Modernists contend that December 25 was only adopted in the fourth century as a Christian holiday by the Roman Emperor Constantine, to encourage a common religious festival for both the Christians and the Pagans.

In predominantly Christian countries, Christmas has become the most economically significant holiday of the year, and it is also celebrated as a secular holiday in many countries with small Christian populations. It is largely characterized by exchanging gifts within families, and by gifts brought by Santa Claus or other mythical figures. Local and regional Christmas traditions are still rich and varied, despite the widespread influence of American and British Christmas motifs through literature, television, and other media.

"Christmas" is a contraction of "Christ's Mass", derived from the Old English Cristes mæsse. It is often abbreviated Xmas, probably because X or Xt have often been used as a contraction for "Christ" ("X" resembles the Greek letter Χ (Chi), the first letter of "Christ" in Greek (Χριστός [Christos])). "Crimbo" is a synonym used in British English.

The religious celebrations begin with Advent, the anticipation of Christ's birth, around the start of December. These observations may include Advent carols and Advent calendars, sometimes containing sweets and chocolate for children. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services may include a midnight mass or a Mass of the Nativity, and feature Christmas carols and hymns. Judaism's Hanukkah, has developed a similar tradition of gift-giving. Christmas has some acceptance in the Islamic world, where Jesus is regarded as a prophet. Many secular aspects of Christmas are becoming common in developed Muslim nations.

The Romans honored Saturn, the ancient god of agriculture, each year beginning on December 17 in a festival called the Saturnalia. This festival lasted for seven days and included the winter solstice, which at that time fell on December 25 (today, following calendar reform, it falls on December 21). During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves. With the lengthening of daylight, these and other winter festivities continued through January 1, the festival of Kalends, when Romans marked the day of the new moon and the first day of the month and religious year (the secular year began in March).

By the 4th century another factor was also at work. Many Romans also celebrated the solstice on December 25 with festivities in honor of the rebirth of Sol Invictus, the "Invincible Sun God", or with rituals to glorify Mithra, the ancient Persian god of light (see Mithraism). Sol Invictus was a religion to which both Constantine himself before his confession of Christianity, and his predecessor Diocletian who had rebuilt the Roman Empire, were especially devoted, and to whom the latter had attributed his military successes (though Constantine saw Christ as having delivered him from the former Roman order's designs: Diocletian at one time had had Constantine living under his eye, against his will, separating him from his father). Constantine is therefore assumed to have found it convenient to find a common major festival for both Sol Invictus and Christianity.

Joseph and Mary with baby Jesus, at "the first Christmas"Historians are unsure exactly when Christians first began celebrating the Nativity of Christ. However, most scholars believe that Christmas originated in the 4th century as a Christian substitute for the pagan Festival of Saturn celebrations of the winter solstice.

The story of Christ's birth has been handed down for centuries, based primarily on the Christian gospels of Matthew and Luke. The gospels of Mark and John do not address the childhood of Jesus, and those of Matthew and Luke give somewhat differing accounts, Luke's being closest to the public impression of the Christmas story and the version most often read in Christmas services.

According to Luke, Mary learned from an angel that she was with child, by virtue of impregnation by the Holy Spirit without intercourse. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband Joseph left their home in Nazareth to travel to Joseph's ancestral home, Bethlehem, to enroll in the census ordered by the Roman emperor, Augustus. Finding no room in inns in the town, they set up primitive lodgings in a stable. There Mary gave birth to Jesus in a manger or stall. Christ's birth in Bethlehem of Judea, the home of the house of David from which Joseph was descended, fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah.

Matthew's gospel begins by recounting the genealogy and virgin birth of Jesus, and then moves to the coming of the Wise Men from the East to where Christ was staying after his birth in Bethlehem. This leaves ambiguous at whose home they were staying and whether Mary and Joseph were residents of Nazareth or, as their access to a home in Bethlehem suggests, of Bethlehem. The wise men, or Magi, first arrived in Jerusalem and reported to the king of Judea, Herod the Great, that they had seen a star heralding the birth of a king. Further inquiry led them to Bethlehem of Judea and the home of Mary and Joseph. They presented Jesus with treasures of "gold, frankincense, and myrrh". While staying the night, each Wise Man had a dream that contained a divine warning that King Herod had murderous designs on the child. Resolving to hinder the ruler, they returned home without notifying Herod of the success of their mission. Matthew then reports that the family next fled to Egypt to escape the murderous rampage of Herod, who had decided to have the children of Bethlehem killed in order to eliminate any local rivals to his power. When Jesus and his family returned, it was then that they settled in Nazareth, where they believed they might live more anonymously.

Another aspect of Christ's birth which has passed from the gospels into popular lore is the announcement by angels to nearby shepherds of Jesus' birth. Some Christmas carols refer to the shepherds observing a huge star directly over Bethlehem, and following it to the birthplace. The Magi, who Matthew reports seeing a giant star as well, have been variously interpreted as "wise men" or as kings, but the Magi might even have been women. They are supposed to have come from Arabia, where they could have gotten their gifts of "gold, frankincense, and myrrh". Some astronomers and historians have proposed to explain what combination of traceable celestial events might explain the appearance of a giant star that had never before been seen, but there is no agreement among them.[1]

Christmas is now celebrated on December 25 in Catholic, Protestant, and most Orthodox churches. The Coptic, Jerusalem, Russian, Serbian, Macedonian and Georgian Orthodox churches celebrate Christmas on January 7. This date results from their having accepted neither the reforms of the Gregorian calendar nor the Revised Julian calendar, with their ecclesiastic December 25 thus falling on the civil (Gregorian) date of January 7 from 1900 to 2099. The Armenian Church places much more emphasis on the Epiphany, the visitation by the Magi, than on Christmas.

Some scholars suggest that December 25 is a date of convenience chosen for other reasons, related to the time of Emperor Constantine. December 25 in the Roman world was the Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, but it may not have been as early as Christmas, if it was a Roman reaction to the Church being persecuted then. It may have served as an attempt to eclipse a precious Devotion of Christians, amidst attempts to kill all Christians off. Many of the earliest Christian Writings were destroyed during those persecutions.

St. Hippolytus, who was already knowledgeably defending the faith in writing at the turn of the century, entering the third century A.D., said that Christ was born Wednesday, December 25, in the 42nd year of Augustus' reign (see his Commentary on Daniel, circa A.D. 204, Bk. 4, Ch. 23).

Additional calculations are made on the basis of the 6-year almanac of Priestly Rotations, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some believe that this almanac lists the week when John the Baptist's father would have served as a high priest. As it is implied John the Baptist could only be conceived during that particular week; and as his conception is believed to be tied to that of Jesus, it is claimed that an approximate date of December 25 can be arrived at for the birth of Jesus. However, most scholars (e.g. see Catholic Encyclopedia in sources), believe this calculation to be unreliable as it is based on a string of assumptions.

Dates for the more secular aspects of the Christmas celebration are similarly varied. In the United Kingdom, the Christmas season traditionally runs for twelve days following Christmas Day. These twelve days of Christmas, a period of feasting and merrymaking, end on Twelfth Night, the Feast of the Epiphany. This period corresponds with the liturgical season of Christmas. Medieval laws in Sweden declared a Christmas peace (julefrid) to be twenty days, during which fines for robbery and manslaughter were doubled. Swedish children still celebrate a party, throwing out the Christmas tree (julgransplundring), on the 20th day of Christmas (January 13, Knut's day).

In practice, the Christmas period has grown longer in some countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and now begins many weeks before Christmas, allowing more time for shopping and get-togethers. It extends beyond Christmas Day up to New Year's Day. This later holiday has its own parties. In some instances, including Scotland's Hogmanay—which occurs at the New Year—it is celebrated more than Christmas.

Countries that celebrate Christmas on December 25 recognize the previous day as Christmas Eve, and vary on the naming of December 26. In the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, and Poland, Christmas Day and the following day are called First and Second Christmas Day. In many European and Commonwealth countries, December 26 is referred to as Boxing Day, while in Ireland, Romania and Catalonia it is known as St. Stephen's Day.

An enormous number of customs, with either secular, religious, or national aspects, surround Christmas, and vary from country to country. Most of the familiar traditional practices and symbols of Christmas, such as the Christmas tree, the Christmas ham, the Yule Log, holly, mistletoe, and the giving of presents, were adapted or appropriated by Christian missionaries from the earlier Germanic pagan midwinter holiday of Yule. This celebration of the winter solstice was widespread and popular in northern Europe long before the arrival of Christianity, and the word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages is still today the pagan jul (=yule). The Christmas tree is believed to have first been used in Germany.

Rather than attempting to suppress every tradition owned by pagans, Pope Gregory I allowed Christian missionaries to allow the innocuous ones as a means to make things already familiar ready aids to re-education through such props for illustrating new understandings of things long before them but ignorantly perceived, giving a rich Christian significance to things that, for lack of such Understanding, stood to bear the reflection of heathen culture.[2] The give and take between religious and governmental authorities and celebrators of Christmas continued through the years. Places where conservative Christian theocracies flourished, as in Cromwellian England and in the early New England colonies, were among those where celebrations were suppressed.[3] After the Russian Revolution, Christmas celebrations were banned in the Soviet Union for the next seventy-five years. A few newer religions, notably the Jehovah's Witnesses, some Puritan groups, and some ultraconservative fundamentalist denominations, view Christmas as a pagan holiday not sanctioned by the Bible, and do not celebrate it (although they are coming at it from a view detached from the historic Church).

A house decorated for Christmas in Yate, EnglandSince the customs of Christmas celebration largely evolved in Northern Europe, many are associated with the Northern Hemisphere winter, whose motifs are prominent in Christmas decorations and in the Santa Claus myth.

Santa Claus and other bringers of gifts :

Gift-giving is a near-universal part of Christmas celebrations. The concept of a mythical figure who brings gifts to children derives from Saint Nicholas, a good hearted bishop of 4th-century Asia Minor. The Dutch modeled a gift-giving Saint Nicholas around his death on December 5. In North America, Other colonists adopted the feast of Sinterklaas brought by the Dutch into their Christmas holiday, and Sinterklaas became Santa Claus, or Saint Nick. In the UK, whilst this name is widely known, "Father Christmas" is more common, and is also used in many West African countries. In the Anglo-American tradition, this jovial fellow arrives on Christmas Eve on a sleigh pulled by reindeer, and lands on the roofs of houses. He then climbs down the chimney, leaves gifts for the children, and eats the food they leave for him. He spends the rest of the year making toys and keeping lists on the behavior of the children.

One belief in the United Kingdom and United States which has been passed down the generations, is the idea of 'Good' and 'Bad' lists of children. Throughout the year, Santa would add names of children to either the good or bad list depending on their behaviour. When it got closer to Christmas time, parents would use the belief to encourage children to behave well. Those who were on the bad list and whose behaviour did not improve before Christmas were said to receive a piece of coal for their 'gift' on Christmas Eve rather than presents.

The French equivalent of Santa, Père Noël, evolved along similar lines, eventually adopting the Santa image Haddon Sundblom painted for a worldwide Coca-Cola advertising campaign in the 1930s. In some cultures Santa Claus is accompanied by Knecht Ruprecht, or Black Peter. In some versions, elves in a toy workshop make the holiday toys, and in some he is married to Mrs. Claus. Many shopping malls in North America and the United Kingdom have a holiday mall Santa Claus whom children can visit to ask for presents.

A classic image of jolly old Saint Nick in many countries, children leave empty containers for Santa to fill with small gifts such as toys, candy, or fruit. In the United States, children hang a Christmas stocking by the fireplace on Christmas Eve, because Santa is said to come down the chimney the night before Christmas to fill them. In other countries, children place their empty shoes out for Santa to fill on the night before Christmas, or for Saint Nicholas on December 5. Gift giving is not restricted to these special gift-bringers, as family members and friends also bestow gifts on each other.

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