Every December the old question comes around again: is Christmas pagan? Some Christians are told that the Christmas tree is an idol, that December 25 belongs to a Roman sun god, and that faithful believers should have nothing to do with any of it. Other Christians hear the opposite message, that Christmas is a Christian holiday which the culture has stolen, and so we must put Christ back into Christmas. These two groups sound like they disagree, but they actually share the same assumption. They both assume that if Christmas has pagan roots, then something has gone badly wrong, and Christians must either fix the holiday or abandon it.

I want to suggest a different answer. Yes, Christmas is pagan. It is not that Christmas has recently become pagan, but that many of its customs were pagan long before anyone used them to honor the birth of Jesus. But this is not a reason for Christians to stay away from Christmas. It is one of the best reasons to celebrate it. Christmas is a living picture of what Jesus does with everything He touches. He does not throw it away. He redeems it. And when we see Christmas this way, the lights, the gifts, and the tree all become ways of proclaiming the “good tidings of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10).

What People Mean When They Say Christmas Is Pagan

When people say Christmas is pagan, they usually mean that much of what we do at Christmas did not come from the Bible. That is true. The Gospels tell us about angels, shepherds, a manger, and wise men from the east, but they say nothing about decorated trees, strings of lights, wreaths on the door, or a man in a red suit who brings presents. These customs came from somewhere, and most of them came from the cultures that surrounded the early church rather than from the church itself.

Across the ancient world, people marked the darkest part of the year. As the days grew shorter and the nights grew longer, many cultures held festivals around the winter solstice. They lit fires and candles to push back the darkness, sang songs, ate rich food, and gave gifts to one another. Greenery that stayed alive through the winter became a sign of life that would return. So when someone says Christmas has pagan roots, they are not making something up. They are describing what the historical record shows, and Christians gain nothing by pretending otherwise.

Saturnalia and the Winter Festivals of Light

The best-known of these winter festivals is the Roman Saturnalia. It honored Saturn, the god of agriculture, and it ran for several days in the second half of December. It was the most popular holiday of the Roman year. Courts and schools closed, business stopped, and the whole city gave itself to feasting. Romans visited one another’s homes, sang in the streets, lit candles, and exchanged small gifts. One of the strangest features of the festival was the reversal of roles, in which masters served meals to their slaves and everyone wore the soft felt cap that normally marked a freed slave.

Closely connected to this season was December 25 itself. By the fourth century, and probably earlier, Romans were celebrating that day as the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The logic is easy to see. After the solstice, the sun begins to climb again and the days begin to lengthen, and so the sun appears to win its battle against the night. Put Saturnalia and the birthday of the sun together, and you have a season full of lights, songs, gifts, feasting, and hope that the darkness will not last forever. Much of what we now think of as Christmas was already part of that season, long before it had anything to do with the birth of Jesus.

How Saturnalia Became Christmas

In the early fourth century, the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, and over the following generations the faith went from persecuted minority to favored religion of the empire. This created a practical problem. What should the church do with all the festivals that people loved? The church could have tried to cancel them, but that rarely works with a holiday people have celebrated their whole lives. So instead, Christians gave the old festivals new meaning. The earliest record we have of Christians celebrating the birth of Jesus on December 25 comes from a Roman calendar in AD 336.

Over time, the symbols of the winter festival were, in a sense, baptized. Lights that once celebrated the return of the sun came to celebrate the coming of the Son, who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Gifts that once marked a season of merriment came to remind us of the gift of God in Jesus. Evergreens that once spoke of life surviving the winter came to speak of eternal life. Historians still debate how deliberate all of this was, and some argue the date came from early Christian calculations rather than from Saturnalia. But either way, the church did not invent its Christmas customs out of nothing. It took what was already there and pointed it toward Jesus.

Was Jesus Born on December 25?

Probably not. The shepherds were living out in the fields with their flocks at night (Luke 2:8), which fits the warmer months better than the middle of winter. When we put that together with the timing of Zacharias’s priestly service (Luke 1:5, 8-9) and Elizabeth’s pregnancy (Luke 1:24-26, 36), I believe the evidence points to the early fall, around the Feast of Tabernacles. It is fitting that John describes the incarnation this way: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for “dwelt” is skēnoō, “to pitch a tent” or “to tabernacle.” I have written more about when Jesus was actually born, so I will not repeat it all here.

But if Jesus was born in the fall, then December 25 lands close to the time when He was conceived, near Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. Hanukkah is not one of the feasts God commanded in the Law of Moses, and yet Jesus went to the temple during the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22) and declared Himself to be the Light of the World. I believe this is very significant. If Jesus could fill a non-biblical holiday with His own meaning, then there is no reason He cannot do the same with a pagan one. I explore Jesus and Hanukkah in another post.

The Christmas Tree and Jeremiah 10

The most common argument against Christmas comes from Jeremiah 10. The prophet writes that “one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold” (Jer 10:3-4). Many sincere Christians read this and conclude that God condemns the Christmas tree. But read one more verse. These objects “cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves” (Jer 10:5). Jeremiah is not describing a living tree with lights on it. He is describing a craftsman who cuts down a tree, carves an idol from the wood, overlays it with silver and gold, and fastens it so it will not fall over.

The rest of the prophets describe the same process (Isa 40:19-20; 44:9-20; Hab 2:18-19). So the Christmas tree is not an idol unless someone worships it, and very few people bow down before their Christmas tree. Of course, anything can become an idol. The Apostle Paul writes of people “whose god is their belly” (Php 3:19), but we do not stop eating because some people worship food. The problem is not the object, but the heart. I once had a church member threaten to leave over the tree in our sanctuary, and I tell that story in Are Christmas trees idols?

Jesus Redeems People, and He Redeems Holidays Too

So why should Christians celebrate a holiday with pagan roots? Because redemption is what Jesus does. To redeem something is to buy it back, so that it comes under new ownership. Scripture says that “the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21), and that through Jesus, God is reconciling “all things to Himself … whether things on earth or things in heaven” (Col 1:20). If Jesus is redeeming all things, then He is redeeming culture too, including the stories, songs, and festivals people have created.

This is the same thing Jesus does with us. Paul lists the sins that once marked the believers in Corinth, and then he writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). None of us came to Jesus with a clean history. All of us have pagan roots. If Jesus can take a sinner and make him a child of God, then taking a winter festival and turning it into a celebration of His birth is a small thing by comparison. I have argued before that pagan holidays point to Christ, because the longings behind them are only fulfilled in Him.

If We Reject Everything with Pagan Roots

We should also be honest about where the objection leads. Christians gather for worship on Sunday, a day named for the sun. We meet in buildings shaped by older temple architecture, follow a calendar in which many of the months honor Roman gods, and sing some hymns set to tunes that were once sung in taverns. Paul himself, when he preached in Athens, began with an altar to an unknown god and said, “the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). If we reject everything with pagan roots, we will have to reject almost everything. I have shown elsewhere that the same logic would also keep us from using a calendar.

So Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?

Not all Christians have thought so. The Puritans in Massachusetts went so far as to outlaw Christmas from 1659 to 1681, and some Christians today still refuse to celebrate it. We should not look down on them. Paul says that “one person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind” (Rom 14:5). If a brother or sister cannot celebrate Christmas with a clear conscience, we can love them and respect their choice without making it the rule for everyone else.

But for most of us, the better way is not to retreat from Christmas, but to celebrate it on purpose. Put up the lights, and let them remind you that Jesus is the Light of the World and that He calls us “the light of the world” too (Matt 5:14). Give gifts, because God gave the greatest gift. Decorate the tree, and remember the tree on which Jesus gave His life. Feast, sing, and visit friends, because the reversal of roles that Saturnalia only played at for a few days is what Jesus actually did when the Lord of all became a servant. The pagan roots of Christmas do not take anything away from this. They only show how far redemption reaches.

Have Yourself a Redeemed Christmas

So is Christmas pagan? In its roots, yes, and it always will be. But that is not the end of the story, any more than our own pagan roots are the end of ours. Christmas is a pagan holiday that has been bought back by Jesus, and every year it gives us the chance to show our neighbors what a redeemed life looks like. We do not need to be afraid of Christmas, and we do not need to rescue it. We simply need to celebrate it as people who have been redeemed by the One it points to.

If you would like to go deeper, I cover all of this in more detail in my short book, Christmas Redemption: Why Christians Should Celebrate a Pagan Holiday. It looks more closely at the feasts of Israel and the date of Jesus’ birth, at Hanukkah, and at the symbols of Christmas, including the tree, the lights, the gifts, and even Santa Claus. It is a quick read, and it might make a good gift for the friend who keeps sending you articles about Saturnalia. Get Christmas Redemption on Amazon, and have yourself a merry Christmas.