Let’s get straight to the point:
Christmas does NOT have a pagan origin.
I was born on the same day as Rubens Barrichello! Do you know what that means? That’s right, nothing!
You can try to say that at Rubinho’s house there are cakes and balloons on the same day there are cakes and balloons at my house… do you know what that means?!? That… Nothing!
To try to mix the meaning of two festivals just because they share the same date is naïveté (or actual dishonesty).
Please, don’t confuse the Treaty of Tordesillas with a creep behind the islands. (Brazilian wordplay: “Tratado de Tordesilhas” vs “tarado atrás das ilhas”.)
Yes, there were pagan festivals that were celebrated in the winter of the northern hemisphere, one of them, the celebration of Saturn (https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia). This festival was a big cultural event. Everyone participated. Something like Carnival or the São João festivals.
Some historians believe that, since no one knows for sure when Jesus was born, the church then decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th. This decision brings some benefits to the Christians of the time. (1) They would have a festival to attend at the same time the whole city was in festival. It was an alternative to the pagan event of the time. An act of counter culture, with biblical content that protected Christians from temptation. (2) This was an excellent way to introduce Jesus to the pagan world. Christians now had a festival at the same time. An opportunity to share the new religion that was arriving to cultures that had never had any contact with the God of Israel, his prophets and his scriptures.
This is a common move by missionaries. Take a cultural event that is “offensive” to Christian traditions and redeem it. Redefine it. Reinvent it with a new meaning. Isn’t this what we traditionally do with our spiritual Carnival retreats?
The same was done by God himself through Moses. The origin of circumcision is not precisely known. The oldest written document is from Ancient Egypt (http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/jc1360_male_circumcision_en_0.pdf). This was already an Egyptian practice, very probably with religious meanings, and what did God and Moses do? They took this cultural event and reinvented it. Most Christians don’t have a problem with the practice of circumcision by the Jews, but wouldn’t the ideological origin of such practice be totally pagan? Why do we use double standards (By the way, a very common practice in the current evangelical church)?
Another example? Luke tells us in Acts 17 that Paul used a cultural element to introduce the person of Jesus to the Greeks:
“Paul stood up at the Areopagus and spoke: ‘It is clear that you, Athenians, take your religion very seriously. I, just arrived here, was fascinated with the quantity of shrines. Then, I found one of them with an inscription: TO THE GOD WHOM NO ONE KNOWS. I am here to present to you precisely this God, so that you can worship him with intelligence, knowing with whom you are dealing.’”
Paul says that the God he announces is THE SAME God that the Athenians honored. Paul gives a new meaning TO A PAGAN ALTAR.
If Moses and Paul could do this, it doesn’t seem wrong to me that the Christians of the fourth century chose to do the same. The church has FREEDOM to REINVENT cultural events with a new spiritual meaning.
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