Is Christmas Pagan? What History Actually Shows

You've heard the claim. Maybe from a documentary. Maybe from a confident relative at dinner. Maybe from a well-meaning Christian who thinks celebrating Christmas is compromising with paganism.

"December 25 was stolen from a Roman sun god."
"Christmas trees are pagan idols."
"The whole thing is just repackaged Saturnalia."

These claims are everywhere. They're repeated with confidence. And they're more complicated than either side usually admits.

Let's look at what we actually know.

The December 25 Question

The most common claim is that Christians chose December 25 to co-opt the Roman festival of Sol Invictus — the "Unconquered Sun." The logic seems straightforward: pagans already celebrated on that day, so Christians hijacked it.

There's just one problem: the historical timeline doesn't support this.

What the Evidence Shows

Steven Hijmans, a scholar at the University of Alberta who has spent years researching Roman sun worship, puts it bluntly:¹

There is no evidence that December 25 was a festival of Sol Invictus before the mid-fourth century.

The first definite mention of a solar festival on December 25 comes from Emperor Julian's Hymn to King Helios — written in 362 AD.² By that point, Christians had already been celebrating Christmas on December 25 for decades.

The earliest reference we have to Christians observing December 25 as Christ's birth appears in the Chronograph of 354 — an ancient Roman calendar and almanac that compiled earlier records.³ The data in that document dates back to 336 AD. And the theological reasoning for the date appears even earlier.

The Calculation Hypothesis

Here's something most people don't know: early Christians had their own reason for December 25, and it had nothing to do with sun worship.

Some early Christians believed that great figures died on the same date they were conceived. They calculated Jesus' crucifixion as March 25 — the spring equinox in the Roman calendar. If Jesus was conceived on March 25, then nine months later would be... December 25.

This reasoning appears in Sextus Julius Africanus's Chronographiai, written before 221 AD⁴ — well before any evidence of Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25.

Does this prove December 25 is the actual date of Jesus' birth? No. We don't know when Jesus was born. But it does show that Christians had theological reasons for the date that didn't require borrowing from pagans.

Who Borrowed from Whom?

Here's where it gets interesting. Hijmans and other scholars have suggested that the influence might have gone the other direction — that Emperor Aurelian may have placed a solar festival on December 25 in 274 AD precisely because Christians were already treating that date as significant.⁵

By the third century, Christianity was growing rapidly. Temples were emptying. A strategic emperor might well have tried to compete.

We can't prove this definitively. But the confident claim that "Christians stole December 25 from pagans" rests on assumptions the evidence doesn't support.

What About Saturnalia?

Saturnalia is the other festival people mention. Roman, festive, gift-giving — surely Christmas came from that?

One problem: Saturnalia was celebrated on December 17, later extended through December 23.⁶ Not December 25.

The conflation of Saturnalia with Christmas involves mixing up two different Roman celebrations (Saturnalia and Sol Invictus), neither of which cleanly maps onto Christmas origins.

Christmas Trees

The claim here is that Christmas trees derive from pagan tree worship, and that Jeremiah 10 explicitly forbids them.

Let's take these one at a time.

The Historical Origins

The documented history of Christmas trees traces to medieval Germany, not ancient paganism:

St. Boniface (723 AD): The English missionary famously felled the "Thunder Oak" dedicated to Thor in Geismar.⁷ According to the account, he pointed to a small fir tree growing behind the fallen oak and said it would be a symbol of Christ — evergreen, pointing heavenward, shaped like a triangle representing the Trinity.

Paradise Plays (14th-15th century): Medieval mystery plays performed on Christmas Eve used "Paradise Trees" decorated with apples to represent the Garden of Eden.⁸ These plays told the story of the Fall and ended with the promise of a coming Savior. The decorated tree was explicitly Christian symbolism.

Martin Luther (16th century): Tradition holds that Luther was inspired by starlight shining through evergreen branches and added candles to recreate the effect on an indoor tree.⁹

Did pagan cultures revere trees? Absolutely. But there's no documented continuity from those practices to Christmas trees. By the time Christmas trees became widespread in the 16th century, European paganism had been extinct for centuries.

What About Jeremiah 10?

Jeremiah was writing to Israelites tempted to adopt the religious practices of surrounding nations — specifically, the manufacture and worship of carved idols. With that context, the passage reads:

They cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. — Jeremiah 10:3-4 (NIV)

Read in isolation, you might see a Christmas tree. But read the next verses:

Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. — Jeremiah 10:5 (NIV)

Jeremiah is describing idol manufacture — cutting a tree, carving it into a figure, overlaying it with precious metals, and worshiping it as a god. The following verses mock these idols for being unable to speak, walk, or do anything.

Applying this to a decorated evergreen tree requires ignoring the context. Jeremiah's audience wasn't thinking about Christmas trees (which wouldn't exist for another two millennia). They were thinking about carved wooden idols — a practice the prophets consistently condemned.

A Christmas tree isn't an idol unless you worship it. Intent matters.

The Bigger Question

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some early Christians did intentionally place Christmas on a date associated with sun worship. Would that make Christmas illegitimate?

Christians have always had to decide how to relate to surrounding culture. The options are roughly:

Receive what is good
Reject what is sinful
Redeem what can be repurposed for truth

Redeeming isn't the same as compromising. When missionaries translated the Bible into new languages, they used local words for "God" — words that had previously referred to pagan deities. The word wasn't the problem; the worship was.

Jesus himself celebrated Hanukkah (John 10:22-23) — a festival not commanded anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, established by the Maccabees in the second century BC. If Jesus could celebrate a non-commanded festival commemorating God's faithfulness, Christians celebrating the incarnation seems at least as justified.

It's worth noting that some Christian traditions — including certain Reformed churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others — choose not to celebrate Christmas at all, either due to concerns about pagan origins or because they prefer to limit observance to what Scripture explicitly commands. These are sincere convictions held by thoughtful people, and the historical evidence doesn't settle the question of whether Christians should celebrate — only whether the "stolen from pagans" narrative holds up.

What This Is Actually About

Christmas is the celebration of the incarnation — the Christian claim that God entered creation in the person of Jesus Christ. The date is secondary. What matters is whether the thing being celebrated is true.

If God became human, that's worth remembering — whether it happened in December, March, or September. The gift matters more than the wrapping paper.

The historical evidence suggests Christians didn't "steal" December 25 from pagans. But even if they had, the question would remain: is the incarnation true? That's the question worth wrestling with.

Questions to Consider

Does the historical origin of a practice determine its current meaning? Can practices be redeemed?
What would change for you if December 25 turned out to be theologically calculated rather than borrowed from paganism?
If Jesus celebrated festivals not commanded in Scripture, what does that suggest about Christian freedom regarding holidays?
The incarnation claims that God entered human history at a specific point in time. Whether or not we know the exact date, what does it mean to you that Christianity makes historical claims — not just moral teachings?

Continue Exploring

The origins of Christmas are just one historical question people ask about Christianity. Others include: Has the Bible been corrupted over time? What happened at the Council of Nicaea? Is there evidence Jesus existed outside the Bible?

Want to explore these questions? TheoGPT can help you investigate historical claims, trace the development of Christian practices, and examine the evidence for yourself — without pressure and without pat answers.

Start exploring →

Sources

1. Hijmans, Steven. "Sol Invictus, the Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas." Mouseion 47, no. 3 (2003): 377-398. View on Academia.edu

2. Julian the Apostate, Hymn to King Helios (362 AD). Julian's oration is the first definite attestation of a solar festival on December 25.

3. The Chronograph of 354 (also known as the Calendar of Filocalus) is a Roman illuminated manuscript produced for a wealthy Christian named Valentinus. It contains the earliest reference to December 25 as Christ's nativity.

4. Sextus Julius Africanus, Chronographiai (c. 221 AD). Africanus placed both the Annunciation and the Passion on March 25, making December 25 the calculated birth date. See also: Talley, Thomas J. The Origins of the Liturgical Year (1986).

5. Hijmans argues that Aurelian's establishment of Sol Invictus worship may have been influenced by Christianity's growing significance of December 25, rather than the reverse. See source 1.

6. Saturnalia dates are well-attested in Roman sources. The festival originally fell on December 17, with celebrations eventually extending through December 23 by the late Republic. See Encyclopedia Britannica: Saturnalia.

7. The account of St. Boniface and the Thunder Oak comes from Willibald's Vita Bonifatii (8th century). See Catholic Answers: St. Boniface and the Christmas Tree.

8. Paradise plays and their use of decorated trees are documented in medieval German sources. See Medievalists.net: Medieval Christmas Tree Origins.

9. The Martin Luther tradition, while popular, is not definitively documented in contemporary sources. See Encyclopedia Britannica: Christmas Tree.