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THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS
ANSWERS TO ATTACKS ON CHRISTMAS

catholic.com
 CONTENTS

THE TIMING OF CHRISTMAS 1

By Jimmy Akin

REFUTING THE ‘PAGAN ROOTS OF CHRISTMAS’ CLAIM 2

By Shaun McAfee

ADVENT: THE SEASON OF FORGOTTEN PENITENCE 7

By Kevin Orlin Johnson

CHRISTMAS 1644 11
By Clayton F. Bower Jr.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTMAS STORY 14

By Rod Bennett

KING HEROD THE GREAT AND THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH 16

By Gary Michuta

DID CHRISTIANS BORROW CHRISTMAS

AND EASTER FROM PAGANS? 18
By Steve Weidenkopf

THE TIMING OF CHRISTMAS

By Jimmy Akin
(Excerpted from A Daily Defense)

CHALLENGE:
“Christians are wrong to celebrate Christmas on December 25. Jesus
could not have been born then—it would have been too cold for the
shepherds to keep their flocks outdoors (as described in Luke 2:8).”

DEFENSE:
There are several problems with this challenge.
First, the Catholic Church celebrates Jesus’ birth on Decem-
ber 25, but this is a matter of custom rather than doctrine. It is not
Church teaching that this is when Jesus was born (note that the mat-
ter isn’t even mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church).
Second, although most Christians today celebrate Christ’s birth
on December 25, this was not the only date proposed. Around A.D.
194, Clement of Alexandria stated Christ was born November 18.
Other early proposals included January 10, April 19 or 20, and May
20 (Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., §488,
§553). By far the most common proposals, however, were January 6
(ibid., §§554–61) and December 25 (ibid., §§562–68).
Although the Catholic Church eventually adopted the last date
for use in its liturgy, the fact that the Church did not declare alternate
proposals heretical shows the matter was not considered essential to
the Faith.
Third, the proposals that put Jesus’ birth in the colder part of the
year (November 18, December 25, January 6, and January 10) are not
ruled out by the fact that there were shepherds keeping watch over
their flocks at night.
Ancient Jews did not have large indoor spaces for housing sheep.
Flocks were kept outdoors during winter in Judaea, as they are else-
2 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

where in the world today, including in places where snow is common

(search for “winter sheep care” on the Internet). Sheep are adapted to
life outdoors. That’s why they have wool, which keeps body heat in
and moisture out.
Sheep are kept outdoors in winter in Israel today: “William Hen-
dricksen quotes a letter dated Jan. 16, 1967, received from the New
Testament scholar Harry Mulder, then teaching in Beirut, in which
the latter tells of being in Shepherd Field at Bethlehem on the just
passed Christmas Eve, and says: “Right near us a few flocks of sheep
were nestled. Even the lambs were not lacking. . . . It is therefore
definitely not impossible that the Lord Jesus was born in December’”
(ibid., §569).

REFUTING THE ‘PAGAN ROOTS OF CHRISTMAS’ CLAIM

By Shaun McAfee

One of the first shows about Christmas I watched as a kid was A

Charlie Brown Christmas. I haven’t watched it in years, but I haven’t
forgotten the climatic scene where Charlie Brown shouts above the
noise to demand an answer to a question he’s struggling with: “Isn’t
there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” As we all
know, Linus steps forward and proclaims the birth of Christ.
The scene is interesting to me as a Catholic. It’s reminiscent of
the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 where, after much debate among
the apostles, Peter rises and puts the debate on circumcision to rest.
Linus was, of course, our second pope, and it seems no small coinci-
dence that, amid all the noise, it was Linus who delivered the truth of
Christmas to Charlie Brown and his friends.
The show first aired in 1965, and it became a holiday favorite for
many, but modern critics dislike the show for its Christian sentiment.
It’s a lot more than sentiment—it’s catechesis! I can’t name another
 REFUTING THE ‘PAGAN ROOTS OF CHRISTMAS’ CLAIM 3

Christmas movie that goes so far as to recite an entire section of the

Bible to discuss the reason we celebrate the birth of Christ (see Luke
2:8-14).
Unfortunately, times have changed, and fewer people are will-
ing to recognize that Christmas is a Christian celebration. If Charlie
Brown entered a crowded room today to ask what Christmas is all
about, he’d get mixed answers. Perhaps out of a desire to further secu-
larize Christmas, many claim that it is not Christian at all, that it was
“invented.”
The modern Catholic has many fronts to defend, one of them be-
ing the so-called “pagan roots” of Christmas. Around Christmastime
you are likely to hear the objection that Christmas is a Christo-pa-
gan holiday, a mash-up of pagan beliefs and Christian celebration.
Here are two of the objections you might meet, and a helpful way to
respond to each.
“Christians coopted Christmas from the winter solstice celebra-
tion of Sol Invictus.”
Yes, there were mid-winter celebrations in religions outside
Christianity during the time of the early Church. In fact, as with
Easter, the Eastern and the Western Churches observed Christmas
differently, while, until recently, the Armenians didn’t celebrate it at
all. The West led the way with a distinctive nativity-based celebration,
concluding with the holy Mass. Christmas was not an assimilated
celebration until the fourth century.
Does that mean that the apostle John and Sts. Polycarp and
Irenaeus—three men who were apostolically connected—did not cel-
ebrate Christmas? They probably didn’t. But there is nothing wrong
with this. There was never a debate about the birth of Christ, but the
celebration of it as Christmas took time to develop.
The person who maintains Christmas has “pagan roots” has to
ask himself the following questions:
1. After centuries of Christians being persecuted for not observ-
4 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

ing pagan holidays, where is the proof of influence?

2. Who influenced whom? Did Christianity influence pagans to
begin to adopt a more public and concrete celebration, or did they
“Christianize” a pagan event? We can observe historically that the two
celebrations were present at the time, but neither scenario is a prob-
lem for the Christian, because the Church has the ability to Chris-
tianize people and celebrations alike. Light overcame darkness at the
celebration of Sol Invictus, and, in Christ, darkness was defeated by
the real luminousness of Christ. Paganism had a hint, but Christianity
had the fulfillment.
Remiond your objector of what Paul said to the Greeks at the
Areopagus:
“For as I passed along, and observed the object of your worship,
I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘to an unknown god.’ What
therefore your worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you . . . that
[every nation of men] should seek God, in the hope that they might
feel after him and find him” (Acts 17:23, 27).
A desire for the “unknown God” is written on the hearts of all
men. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way:
“The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is
created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to
himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never
stops searching for” (CCC 27).

“The Christmas tree comes from pagan origins and is condemned

in the Bible.”

The objector can have a field day with this one. Evergreens are a
near-universal symbol of hope in the winter season. They represented
resurrection (triumph of life over death) for the Egyptians, everlast-
ing life for the Scandinavians and Druids, and agricultural anticipa-
tion (to the god Saturnalia) for the Greeks and Romans. But the tree
 REFUTING THE ‘PAGAN ROOTS OF CHRISTMAS’ CLAIM 5

was not used to celebrate Christmas until the time of the Reforma-
tion.
More closely connected to the ancient Church is the use of ever-
green wreaths. Your objector might say that it came into use around
the same time as the popularity of the pagan celebration Saturnalia.
The truth is, Tertullian wrote as early as A.D. 190-220 that Christians
hang more “wreaths and laurels” than the pagans (who hang it for the
“gate gods”) at their doors.
In this letter, Tertullian condemned the wreath as something
into which to put hope as did the pagans with their temples, over
that of Jesus who is the true Light in which we are the actual temples
of the Spirit. He wasn’t condemning the décor! He ends with, “You
are a light of the world, and a tree ever green. If you have renounced
temples, make not your own gate a temple.” There’s little evidence that
the Church adopted the practice from the pagans they were trying to
convert.
The passage in the Bible to which your objector likely is referring
is Jeremiah 10:3-4.
“Thus says the LORD: Learn not the customs of the nations,
and have no fear of the signs of the heavens, though the nations fear
them. For the cult idols of the nations are nothing, wood cut from the
forest, wrought by craftsmen with the adze, adorned with silver and
gold. With nails and hammers they are fastened, that they may not
totter”(NAB).
Let’s get one thing straight: Jeremiah was not talking about
Christmas trees. He was writing hundreds of years before Christmas
became a celebration. He was pointing out the idolatry of the people
of that day and, like Tertullian, was warning against the idolatry of
those who put their hope in earthly gods and things.
The objector must understand that Christians are not intent on
worshiping their trees and are certainly not putting them in their en-
tryways to deter spirits—perhaps for some carolers and eggnog, but
not for protection.
6 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with the Church baptizing certain prac-

tices of other religions. The objector is claiming the Church derived
its beliefs from these celebrations when it only assimilated such
seasonal celebrations and symbols. St. Patrick did the same with the
clover to illuminate and demonstrate the reality of the Trinity. As did
St. Paul in explaining the “unknown god” at the Areopagus. Paul did
not derive the idea of God from the Greeks that day, and Patrick did
not derive the Trinity from a leaf.
We don’t believe that Christians hold the patent on truth. In-
stead, we believe that God has allowed hints of himself in other reli-
gions. In other words, just because a specific religion does not contain
the whole truth does not mean it contains no truth. If you witness to
a pagan who believes a wreath will save him, maybe you can show
him how Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise of everlasting life.
Then, like the cross that hangs from our neck, the wreath we display
reminds us what is true. In this way, Christianity has the distinct abil-
ity to assimilate the “hints” of other religions.
I find the following passage from Vatican II’s Declaration on the
Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions especially enlighten-
ing:
“The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in
these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of con-
duct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing
in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless
often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she
proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ ‘the way, the truth, and the
life’ (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life,
in whom God has reconciled all things to himself ” (Nostra Aetate 4).

 ADVENT: THE SEASON OF FORGOTTEN PENITENCE 7

ADVENT: THE SEASON OF FORGOTTEN PENITENCE

By Kevin Orlin Johnson

For many American Catholics, Thanksgiving kicks off another season

of “here we go again”—fending off the annual bombardment from
advertisers and the temptation to measure Christmas in terms of
presents. It’s a monthlong struggle to get all of our holiday work done
and somehow keep Christ in Christmas, too.
Many of us look back to a simpler Christmas in the “good old
days,” a mythical time when the holiday came wrapped in a stocking
full of chocolates and maybe an orange. Well, let’s look back a little
farther and stand where we can get some perspective on the matter.
For one thing, when you look at the liturgical calendar, you’ll
notice that Christmas isn’t the Church’s major holiday. It never has
been. Church Fathers such as Augustine didn’t include a commemo-
ration of Christ’s birth in their lists of holidays at all. Early Christians
focused their attention on Easter, the holiest day in the Church’s
calendar, the solemnity of solemnities.

Easter: the queen of feasts

In fact, our pattern of activity each week still echoes the Easter
Triduum. That’s why every Friday has always been a day of penance
(it still is, by the way—the rule is either no meat or an equivalent
penance).
Saturday was originally a day to lie low and keep quiet, which is
why we have two-day weekends instead of laboring six days, as it says
in Genesis. Sunday is the “little Easter” commemorating the Resur-
rection in the splendid liturgies of the principal Mass of the week.
The early Church recalled this more explicitly in its weekly
liturgies, but in the old days Easter itself was surrounded by vigils,
processions, songs, presents, feasts, and parties for which everybody
8 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

bought new clothes.

Today we’ve shifted much of the fuss and festivities to Christmas,
and we pass over Easter almost entirely. But Easter still overshadows
the commemoration of the birth of Jesus—spiritually, theologically,
and liturgically—as the high holy day, the most solemn and joyous
holiday of all.

The development of Christmas celebrations

That’s undoubtedly why we didn’t get around to commemorating

the birth of Christ in the liturgy until about the late fourth century.
The earliest surviving record of a specific celebration of the Nativity is
a sermon by St. Optatus, bishop of Mileve in Africa, from about A.D.
383. Evidently, Optatus was the first to put a Feast of the Nativity into
his diocese’s calendar.
The idea caught on almost immediately, but the feast was cele-
brated on different days in different places any time from November
to March. It wasn’t set at December 25 for the whole Church until
about 650, and even then it wasn’t a major holiday. It wasn’t called
“Christmas” until about the year 1000. The Feast of the Nativity didn’t
get loaded down with all secular customs of Christmas—the caroling,
the banqueting, and the elaborate exchange of presents—until about
500 years later.
Christians in northern Africa, the Middle East, and the Medi-
terranean were still observing Christmas low-profile around the year
1500. But it was different in northern Europe. About that time, that
part of the world experienced a mini–Ice Age. Suddenly there was
snow in the winter, lots of it; people had to work all summer to store
up food for the weeks and months they’d be kept indoors. By the end
of December you’d probably be stringing the dried fruit into endless
garlands and singing incomprehensible songs anyway, holiday or no.
Certainly, having the neighbors in to sit around a blazing Yule
log wouldn’t cut into your workday. All of the extras that naturally
 ADVENT: THE SEASON OF FORGOTTEN PENITENCE 9

settled around Christmas—which comes just after the winter sol-

stice—were not so much a burden as a welcome excuse for some
social and physical activity. The parties back then were a well-earned
celebration of a whole year’s work harvested and gathered into barns.
Nowadays, of course, we wear ourselves out doing all of that stuff
in addition to our normal daily workload, which negates the whole
point of it. Simplifying things to a leisurely level would be a coura-
geous countercultural stand. But as our forebears in faith filled their
empty hours with Yuletide cheer, they did something else, too, in the
weeks before Christmas, something that can still put the holiday in
perspective: they observed Advent.

A season of anticipation

Advent is really a lot like Lent. Both are roughly monthlong

seasons of preparation for a joyful holiday. In fact, starting in about
the sixth century, Advent and Lent used the same liturgies, Mass for
Mass, in the Latin Rite. During both seasons, you would see the pur-
ple vestments of mourning, symbolism echoed today by the colored
candles of the Advent wreath.
In the reign of Innocent III (1198-1216), the vestments of Advent
were black. Long after that, pictures and statues were covered, the
organ was silenced, and flowers were banned from the churches, just
as during Lent. Even in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites, where
there was no special Advent liturgy, there was still a requirement to
fast during the season before the Nativity. It was designed to remind
us of the need to repent in preparation for a holy season.
In Protestant denominations, of course, Advent has largely faded
away. That’s probably why the secular observances of Christmas, as
they rushed in to fill the void, got out of hand. Advent fasting and
almsgiving used to keep people aware of the proper use of material
goods and of the need to offset other people’s poverty with the excess
from our own prosperity. If you take the penitential observances
10 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

away, the secular celebrations can seem somehow obligatory, some-

how the essence of Christmas.
Well, you wouldn’t get far asking people to give up Santa’s jolly
red suit in favor of sackcloth and ashes. But there’s one crucial dif-
ference between Lent and Advent: Christmas doesn’t have Passion
Week preceding it. The penitential observances of Advent always had
a festive character to them. The idea was to contain your excitement
before Christmas and to use that energy in preparing for Christ’s
coming.
So people took on these penances joyfully—something that only
a Christian could do. They’d pause in their celebrations to acknowl-
edge their sins and to clean house spiritually, overjoyed that Christ
came to us but aware of our unworthiness to receive him.
We still use Advent calendars and wreaths to measure out joyful
anticipation, but we can learn a lot from the old Advent practices that
we’ve forgotten. Kids probably begged Optatus himself for Christmas
presents, but for a month before that they would collect pennies for
the poor, going door to door with a little Christ-child doll in an Ad-
vent variation on trick-or-treat.
Families would have meager meals and give the unused food to
the needy. Parishes used to have penitential feasts after Mass during
Advent, with menus that were abundant but austere: bread and water,
maybe, or fish, but plenty of it.
People had a good time keeping Advent, although music and
dancing were forbidden then, just as during Lent. It was all part of a
“discipline of joy” that is still an important part of our heritage today.
Listen to the Mass after the Lord’s Prayer: “In your mercy keep us free
from sin . . . as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior,
Jesus Christ.” That’s Advent, right there.
Maybe we can still recapture this uniquely Christian attitude of
joyful penance. During these Advent weeks bring out that Lenten
alms box and add coins to it before a meatless Friday dinner. Sing an
Advent song as you do. Put the poor on your gift list: books and toys
 CHRISTMAS 1644 11

for the children, of course, but the whole family might save up for a
bigger gift—an overcoat, maybe, for somebody who couldn’t other-
wise afford it.
And pay more attention to Easter. It’s still our highest holy day.
And the weather’s usually nicer, too.

CHRISTMAS 1644
By Clayton F. Bower Jr.

In London, early on a Christmas morning, a family was busily pre-

paring a goose, plum pudding, chestnuts, and other delectable items
for the holiday’s feast.
Suddenly there were loud knocks at the door, which, when
opened, did not reveal faces of well-wishers or visiting relatives. What
were seen were the stern faces of Parliament’s troops, there to arrest
and fine the family for celebrating Christmas Day with a feast instead
of the mandated fast.
In 1644 the English Parliament, under Puritan control, declared
Christmas a day of fasting. The English people were not to rejoice and
celebrate but were to use Christmas as a day to ponder their sins and
the sins of their fathers. Troops were ordered to enforce Parliament’s
order, and they patrolled London’s streets and made the rounds of
houses.
In Scotland, the Calvinist descendants of John Knox had gone
a step further than the English Puritans by completely abolishing
Christmas as a public holiday.
This dour work by the Puritans and Calvinists would shadow
Christmas for some time in English-speaking countries, even after
their political power waned—and when it did wane, the Puritans
looked beyond England for another place to construct their theocra-
12 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

cy. They looked first to the Continent.

They migrated to Holland for a short while but were alarmed as
their children began to pick up the speech and customs of the Dutch.
It must have been particularly annoying when St. Nicholas processed
into town and gave children gifts; he arrived dressed as a Catholic
bishop.
The Puritans felt compelled to leave Holland, and they settled in
America, establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their sad and
lifeless Christmas Day was transplanted with them. They hoped their
children, sometimes referred to by their preachers as “imps of Satan,”
could be molded without the Old World’s distractions.
It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the last of the gloom
lifted from Christmas. Much credit is given to Charles Dickens. His
Christmas Carol and Pickwick Papers helped melt away the severity of
the Puritan Christmas. Dickens said, “It is good to be children some-
times, and never better than at Christmas when the mighty Founder
of Christianity was a child himself.”
Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert, a German, saw many
old Continental European Christmas customs introduced into Britain
through the royal family. They quickly trickled down into the rest of
the classes, and they went overseas too.
The influence of nineteenth-century immigrants from coun-
tries beyond Puritan and Calvinist control had a great effect as well.
Immigrants to the United States coming from Ireland, Germany, Italy,
and elsewhere brought their unsuppressed Christmas customs with
them. These blended with the slowly changing Anglo-Saxon customs
to form our typical American Christmas.
What was the motive for the earlier puritanical infestivity? It
will be found in Calvinism’s attitude toward (really, opposition to)
simple pleasures. Calvinism has an anti-incarnational streak within
itself. It has not gone unnoticed. British historian Thomas Babington
Macaulay observed, “The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it
gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”
 CHRISTMAS 1644 13

American writer H. L. Mencken wrote, “There is only one honest im-

pulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish
the man with a superior capacity for happiness.”
This lack of happiness, the discomfort at seeing others enjoying
themselves, still is found in some Protestant sects. The members offer
excuses so they won’t have to admit disliking plain old fun. They
brand Christmas a “pagan” celebration, saying it is evidence of the
Catholic Church’s contamination, decadence, and apostasy.
For many people Christmas is a shameful thing, as profound a
shame today as it was in the sixteenth century. A new member of a
sect once told how she had taken all the family’s Christmas lights,
bulbs, and other decorations and smashed them all, thereby symboli-
cally smashing Christmas and Catholicism.
The bishops of Rome in the fourth century adopted the date
of December 25 as the Feast of the Nativity. Persuaded by John
Chrysostom, the Eastern Church joined in, and the universal quality
of the celebration for the family of the Church was maintained until
the Reformation.
In the first few centuries, when pagan temples were knocked
down and replaced by Catholic basilicas, when pagan holidays days
were transformed into memorials to the martyrs, saints, and the Lord,
there was no misconception about what was taking place. It was an
absolute triumph of the Church over paganism. The winter solstice
was the astronomical event, written into God’s creation as well as the
calendar, used to commemorate Christ’s coming as “The Light of the
World.”
This was not going be a half-hearted holiday. Happiness can’t be
quantified or rationed. The birth of Christ was bound to be marked
with excess because of the very spontaneous nature of exuberance.
When the Ark of the Covenant comes home, King David dances
and jumps, leaping well outside the bounds of modesty (2 Sam. 12-
23). When the woman in Bethany runs up to Jesus, she exuberantly
breaks the alabaster jar and pours all the ointment onto him (Matt.
14 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

26:6-13). When the wedding guests at Cana drink the place dry, Jesus
provides them more wine—to their joy (John 2:1-10).
At Christmas the champagne is going to spill over the glass.
The stomach is going to ache with too much food. Feet are going to
be sore, and budgets will be pinched from too much shopping. We
should keep in mind Fulton Sheen’s notion about what distinguishes
the Puritan from the Catholic. He said the Puritan attitude is, “First
comes the feast, then comes the hangover.” The Catholic attitude is,
“First comes the fast, then comes the feast.”

A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTMAS STORY

By Rod Bennett
(Excerpted from The Apostasy That Wasn’t)

At their feet spread the great Egyptian desert, a shadowy ocean of

sand rolling southward into Africa. The woman, a pale redhead with
dark rings of sorrow under her eyes, had otherwise the look of ease
and city life about her. Her child seemed even more incongruous: a
scrawny, big-eyed boy, five, perhaps, six years old, with an ominous,
unending cough; a dark, mixed-race runt with a head of kinky yet
unmistakably Celtic red hair.
Most Roman women would have exposed this child at birth, or
aborted him early on, at the first signs of a difficult pregnancy. This
woman was different. She clung to her pathetic little offspring as if he
were a bag of gold, and even now she was taking terrible risks, break-
ing Caesar’s law, on his behalf. Other mothers were nearby, they stood
together with only the occasional whimper of grief, patiently waiting
for the gaunt, somber men who were coming to carry their sons away.
Presently, the riders themselves came into view, “the Children of
Israel,” as they had been derisively known by the city Christians, five
tall, bearded men between eighteen and thirty, deep voiced, dressed
 A DIFFERENT KIND OF CHRISTMAS STORY 15

in skins, courtly and old-fashioned in their speech.

As the brothers sidled up to the group and began to dismount,
the woman looked down suddenly into the eyes of her son. This was
it, she realized—the final moment. All around her, she sensed the
other mothers coming to the same realization, felt them instinctively
tighten their grip on the boys.
The mother gathered her child into her arms. She kissed him
roughly on the side of the face and then thrust him into the hands of
the closest brother.
“His name is Athanasius,” she told him.
“We will take him to Antony,” the quiet, cow-eyed man an-
swered.
At last, with all eyes fixed in her direction, the woman turned
decisively away from her baby.
The brothers began to move quickly among them, gathering up
the children. There would be no time for extended farewells tonight;
Caesar’s spies might have followed this little exodus, might be watch-
ing even now.
The boys cried out for their mothers from the arms of their new
fathers as the caravan remounted, the men pronounced a final word
of benediction. Then it was all over.
Most of us today will have noticed the biblical parallels in this
story. The Holy Child of Bethlehem, for instance, was carried, three
centuries before, into this very same desert to escape the wrath of
another tyrannical potentate, King Herod the Great. As a matter of
fact, little Athanasius’s departure may actually have happened during
the Christmas season.
The year was 304 and Christmas was, as yet, a very minor feast
on the calendar, celebrated nowhere with any particular fervor and
not at all in many Christian communities.
In this story, however, the tyrant is the Roman emperor Diocle-
tian, and his late campaign to finally extirpate “the Christian supersti-
tion” once and for all is known to historians as the Great Persecution,
16 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

the final and fiercest of the ten general persecutions through which
the early Church had been destined to pass.
There are no angels or shepherds in this Christmas story; no one
here knows any Christmas carols to sing. The only music is the cry
of a lost, imperfect child receding slowly across the sands, swallowed
finally by the vastness of the desert.
Yet this pitiful runt, this redheaded stepchild, is fated, though
no one knows it yet, to save Christianity—to save, in fact, the world.
Had anyone thought to spare him his compromised quality of life, to
put him “out of his misery” after the fashion of the pagans, that world
never would have been saved.
If it is to be saved again, from the new and frightening rebirth of
paganism happening in our own time, we would do well to remember
Athanasius. His is a Christmas story worth telling again, even in the
twenty-first century, full of new life and hope.

KING HEROD THE GREAT AND THE
COMING OF THE MESSIAH
By Gary Michuta
(Excerpted from Hostile Witnesses)

Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.) appointed Herod procurator of Judaea

in 47 B.C. The Roman senate eventually appointed Herod to be the
“king of the Jews.” Herod’s control of Judaea wasn’t immediate; it took
years for him to secure it. Even after Herod’s kingship was secured,
the Jewish people never fully embraced him because of his Idumean
descent. In the Old Testament, God promised David that his descen-
dants would occupy the throne (2 Sam. 7:16-17; Ps. 89:4-5, 110:1-2,
132:11; Jer. 33:17); and since Herod was not Davidic, his kingship
wasn’t considered—for lack of a better word—kosher. Herod knew
this, and his insecurity shows up in a number of ways, such as his
attempt to ingratiate himself with the Jews through various building
 KING HEROD THE GREAT AND THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH 17

projects, especially the improvement and expansion of the Jerusalem

temple. He also was a ruthless murderer, executing anyone whom he
believed was a threat to his throne, including his own family mem-
bers—causing Caesar Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) to quip, “It’s better
to be Herod’s pig than son.”

The Coming of the Messiah

Testimony – Matthew 2:8

“He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for
the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go
and do him homage.”

Comment

When eastern Magi arrived in Jerusalem claiming they’d seen

a sign in the heavens that the king of the Jews had been born (Matt.
2:2), Herod immediately understood that they were referring to the
Messiah King (Matt. 2:3-4). After consulting Micah 5:1, which identi-
fied the Messiah’s birthplace as Bethlehem, he instructed the Magi to
find the child and to return with news of him so that he “may go and
do him homage.”
Whether or not Herod believed in the Messiah, he knew that the
people believed, and any such claimant in the people’s eyes would
have a more legitimate right to the throne than Herod himself.
Therefore, he feigned piety in order to identify the individual and kill
him. When this failed, Herod “ordered the massacre of all the boys in
Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16).
There are some today who claim that first-century Jews weren’t
expecting the imminent arrival of the Messiah. Herod’s actions speak
against this idea. When the Magi approached Herod claiming that
a king had been born, Herod did not question whether the Messiah
18 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

was to be born at that time. Instead, he inquired where he would be

born. This suggests that there was already (ca. 4 B.C.) a common
expectation of the Messiah’s imminent arrival. Herod’s actions point
to this expectation.

DID CHRISTIANS BORROW CHRISTMAS

AND EASTER FROM PAGANS?
By Steve Weidenkopf
(Excerpted from The Real Story of Catholic History)

Every spring just before Easter, major news organizations run stories
“debunking” one of the central tenets of the Christian faith—Jesus’
resurrection. Some take the form of an interview with a supposed
biblical expert who puts forth reasons to doubt the Gospels’ veracity
concerning the Resurrection; others breathlessly report some archae-
ological “discovery” that supposedly disproves the Resurrection, such
as an ossuary that contains Jesus’ bones. Whatever form these attacks
take, their objective is always the same: to sow doubt in the minds of
believers and confirm those in the minds of unbelievers.
One common myth about the Resurrection that even some
Christians wrongly embrace, at least in part, concerns its celebra-
tion at Easter. The theory holds that Easter was a pagan festival that
Christians “baptized.” This false narrative rests on the use of the word
“Easter” itself to designate the Solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection.
Skeptics note that the word is similar to the old English word Eostre,
which was supposedly the name of an ancient Teutonic goddess of
rising light and spring. For evidence of that, they point to a passage
in On the Reckoning of Time by the English saint Bede (672-735),
wherein he wrote, “April, Eosturmonath . . . has a name which is now
translated ‘Paschal month’ and which was once called after a goddess
of theirs named Eostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated in that
month.”i But although Bede mentions the goddess’s name, he is the
 DID CHRISTIANS BORROW CHRISTMAS 19

only author to have done so: there is no evidence outside of his work
for the existence of this goddess in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, or Germanic
mythology. And note that this entire argument works only with the
English language, since all other European languages derive their
word for Easter (such as the French Pâques) from the Greek pascha,
which in turn comes from the Hebrew word pesach, meaning Pass-
over.
When the history of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in
England and of the Saxons in continental Europe is considered, it
becomes clear there is no connection between Easter and pagan rites.
The Anglo-Saxons were converted in the late sixth century by St. Au-
gustine of Canterbury (d. 604), and Charlemagne (742-814) forcibly
brought the continental Saxons to the Faith in the eighth century.
These conversions occurred long after Christians first celebrated the
feast of Easter, which was firmly entrenched in the Church’s liturgical
calendar by the second century. The celebration of the Lord’s resur-
rection is also well documented in Scripture and in writings by and
about the early Christians. There was even an early Church crisis over
the dating of Easter, such that when the Eastern bishop St. Polycarp
(69-155) visited Rome in 154, he discussed the dating of Easter with
Pope St. Pius I (r. 140-155).ii Ultimately, the matter was settled at the
Council of Nicaea in 325.
But it is the celebration of Christmas, not Easter, that draws the
most comparisons to pagan rites, specifically ancient Roman celebra-
tions for the gods Saturn and Sol Invictus. These comparisons even
influenced the Puritans, who rejected the celebration of Christmas as
“Foolstide.”iii Puritan influence in the United States kept the nation
from recognizing Christmas as a federal holiday until 1870.
The feast of the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn, was a two-
day celebration of the end of the planting season and was known as
the Saturnalia. During the reign of Emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.-
A.D.14) the festival would begin on December 17, but that date was
later moved by Emperor Domitian (r. 51-96) to December 25. By the
20 THE CASE FOR CHRISTMAS

second century A.D. the celebration encompassed an entire week.

The cult of Sol Invictus (the “Unconquered Sun”) was introduced
in A.D. 274 by Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275), but it was not associat-
ed with an annual event. Although the date for the celebration of Sol
Invictus’s birthday was December 25, the only documentary source
for that date is a fourth-century illustrated calendar for a wealthy
Christian known as the Chronography of 354. It is easy for skeptics
to claim Christmas was borrowed from paganism, because Scripture
does not provide a date or even a time of year for Christ’s birth. But
the lack of calendar specificity in the Bible does not prove the Church
decided to “baptize” a pagan celebration with the Nativity of the Lord.
There is no early Christian or pagan writing that indicates December
25 was picked because of its correspondence with the Saturnalia or
the birthday of Sol Invictus. In fact, early Christians went out of their
way to demonstrate how different they were from the pagans. They
recognized that the Nativity merited a place in the liturgical calendar,
so by the third century Christmas was celebrated on December 25 in
the West and January 6 in the East.
The Real Story: The celebration of Easter is rooted in the res-
urrection of Jesus from the dead and was a central focus of the early
Christians. The Sabbath was changed by the early Jewish converts
from Saturday to Sunday in recognition of the Resurrection and was
not borrowed from pagan practice. Fixing the date for Christmas
on December 25 had more to do with Jewish tradition than pagan
custom. In Jewish tradition, March 25 was celebrated as the date of
Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, when the Lord promised to send a lamb
to complete the sacrifice. It also marked the first day of the Creation,
when God brought forth light. The early Christians easily recog-
nized the connection between Christ the Lamb and the Light, and
dated both his conception and death to March 25. If the Incarnation
occurred on March 25, then it follows that the Nativity occurred nine
months later on December 25. For the early Christians, “the deci-
sive factor was the connection of creation and cross, of creation and
 DID CHRISTIANS BORROW CHRISTMAS 21

Christ’s conception,” not the desire to baptize pagan celebrations.

i
Anthony McRoy, “Was Easter Borrowed from a Pagan Holiday?” Christianity Today,
April 2, 2009. Available at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/bytopic/holidays/
easterborrowedholiday.html. Accessed on June 9, 2014.
ii
The crisis revolved around the day of the week for the Easter celebration. The east-
ern half of the Church dated Easter from the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of
Nisan, regardless of the day of the week. The Roman Church celebrated Easter on the
first Sunday after the first full moon of the vernal equinox.
iii
Jeff Mirus, “Ghosts of Christmas Past”, Catholic Culture, accessed June 10, 2014,
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=911.

 26
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