Our urge to mark midwinter and watch the days grow longer precedes Christianity by thousands of years, says science professor Alice Roberts
I love Christmas. At this very special time of year, when the sun appears only fleetingly to those of us living in the northern hemisphere, I feel a deep connection with ancient ancestors. I like to go for wintry walks, on crisp days in pale winter sunshine, finding a Neolithic monument or an iron age hillfort to explore with my children. It also feels right to hunker down, to be with friends and family, to celebrate friendship with the exchange of gifts, and to give to good causes. I love creating cosiness at home – a bit of Danish hygge – with candles and firelight, holly and pine cones. It’s all “good for the soul”.
Occasionally, friends who know I’m a humanist – that I don’t believe in any sort of gods, or indeed an immortal soul – have questioned why I would celebrate Christmas. But while Christians may choose to commemorate the birth of Jesus on 25 December, I don’t see any reason why others shouldn’t enjoy a midwinter ritual whose roots go back much further than the origins of Christianity.
In the late third century AD, the Roman emperor Aurelian established an official religion, based on a popular sun cult, to help bond the empire together. Priests of Sol were elevated to membership of the senatorial elite – rather like bishops gaining automatic seats in the House of Lords today. In the fourth century, the emperor Constantine was still stamping the solar deity on his coins, as well as declaring dies Solis, Sunday, an official day of rest. But the sun–god just didn’t seem to have the power to prevent the Roman empire from falling apart.
Meanwhile, a fairly obscure Jewish apocalyptic cult from Roman Palestine had grown, over three centuries, to become part of the fabric of Roman towns and cities. Constantine seems to have had a change of heart, or at least of policy. Perhaps this relatively new–fangled religion could help give the empire the common focus and identity it needed. In AD313, Constantine decriminalised various cults, including Christianity. Twelve years later, he convened the Council of Nicaea – a gathering of Christian bishops from across the empire – in what is now Turkey. He processed through the assembly, resplendent in purple robes decorated with gold and precious gems. Christianity had gained an imperial seal of approval. Just before Constantine died, he was baptised. After his death in AD337, coins were minted, not with Jupiter or the sun–god, but with the hand of a Christian god reaching down towards the deceased emperor.
By the end of the fourth century, Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire. And the early church had selected four “official” gospels – about the life of Jesus – for inclusion in the New Testament. Only two – Luke and Matthew – describe, with some contradictions, the birth of Jesus. The historian Ronald Hutton describes how the Jesus of those two gospels enters the world as an archetypal hero, fulfilling Hebrew prophecy. In Luke, shepherds go to find Jesus. In Matthew, an unspecified number of wise men, sometimes portrayed as kings, arrive. Nativity plays usually throw all the elements together, with kings and shepherds beating a path to the stable.
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