A Christmas Tradition - Did You Know?

A Christmas Tradition - Did You Know?

As recently as 1843, there were no Christmas cards. Trees weren't cut or decorated. There were no turkey feasts, gift-giving, holiday business parties, or concerted efforts to help the less fortunate. In fact, Christmas as we now know it just did not exist. At this time, the church frowned on any type of Christmas celebrations because, any holiday spirit during the Winter Solstice smacked of paganism.

By October of 1843, Charles Dickens had become a desperate man. He had just experienced three disappointing publishing efforts in England, after a string of five very successful literary enterprises. Was his literary career over already? He was only thirty-one; but he was broke and any reputation as an author was quickly disappearing. He walked the streets of London night after night trying to think of some book that would again gain the public's interest and recover his writing career. As he walked, a story began to unfold in his imagination. With a burst of inspiration, he completed his new 30,000-word manuscript in just six weeks. It was the shortest book he had ever written, but his publisher was no longer interested in his work.

Dickens finally decided to pay for the book's publication himself. He was glad he did. Readers quickly embraced the tale even though it did not reflect anything about their current understanding of an English Christmas. By the end of that bleak year of 1843, Dickens' life had been transformed. And so had Christmas itself.

Dickens' new tale, A Christmas Carol, went into its third printing by the end of that year and his book's fictional depiction of Christmas played a major role in transforming a non-holiday into the most celebrated time of the year.

History of Christmas

Christmas was not observed as a holiday at all during the first few centuries of Christianity. Early Christians generally celebrated the deaths of important persons such as the martyrdom of Stephen. In fact, the Easter holiday was much more celebrated than Christ's birth during those early centuries of Christianity. The birth of Jesus was not widely celebrated until the 4th century. A.D. By the 5th century A.D., the church declared a feast for the birth of the Savior on December 25th, at least partially to compete with the pagan Saturnalia celebrations of the Winter Solstice, revered as the birth of the sun.

The tradition of a Christmas nativity presentation and Christmas carols began to be popular about the 13th century as a way of keeping the story of Jesus' birth alive in populations that could not read the Bible for themselves. But in English speaking countries, Christmas was just not a major holiday in the 17th century when Charles Dickens' 1843 book gave it a whole new meaning--one that people could get excited about.

Christmas in America

In America, the Dickens' Christmas Carol tale became popular along with the poem, The Night Before Christmas, which many believe was written in 1822 by an American dentist, Clement Clarke Moore. These two books completely transformed the Christmas holiday in America into a fun and jubilant celebration of the birth of Christ, with a heavy emphasis on helping the less fortunate. This new holiday quickly replaced the pagan secular events of the Winter Solstice that had previously been popular in English-speaking countries.



Modern pagan "separationists" in America, those who are hostile to Christianity, seem to want to unwind this clock and return our nation to the days of a totally pagan Winter Solstice festival. As people of God, let's not let that happen. Let's keep Christ in Christmas and keep this season a positive time of the year--focused on our Savior's birth and on helping others.