20 things you didn’t know about Christmas

by Gunther Simmermacher · December 25, 2015

Did you know that Bethlehem has three official Christmases? Or why the traditional Christmas colours are green and red (and gold)? Gunther Simmermacher unpacks 20 facts about Christmas which you might not know – plus one you should know.

The colours of Christmas

The two colours that are usually associated with Christmas, green and red, have a Christian significance: Green represents new life and rebirth; red represents the blood the new-born Saviour will shed for our salvation. Sometimes a third colour is used: gold, representing light and the new Kingdom.

Church of the Nativity, Christmas

Little town of Bethlehem

In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Our Lord, there are three Christmas celebrations. Catholics and Protestants have their Christmas celebrations on December 24 and 25; the Orthodox Churches have theirs on January 6 and 7 (the calendar variance dates back to the introduction of the Gregorian calendar in the West); and the Armenians on January 18 and 19, since their Christmas is celebrated on the feast of the Epiphany, and their date adheres to the Julian calendar.

The location of Jesus’ birth, marked by a silver star in the crypt of Bethlehem’s church of the Nativity, was venerated by the earliest Christians. In the second century the Romans built pagan structures over the site, thereby signposting it for generations until the unbanning of Christianity. Construction for the first church of the Nativity began in 327. It was burnt down by the Samaritans in 529, and rebuilt in 565. That is the present church of the Nativity.

The rebuilt church of the Nativity was spared destruction during the Persian sack of the Holy Land in 614. The invaders’ general, Shahrbaraz, spotted mosaics of the Three Wise Men in Persian dress on the church’s walls. Touched by what he understood to be a show of respect for his people, Shahrbaraz spared the church.

Christmas and the pagans

The very early Christians did not attach much importance to the feast of the Nativity. Some sources suggest that the feast had no specific date, but rather was a ‘floating’ feast. The principal feast was Easter (as the Church still maintains today). The celebration of the feast of the Nativity is first mentioned in a surviving document from 336, in the Roman Deposito Martyrum – before Pope Julius set the feast’s date officially on December 25.

Received wisdom claims that the Church set the date of Jesus’ birth on December 25 to hijack the pagan celebrations of Saturnalia and the Sol Invictus. The methods of celebrating Christmas might have borrowed from pagan celebrations, but the date most likely was based on the calculation of Jerusalem scholar Sextus Julius Africanus in 221AD, half a century before the Romans had the only celebration of the Sol Invictus recorded on a December 25. Sextus Julius Africanus calculated that the Annunciation could be dated to March 25. He added nine months of pregnancy to arrive at a December 25 birth.

St Francis and Christmas

St Francis of Assisi invented the Nativity Scene in 1223 in a forest at Greccio, in Italy’s Lazio region. He used actual people for that, including a baby. His contemporary St Bonaventure later claimed that the straw on which the baby slept “miraculously cured all diseases of cattle, and many other pestilences”.

Around the same time as he invented the Nativity Scene, St Francis also wrote what is considered the very first Christmas carol, Psalmus in Nativitate, a hymn that could be sung outside the liturgy. The idea caught on quickly and spread throughout Europe. It was another Franciscan, Bl Jacopone of Todi (1230-1306), who first produced Christmas hymns in the vernacular.

Singing at Christmas

The first Anglican Christmas carol was “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks”. Before its appearance in 1700, only the Psalms of David were sung in Anglican churches. Two melodies are used for it today: that of the 1553 song “Winchester Old” by Christopher Tye is commonly used in Britain and its former colonies, and an aria from Handel’s 1728 opera Siroe is generally used in North America.

The Christmas song “Do You Hear What I Hear” was written in October 1962 by the French songwriter Noel Regney and his songwriter wife Gloria Shayne Baker as a plea for peace during the widespread fears of a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis that month.

The Christmas song “Jingle Bells” was originally written in 1857 by James Lord Pierpont as “One Horse Open Sleigh” for the US holiday of Thanksgiving. Soon it was adapted for Christmas. “Jingle Bells” became the first song to be broadcast from space when astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra played it on a harmonica and sleigh bells on December 16, 1965.

St Nicholas and Santa

It is well known that Santa Claus is based on St Nicholas, a bishop in what is now Turkey. Before he became a jolly fat man, he was an austere authority figure who would reward children who were good and punish those who weren�t. The image of Santa on a flying sleigh might derive from a Norse legend of the god Odin riding Sleipnir, an eight-legged flying horse. Like St Nicholas, Odin rewarded good and punished naughty children.

Every year some 20000 Santas are trained in the United States for deployment in malls, department stores and other public places. Their training includes keeping a jolly demeanour even when pressured by a badly behaving public. They are also instructed not to eat garlic, onions or beans before going on Santa duty. In London’s Oxford Street, 20 budding Santas are trained each year in matters such as the latest TV games, music and toys so that they can converse with the children on their laps.

The war on Christmas

In 1649 the British leader Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritans outlawed Christmas as a “decadent” (and Catholic) feast. The ban stayed in place until 1660. A year before that, the Puritans in America also banned it, until 1681. Those caught celebrating Christmas were fined five shillings and stood to be accused of being enemies of Christianity. It became a recognised holiday in the US?only in 1870. So the “War on Christmas” goes back 350 years and was initially waged by Christians.

Christmas traditions

Most people know that the Christmas tree came to England and the rest of the Anglophone world from Germany in the 19th century. There it had been a tradition for a long time, possibly going back to the 8th century, when St Boniface was converting the Germanic tribes. The oldest known reference to the Christmas tree in print dates to 1531. One tradition claims that Martin Luther was the first person to decorate a Christmas tree.

On Christmas trees in Poland and Ukraine one might find silver and golden spiders or spider webs among the decorations. This is based on a legend which claims that a spider wove a blanket for baby Jesus.

In Bolivia, people take roosters to midnight Mass, in the belief that a rooster was the first animal to announce the birth of Christ. The Mass is therefore known as the Misa del Gallo (Mass of the Rooster).

Christmas and the arts

By far the most successful Christmas movie at the Oscars is Miracle on 34th Street, from 1947 (pictured below). In the film, Santa Claus must prove in court that he is real. It won Oscars for Supporting Actor (Edmund Gwenn, as Santa Claus), Original Story and Best Screenplay, and was nominated for Best Movie (losing to Gentleman’s Agreement). The female lead, the doubting events coordinator and mother, was played by the Catholic actress Maureen O’Hara, who died in October this year.

Author Harper Lee was able to finish her classic 1960 book To Kill A Mockingbird only because her friends collected funds that allowed her to take a year off to complete her manuscript; the money was presented to her as a Christmas gift. The film of the book, with Catholic actor Gregory Peck in the lead role, was released in the US on Christmas Day 1962.

From 1963 to 1969, The Beatles produced special Christmas records which were available only to members of official Beatles fan clubs on flexi-disc. They consisted mostly of spoken words with snatches of Christmas songs. All four Beatles went on to release solo Christmas records.

Lastly, here’s one you should know: there is nothing disrespectful about writing “Xmas”, as many Christians angrily claim. The letter X in our alphabet indicates the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Christ’s name in Greek. It might annoy us when people write Xmas as a lazy shortcut, but its roots are ancient and solidly Christian.