Christmas. As Andy Williams sang, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Approximately 85 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, and even those who don’t are still surrounded by the holiday spirit. Whether you celebrate or not, here are five fun facts about the holiday that may surprise you:
Happy Birthday... right?
Traditionally, Christmas is celebrated as the birth of Jesus Christ, a major figure in Christianity. However, it is unlikely that Jesus’s birthday was actually on December 25th. For starters, the Bible never specifies a month or date. Many scholarly interpretations place his date of birth slightly earlier in the year - late September, to be exact - based on some key details provided in the New Testament. For one, the mention of shepherds in their fields during the birth indicates that the birth was not during the winter season. That, combined with the information that Mary and Joseph were traveling to take part in a census - which usually occurred in September or October - allowed scholars to hypothesize an early Autumn birth. Around the fourth century, the Church designated December 25th as Christ’s birthday in an attempt to distract from and interfere with the Pagan celebration of the winter solstice, resulting in the eventual worldwide celebration of Christmas, first by Christians and then spreading to non-religious celebration.
Santa Claus, Saint Nick, and Father Christmas. Three Separate People?
Is Santa Claus the same person as St. Nick? And what about Father Christmas? You may have heard all three names used interchangeably or may know one name as one person and another name as another person. To identify their differences, we first have to look into the past to understand how the myths have evolved. In the fourth century, St. Nicholas was a Turkish bishop who gave money to the poor throughout his life. One of his methods of helping people was said to be secretly leaving money in people’s stockings overnight. After his death on December 6 and posthumous declaration of sainthood, December 6 was declared St. Nicholas Day. In the spirit of Nicholas’ donations through stockings, many cultures celebrated the day by encouraging their kids to leave stockings out to be filled by “St. Nick” with gifts - typically food items including fruit, nuts, and candy.
Then, in the 1500s, Europeans decided to keep the gifting tradition while shifting away from St. Nicholas, replacing him instead with Father Christmas. Associated with holiday merrymaking and drunkenness, Father Christmas first appeared in 15th-century writings. Similar to Europe, St. Nicholas morphed into someone new in the United States, taking the form of not Father Christmas, but Kris Kringle - a name that emerged from the German "Kristkindl" meaning "Christ Child.” With these changes in name in America and Europe, the gifting tradition began to occur on Christmas, not the original holiday’s date of December 6th. The final evolution came when Dutch immigrants to the US brought their stories of St. Nicholas and the name they called him: Sinterklaas. This Dutch name was eventually Americanized into its now iconic and instantly recognizable form: Santa Claus.
By the 1900s, all the Christmas-related figures, from Father Christmas to Kris Kringle, were unified in much of the Western world under the label Santa Claus, typically depicted as white-bearded, red-cheeked, and round-bellied. Saint Nicholas, though, is still sometimes celebrated as his own figure in different European countries, with stockings being set out on December 6th like tradition. In other places, though, St. Nick is just another form of Santa Claus. While it is true that the many figures of Christmas are not so different from each other and are often used as different names for the same person, it is important to remember that most of them originate from the good deeds of a real man, showing that the true Christmas spirit has always been rooted in giving to those in need.
A Not-So-Christmas Carol
This one is short, but the classic Christmas carol “Jingle Bells” was not written for Christmas! The original song was written by American composer James Lord Pierpont in the 1850s to celebrate Thanksgiving. In Medford, Massachusetts, the sleigh races that are the subject of the song - whose original title was “One Horse Open Sleigh” - were held around Thanksgiving annually. However, over time, the song lost its original context and gradually became associated with Christmas.
Have A Happy Xmas!
The term “Xmas” as an abbreviation for Christmas may seem relatively modern. After all, it looks like it is just a shortened version someone might type over text instead of the whole word. Some also claim that “Xmas” is sacrilegious by removing the “Christ” from Christmas and therefore taking religion out of the holiday. However, the abbreviation has been around much longer than one might guess. In Greek, the word "Christ" is written as "Χριστός", with the first letter being the Greek letter “X” or chi (pronounced k-eye). Chi is also written as the letter X in the Roman alphabet, meaning that the “X” part of “Xmas” is just a shortening of the word “Christ.” While it is not known when the abbreviation first appeared, the accepted guess is somewhere between the 13th and 16th centuries.
The Thirteen Colonies... of Christmas?
Christmas in early colonial America, as to be expected, was different in many ways from Christmas today. Many Anglican communities like Williamsburg, Virginia celebrated the holiday, while many groups like the Scots-Irish, Presbyterian, Quakers, and Puritans did not. Some even saw Christmas as an un-Biblical excuse for laziness and disorder. In fact, the Massachusetts General Court made it a criminal offense to celebrate Christmas in 1659.
Those communities that did celebrate Christmas celebrated it as a whole season and not just a day. Virginia Anglicans celebrated from just before Christmas until Twelfth Night, on the evening of January 5. Some even extended the season into February. Unlike the now-traditional practice of Christmas at home with the family, the holiday was a major social event in many communities. Dancing, food, music, and games drew households together. Where snow wasn’t expected, people planned trips for Christmastime, and it was also a popular time of year for weddings.
Unlike the modern day, the holiday wasn’t very much fun for children. Some wealthy eighteenth-century children received gifts, such as books or candy. But most accounts of early Christmas celebrations don’t mention children. Many of the most widely embraced Christmas traditions—gambling, excessive drinking, shooting guns, fox hunting—were not very child-friendly. Children might be allowed to participate in some adult activities, like dancing and going to church, but they had to wait until the nineteenth century for Christmas celebrations to become oriented around them.
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