Christmas is intrinsically tied to Hollywood. American culture reigns supreme worldwide because everyone watches American movies, and Americans love Christmas.
They decorate giant trees, litter their houses with twinkling lights, and open gifts on Christmas morning. They share lavish feasts, give to the needy, and travel long distances to enjoy the final week of December with friends and family.
Admittedly, those warm and joyous sentiments have dulled in recent years, because modern Christmas movies are cynical. People lose sleep over all the shopping they have to do, the parties they have to organize, and the people they will inevitably host.
As such, rather than preaching about the spirit of Christmas, many screenwriters and directors use their films to question whether Christmas is worth the stress. You also have a new crop of storytellers who keep trying to reinvent our understanding of the holiday.
They routinely argue that Christmas has its roots in paganism, and that ancient Christians either stole the holiday outright or took inspiration from pagan festivals. In that regard, we should think twice about putting up Christmas trees, lest we unknowingly participate in the worship of ancient gods.
Those claims are not restricted to Christmas films. These days, you hear them all year long in every movie or TV show in which someone dares to mention Christmas. They inevitably receive a brief lecture from a side character who is determined to educate viewers about the origins of Christmas.
If you enjoy Christmas, allow me to put your mind at ease. All those claims are baseless myths. Secular scholars have repeatedly investigated that topic. They always reach the same conclusion.
Christmas did not originate from Yuletide, Saturnalia, or any of the dozens of pagan celebrations that some people routinely present as possible blueprints for Christmas. Additionally, you should ignore people who definitively tell you that Christians placed Christmas on December 25 to replace pre-existing pagan festivals.
While those claims sound rational, they were also investigated, and you won’t find any conclusive evidence justifying them. In fact, the available evidence shows that early Christians placed the birth of Jesus on December 25 around the same time or before the Romans started celebrating Sol Invictus on that same date.
Many people have spent decades arguing that Sol Invictus festivals inspired Christmas when, more than likely, Christmas came before. Why did early Christians select December 25? Put simply, for reasons I don’t fully understand, they identified March 25 as the day the angel Gabriel visited Mary to announce her pregnancy.
Then they added 9 months to that date, bringing them to December 25. It is also worth noting that December 25 was the winter solstice in the Roman Empire (the shortest day and longest night of a conventional year).
It signified rebirth, a shift from the darkness to the light. You can see why Christians would find that period so appealing. They were not the only ones. Various tribes and communities all over the world would organize feasts to celebrate the winter solstice, treating the moment as a point of renewal.
You can see where the confusion comes from. Someone from 2025 will look at history, notice all the tribes in a particular region celebrating during the Winter Solstice, and conclude that at least one of those groups merely copied and pasted a pre-existing tradition.
However, every competent historian you meet will tell you that those superficial similarities don’t mean nearly as much as you think. I should also point out that officially setting December 25 aside as the birth of Christ did not start Christmas.
Historical records show that Christians were celebrating the birth of Jesus even before they settled on a specific date. These moments of remembrance sprang up organically. They were not formally organized by a particular religious organization.
Identifying December 25th as the birth of Jesus merely streamlined matters, allowing all Christians to celebrate as one. Simply put, if you want to celebrate Christmas, feel free to do so. You are not participating in a pagan festival.
In fact, you have plenty of reasons to believe that Martin Luther, the renowned German priest, started the Christmas traditions we follow today. Don’t allow Hollywood to warp your understanding of the December holidays.
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