The truth about Christmas
By John Quinlan, Journal staff writer | Posted: Sunday, December 16, 2007
Bruce David Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College gives readers an all-inclusive look at the holiday with his most recent book, "Christmas: A Candid History." (Staff photo by Jerry Mennenga)
A lot of people think we should get back to the pure, spiritual holiday that Christmas once was.
A new book shows just how naive those people are.
"The point is that it never was. It's the way we never were," says Bruce David Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College who gives us an all-inclusive look at the holiday with his most recent published book, "Christmas: A Candid History."
As he explains it, Christmas never was especially spiritual, springing as it did from jolly midwinter solstice celebrations that even preceded Christ's birth. And without the input of such un-Biblical fellows as Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Thomas Nast, Clement Moore and a popular commercial artist named Haddon Sundblom employed by The Coca-Cola Co., we wouldn't have much of a Christmas at all.
Forbes, an ordained minister who has developed a reputation for the study of popular culture, decided he should write the book because it puts together two of his special interests: popular culture and Christmas. His specialty at Morningside is the history of Christianity.
Several years ago, Morningside College asked him to do a presentation on the history of Christmas. So he did a Powerpoint project, then started finding out interesting tidbits, such as the fact that there was no Christmas observance for the first 300 years of Christianity. He shared his newfound knowledge with others over the years, and people told him he ought to write them down. So he did. The result is the "Christmas" book published this October by the University of California Press.
Now, as an acknowledged expert on Christmas, he gives talks, often at area churches, that keep him busy most weekends this time of year.
Today, we always talk about Christmas and Easter as the two big Christian holidays, but for early Christians, it was all about Christ's death and resurrection, Forbes said. Only belatedly did they start a birthday party. And when they did start it, they decided on Dec. 25, which was not the day that Christ was born, Forbes said, though that is something that often surprises his audiences.
"What they do is plot the celebration of Jesus' birth right in the middle of three Roman midwinter parties. There's a lot of hoopla going on," he said.
Tellingly, the first chapter of his book is titled "First There Was Winter."
"My interpretation of that is that winter is hard for human beings to survive," he said, mentioning the harsh conditions he and some students experienced one year in Alaska, with the temperatures at 50 below zero and only five hours of daylight. "So you could almost guess what human beings would do to try to get through winter. What they'd do is plan a big blowout midwinter party, and the features of it are all predictable."
Those features include a celebration when the days get shorter, as at winter solstice; a festival of lights to push back the darkness; evergreens as a sign of life in the midst of death; and maybe the giving of gifts. And you would feast, drink, party and dance, he said.
"So when we say it has pagan roots, it's not necessarily there is this other rival religion and now they borrowed from it," Forbes said. "This is an understandable human impulse of what human beings would do to survive winter. And so when Christianity moves into winter areas (like Europe), it shouldn't surprise me that Christianity buys into that, too.
"One of my lines is, 'If I lived in a culture where they didn't have a midwinter celebration, I'd make one up.'"
He also compares Christmas to the snowball -- the kind you roll, not throw.
"So as it rolls through Europe, it picks up things just like a snowball does," he said. "It picks up aspects of this midwinter celebration and that one, including their terminology and their practices."
The word "yule," for instance, which has become synonymous with Christmas, dates to a midwinter celebration in northern Europe that predated Christianity.
The fall and rise of Christmas
People who fear for the future of Christmas might be surprised to learn that it was once illegal in England and that New England. Puritans had it banned, Forbes said.
"First of all, they said early Christians didn't celebrate Christmas. And they were right," he said. "And the second thing is,
(the Puritans decreed) this has been an excuse for way too much partying."
In England, Parliament actually passed legislation saying Christmas was a day of penance and not a feast day. "They would send town criers around on Christmas Eve, saying 'No Christmas! No Christmas!' And they would order businesses that they had to be open on Christmas Day. That kind of thing," he said.
The ban, however, never really took hold. It was too divisive. Too many people wanted their Christmas.
"There were virtually riots about this," he said. "If we talk about culture wars now, that was a culture war back when the Puritans tried to suppress one thing and people wanted the other."
Officially, however, Christmas was suppressed in England and the U.S. for about 150 years. Though in the U.S., he noted, the influx of so many immigrants from non-English European countries kept the holiday traditions alive, if not legally.
Then it came "roaring back" in the middle 1800s in England, about the time the Puritan Revolution died, Forbes said.
"It's oversimplified, but you could probably say it's primarily due to the influence of Charles Dickens and 'A Christmas Carol,'" he said. "When he writes that novel, he's not reflecting the way Christmas was at that time. He's helping recreate, advocate the return of, Christmas. And it's very popular and very successful."
Other prominent people get into the act, including some popular English monarchs from a distinctly pro-Christmas German lineage, and Christmas is OK again. They even bring over a Christmas tree from Germany, he noted.
"I'd say Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Dickens together caused Christmas to revive again after being suppressed for 150 years," he said.
And while many Americans continued to celebrate Christmas during that time, it wasn't the holiday we know today. Forbes discovered that Congress met on Christmas Day up until the 1850s and that some New England schools were open that day until the 1870s.
Basically, though, when Victorian Christmas hit England, it made the same waves in the United States.
At the same time, Christmas also became the commercialized holiday that it remains to this day. "And the modern Christmas is especially a cultural thing, which might or might not be religious," Forbes said. "The result today is that we kind of have two Christmases. We have a Christian Christmas. We have a cultural Christmas. A lot of people do both. Some people do only one."
So from the very beginning, Christmas has been a mixture of a boisterous winter holiday and something with spiritual meaning, Forbes said. And Christians from the moment the holiday was started have always struggled with the question: How do you balance this?
"And if people struggle with that now, it's not new," he said. "It's not just something that happened, that began in the last 50 years. It's always been a struggle."
More Christmas nuggets:
-- Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas" turned Old St. Nick into a jolly gift giver, creating this Christmas tradition. The story also gave the world Santa's reindeer.
-- Moore's Santa was originally an elf. Cartoonist Thomas Nast, who invented the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey, turned Santa into a much bigger guy.
-- Thomas Nast is also primarily responsible for Santa's elf-ridden workshop at the North Pole.
-- Santa's red suit and modern look come courtesy of artist Haddon Sundblom and the illustrations for magazines and billboards that he did for Coca-Cola from 1931 to 1964.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.
-- The first Christmas card was produced in England by John Calcott Horsley and commissioned by Henry Cole in 1843.
-- In the West, the first written record we have that associates the birth of Jesus with Dec. 25 is found in a Roman document called the Philocalian calendar, also known as the Chronograph of 354.
-- "Christmas: A Candid History" is available at Barnes & Noble, Book People, Morningside College and various Web sites, such as Amazon.com.
A new book shows just how naive those people are.
"The point is that it never was. It's the way we never were," says Bruce David Forbes, a professor of religious studies at Morningside College who gives us an all-inclusive look at the holiday with his most recent published book, "Christmas: A Candid History."
As he explains it, Christmas never was especially spiritual, springing as it did from jolly midwinter solstice celebrations that even preceded Christ's birth. And without the input of such un-Biblical fellows as Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Thomas Nast, Clement Moore and a popular commercial artist named Haddon Sundblom employed by The Coca-Cola Co., we wouldn't have much of a Christmas at all.
Forbes, an ordained minister who has developed a reputation for the study of popular culture, decided he should write the book because it puts together two of his special interests: popular culture and Christmas. His specialty at Morningside is the history of Christianity.
Several years ago, Morningside College asked him to do a presentation on the history of Christmas. So he did a Powerpoint project, then started finding out interesting tidbits, such as the fact that there was no Christmas observance for the first 300 years of Christianity. He shared his newfound knowledge with others over the years, and people told him he ought to write them down. So he did. The result is the "Christmas" book published this October by the University of California Press.
Now, as an acknowledged expert on Christmas, he gives talks, often at area churches, that keep him busy most weekends this time of year.
Today, we always talk about Christmas and Easter as the two big Christian holidays, but for early Christians, it was all about Christ's death and resurrection, Forbes said. Only belatedly did they start a birthday party. And when they did start it, they decided on Dec. 25, which was not the day that Christ was born, Forbes said, though that is something that often surprises his audiences.
"What they do is plot the celebration of Jesus' birth right in the middle of three Roman midwinter parties. There's a lot of hoopla going on," he said.
Tellingly, the first chapter of his book is titled "First There Was Winter."
"My interpretation of that is that winter is hard for human beings to survive," he said, mentioning the harsh conditions he and some students experienced one year in Alaska, with the temperatures at 50 below zero and only five hours of daylight. "So you could almost guess what human beings would do to try to get through winter. What they'd do is plan a big blowout midwinter party, and the features of it are all predictable."
Those features include a celebration when the days get shorter, as at winter solstice; a festival of lights to push back the darkness; evergreens as a sign of life in the midst of death; and maybe the giving of gifts. And you would feast, drink, party and dance, he said.
"So when we say it has pagan roots, it's not necessarily there is this other rival religion and now they borrowed from it," Forbes said. "This is an understandable human impulse of what human beings would do to survive winter. And so when Christianity moves into winter areas (like Europe), it shouldn't surprise me that Christianity buys into that, too.
"One of my lines is, 'If I lived in a culture where they didn't have a midwinter celebration, I'd make one up.'"
He also compares Christmas to the snowball -- the kind you roll, not throw.
"So as it rolls through Europe, it picks up things just like a snowball does," he said. "It picks up aspects of this midwinter celebration and that one, including their terminology and their practices."
The word "yule," for instance, which has become synonymous with Christmas, dates to a midwinter celebration in northern Europe that predated Christianity.
The fall and rise of Christmas
People who fear for the future of Christmas might be surprised to learn that it was once illegal in England and that New England. Puritans had it banned, Forbes said.
"First of all, they said early Christians didn't celebrate Christmas. And they were right," he said. "And the second thing is,
(the Puritans decreed) this has been an excuse for way too much partying."
In England, Parliament actually passed legislation saying Christmas was a day of penance and not a feast day. "They would send town criers around on Christmas Eve, saying 'No Christmas! No Christmas!' And they would order businesses that they had to be open on Christmas Day. That kind of thing," he said.
The ban, however, never really took hold. It was too divisive. Too many people wanted their Christmas.
"There were virtually riots about this," he said. "If we talk about culture wars now, that was a culture war back when the Puritans tried to suppress one thing and people wanted the other."
Officially, however, Christmas was suppressed in England and the U.S. for about 150 years. Though in the U.S., he noted, the influx of so many immigrants from non-English European countries kept the holiday traditions alive, if not legally.
Then it came "roaring back" in the middle 1800s in England, about the time the Puritan Revolution died, Forbes said.
"It's oversimplified, but you could probably say it's primarily due to the influence of Charles Dickens and 'A Christmas Carol,'" he said. "When he writes that novel, he's not reflecting the way Christmas was at that time. He's helping recreate, advocate the return of, Christmas. And it's very popular and very successful."
Other prominent people get into the act, including some popular English monarchs from a distinctly pro-Christmas German lineage, and Christmas is OK again. They even bring over a Christmas tree from Germany, he noted.
"I'd say Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Dickens together caused Christmas to revive again after being suppressed for 150 years," he said.
And while many Americans continued to celebrate Christmas during that time, it wasn't the holiday we know today. Forbes discovered that Congress met on Christmas Day up until the 1850s and that some New England schools were open that day until the 1870s.
Basically, though, when Victorian Christmas hit England, it made the same waves in the United States.
At the same time, Christmas also became the commercialized holiday that it remains to this day. "And the modern Christmas is especially a cultural thing, which might or might not be religious," Forbes said. "The result today is that we kind of have two Christmases. We have a Christian Christmas. We have a cultural Christmas. A lot of people do both. Some people do only one."
So from the very beginning, Christmas has been a mixture of a boisterous winter holiday and something with spiritual meaning, Forbes said. And Christians from the moment the holiday was started have always struggled with the question: How do you balance this?
"And if people struggle with that now, it's not new," he said. "It's not just something that happened, that began in the last 50 years. It's always been a struggle."
More Christmas nuggets:
-- Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas" turned Old St. Nick into a jolly gift giver, creating this Christmas tradition. The story also gave the world Santa's reindeer.
-- Moore's Santa was originally an elf. Cartoonist Thomas Nast, who invented the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey, turned Santa into a much bigger guy.
-- Thomas Nast is also primarily responsible for Santa's elf-ridden workshop at the North Pole.
-- Santa's red suit and modern look come courtesy of artist Haddon Sundblom and the illustrations for magazines and billboards that he did for Coca-Cola from 1931 to 1964.
-- President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the date of Thanksgiving in order to lengthen the Christmas shopping season.
-- The first Christmas card was produced in England by John Calcott Horsley and commissioned by Henry Cole in 1843.
-- In the West, the first written record we have that associates the birth of Jesus with Dec. 25 is found in a Roman document called the Philocalian calendar, also known as the Chronograph of 354.
-- "Christmas: A Candid History" is available at Barnes & Noble, Book People, Morningside College and various Web sites, such as Amazon.com.
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Denny McGinnis wrote on Dec 16, 2007 9:05 AM: