Only 15 Days Until . . .

If a handful of card manufacturers, book publishers and evangelical preachers are to be believed, Christmas has been celebrated on December 25 ever since Mary placed the Christ child in a manger. Unfortunately, historical documents, legend and law prove this widespread rumor unfounded. Books on the history of Christmas and on holiday traditions show that Christmas festivities have as firm a root in pagan ritual as Christian rite and that Massachusetts itself at one time played the grinch.

Early Christians condemned birthday celebrations as a repugnant heathen custom and kept no record of the anniversary of Christ's birth. As late as 245 A.D., the African church father and philosopher Origen wrote that it was sinful even to contemplate observing Jesus's birthday "as though he were a King Pharaoh."

By early in the fourth century, however, Christians were beginning to warm to the idea of a Christmas celebration. But because no one knew when Christ's birth really was, the religious celebrated variously and sporadically with the most popular dates being January 1, January 6, March 25, September 29 and December 25.

The final decision to fix the date was a direct response to an array of pagan harvest festivals, and ignored the philosophical arguments offered by some Christian theologians. Most sun-worshiping early religions--including the Persian, Roman Norse, Gothic, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon--staged lavish winter solstice celebrations to mark the annual rebirth of the sun.

Led by the Roman Saturnalia, these revels were explosions of license and merry-making, and featured drinking and debauchery, houses decked with laurels and evergreens, feasting, bonfires and an exchange of presents. Christian missionaries, finding that they could not get converts to refrain from the festive activities, pleaded with Rome to give the festivals a Christian excuse. In 352 A.D., Pope Julius I decreed Christmas December 25.

Although the Church intended only to retain pagan forms, it had a difficult time restraining the pagan spirit. Despite clerical protests and papal anathemas, Christmas in the early days preserved many of the worst orgies, debaucheries and indecencies of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia. The clergy itself was whirled into the vortex, instituting a Feast of Fools so that "the folly which is natural to and born with us might exhale . . . once a year."

Throughout the Middle Ages, Christmas continued to be a period of riot and debauchery, sometimes lasting several weeks. The French court in 1393 arranged a marriage between two court attendants as an excuse for prolonging the merriment. As described in William S. Walsh's Curiosities of Popular Customs, at the height of the ceremonies, the king and five nobles withdrew and, covering themselves with tar and hemp, re-emerged as dancing bears, tied together with a silken rope.

One wild and drunken noble, the Duke of Orleans, seized a torch and, shouting "Who are they? We'll soon find out!" lit the string of mummers. A young duchess, throwing her robe over the king, extinguished the sovereign, while one flaming courtier bit through the rope and dived "like a flaming comet" throught the window into a cistern in the court. The other four "whirled hither and thither through the horrified mob, struggling with one another, fighting with the flames, cursing, shrieking with pain," as Walsh describes it. Although the flames at last burnt out, none of the four maskers survived.

Spectacles like this undoubtedly led some people to question the purpose of the holiday, and, with the rise of Puritanism, Christmas's very existence was threatened. Regarding the good cheer as "pagan" and "Popish," England's Roundhead Parliament in 1643 abolished the observance of the day. The King protested and mobs attacked those who opened their shops. But Parliament adopted strong measures, and for the next 12 years Christmas as a general English holiday ceased.

The English Parliament was not the only grinch. In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 a penal offense; Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritans were given a five-shilling fine for "observing any such day as Christmas."

The law was repealed in 1681, but Puritan tradition effectively smothered Christmas festivities. Only in the mid-19th century, with the influx of German and Irish immigrants at New England ports, was the Puritan legacy undermined. In 1856, Massachusetts finally proclaimed Christmas a holiday.