As the Halloween decorations go up in the stores we know that soon the world's most recognizable holiday, along with the United States' most profitable, is coming soon. The Christmas holiday will be starting off with as much fanfare as commercialism can create. This is ironic to some because we are celebrating the "birth of baby Jesus". Before we start buying up the isles and filling the pews we should ask ourselves something. What is Christmas, why does it fall on December 25th, and the origins of the holiday itself?

Let's start off with the name. "It's all in the name" as we've heard throughout our lives, so let's see. Christmas is derived from two words, as we assume Christ and mass. Christ's mass, easy enough right. Christ, a word derived from the greek word "christos". Now to appreciate this word we have to look at another with the exact same meaning, the hebrew word "messias". Both of these words "messias" and "christos" mean one thing - "annointed". The second part of the word christmas is simple itself mas - derived from the word "masse", or mass. So we have the "annoited mass", or as we choose to use in our language, "The annoited one's mass". The person that we are celebrating, the "annoited one" is of course Jesus. Another word that we need to examine really quick. Jesus is a latin form of the greek word Iesous. Iesous is the greek form of another word in hebrew - Jeshua or if you like Joshua. Why are we concerned with all the greek and hebrew. Lest we forget, or most likely not been told, the man known as Jesus had a tremendous following which in turned was mostly Hebrew and (surprise) Greek! The transcribers of the bible would almost certainly use what was available or put in front of them, that was also mostly greek and hebrew. Being Roman's they of course translated to latin which in turn was put to english. Let us not delve into the world of how many mis-translations could have occured!

So we will conceed that christmas is the annoited one's mass and that the annoited one is Jesus, ergo...this is in fact the day we celebrate Jesus. So why do we celebrate this day on December 25th? If we celebrate this as the birth of Jesus, are we celebrating the actual date or a made up one? Most of us know that most likely December 25 is not the birthday of Jesus nor anywhere close to it. Study after study has tried to answer another question best not attempted here by me. So was this date randomly picked, why wasn't the real date used? Good questions, and first to deal with why the real date was not used. No one knows, or if they do they are not telling. The birthdate of the most famous man in history is unknown. The gospels that most of this history is derived have conflicting reports on the conditions of the family or the city he was born in, let alone the date. The gospels of Mark and John leave the subject alone all together and even browsing through other gospels of the Nag Hammadi we find no clues.

So let's try to find out why December 25 is used, and we can all point to one person Pope Julius I. A power struggle for the Holy See and the Roman empire after Constantine and the exiles of Bishop Athanasius, "Saint" Julius I took control of the Holy See. Needing to unite the religions and the people to keep the empire from falling apart he proclaimed that December 25th to be the set date of the birth of Jesus. This was not done by a lottery pick but by actually a quite ingenious plan. Most of Rome let alone the world was pagan and celebrated pagan holidays, and the Romans had a good one. "Dias Natalis Invicti Salis" or to us "the birthday of the unconquered sun" was a great celebration among the Romans. This was during the time of winter solstice or Saturnalia. Saturn, to the Romans, the god of agriculture. During Saturnalia the Romans allowed slaves the day off and everyone dressed the same and ate together. One could not tell the difference between slave or master and drinking, gambling, and over all debauchery was in full force. A party not many would want to end, and the church recognized this. The church accepted into its holiday many of the same traditions of Saturnalia to make an easier pill to swallow. Everyone still got time off, and the feasts of course were still in effect. Some of the notable traditions were that the Romans "decked the halls" with laurel and green trees. Candles and lamps were also put out during the celebration. Another tradition that is still be used in a way were the Mummers. The mummers were singers who dressed up and traveled from house to house entertaining the people. Anything sound familiar?

We cannot stop at the Romans though, we have a few more traditions that we are familiar with and may not know were they came from. The Europeans of course had many cultures and influences that would have been enfolded into the holiday with the spread of Christianity. In the north many of the pagans worshipped the sun-god Mithros. Once again during winter solstice these worshippers burned a yule log as a sacrifice to the sun-god. Yule, which is a nordic word meaning wheel, and representing the sun was not the only tradition we took. The mistletoe was considered a sacred object and kissing underneath one supposedly helped with fertility. These norse-folk also believed Hollyberries were food of the gods. The Germanics used trees as well in their celebrations and decorated them with food and gifts that would be "picked' from the tree and given as gifts. And let us not forget another important birthday from some pagans. December 25th is the birthday of the son of Isis, goddess of fertility. The use of all of the "suns/son's" can be debated about for years and endless cycles but we can at least track down some of our prominate traditions and their origins.

There are some things that we can state as almost proof. Christmas is not the birthday of Jesus, and the celebration known as christmas or Epiphany did not start out revolving around the one known to millions as "Lord and Savior". Another thing about this holiday season it always seems to end up with a overkill of the holiday. Even Roman's complained that the holiday had grown to seem to encompass the year, and getting away from the reason for the holiday. Trying to out-do each other in presents and partying seems one trait that no matter what god is celebrated, they cannot stop man's excessiveness.

Bibliography and resources:

1. The Open Bible-King James version. 1975
2. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia - wikipedia.com
3. Wheelock's Latin for Beginners: 5th College Edition.
4. The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 8
5. The Detective and the Toga. 2007 by Richard M. Heli
6. New Advent - newadvent.com
7. The Gospel of Thomas.1992 trans. by Harold Bloom
8. Webster's New World Dictionary 1989
9. Anthropology: 3rd Edition org. c 1948 by Hoebel
10. Holy Blood Holy Grail 1978 by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln