American families.
The truth is that very few modern Christmas traditions can legitimately be traced back to pre-Christian paganism. The holiday itself dates back to the early centuries of the common era, but it was celebrated nothing like we celebrate it today. For nearly the entire middle ages and a large chunk of the early modern period, Christmas was regarded as a sort of, to put it in a modern perspective, mix of Carnival and Mardi Gras. Then the reformation happened and protestants did away with all of that.
So you might be wondering, but wait, how *do* pagans celebrate the Solstice in the current year?
The truth is, it depends on the branch. For Wicca, which was created by Gerald Gardner and loosely based on surviving texts pertaining to Celtic Druidry, it usually involves decorating a tree with dried orange slices that represent the sun; this is almost certainly due to the availability of evergreen trees over any other kind of evergreen decoration, and not due to copying the Christmas tree. For Norse pagan Yule, it involves roasting some pork and drinking some mead and wine.
For me, who considers myself an eclectic Pagan grounded in Celtic druidry with a mix of Wicca (though I am not an initiate in any tradition due to circumstance, I did study with a lineaged coven for some years), it means spending time out in nature (when weather allows), observing the turning of the year. The Winter Solstice is not typically an extravagant affair - there may be gift giving and other merriment, but it is certainly not the most important holiday.
That would be either Midsummer or Samhain, depending on who you talk to.
People don't need to create a narrative that Christmas is Pagan to do a 'gotcha' about the 'keep Christ in Christmas' thing. All we have to do is remind Christians that they have multiple holidays in December themselves, and that everyone should be free to believe, practice, and celebrate however and whatever they wish.
The TRUE Meaning of Merry Christmas
Look, b’ys, every December someone starts yellin' about “protecting the true meaning of Christmas” or "there's a war on Christmas" as if the holiday wasn’t a bunch of different patches stitched together like Nan’s quilt.
So here’s a little history lesson for anyone gettin' worked up about the use of Happy Holidays:
1. The Bible never said Jesus was born on December 25. Not a whisper. Not even a hint. The early Christians didn’t celebrate birthdays at all. Too pagan, they said.
2. Meanwhile, the Romans were already having a week‑long bender called Saturnalia: drinking, gift‑giving, role‑reversal, and general foolishness. Basically George Street but with togas.
3. Then there was Sol Invictus (the Sun God) whose birthday was on December 25. So the early church looked around and said, “Well, everyone’s already off work and half‑cut… might as well slide Jesus in here.”
4. Fast‑forward a bit and we’ve got Norse Yule traditions, evergreen trees, feasts, logs, and whatever else Christianity could borrow. Ya knows, like yer cousin “borrows” your tools and never brings them back.
5. The cozy family Christmas? Victorian invention. Before that, it was chaos.
6. Santa? A mashup of Saint Nicholas, Dutch folklore, American marketing, and capitalism.
So if someone tells you Christmas has a “pure, unbroken tradition,” just smile and say:
“Yes b’y, nothing says purity like a pagan solstice rave, a Roman street party, a Victorian PR campaign, and a jolly man invented by Coca‑Cola.”
So, say Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Blessed Yule, or Have a good one, my son! It’s all the same winter mashup.
