Welcome to Christmas! That great traditional celebration about trees and Santa Claus, tinsel and songs, about reindeer and animated snowmen!
Our modern Christmas, of course, wouldn’t be remotely recognizable to someone from two centuries ago, and the farther back you go, the odder they would find some of our customs.
Exactly one thing is certain – Christmas originated as a celebration of the birth of Christ. Which meant it was far from the most important event on the early Christian calendar – that would be Easter. Epiphany, the celebration of the baptism of Jesus and the visit of the Magi, was also considered more important for centuries.
In fact, there’s some evidence that there were a variety of dates set for the celebration of Christ’s birth, before the early church decided on Dec. 25, for reasons that historians still debate.
Once it was settled as a date, the early medieval church established Christmastide, and the 12 days of Christmas. Today we often confuse this with Advent, but the 12 days of Christmas actually started at sunset on Dec. 24, and continued until Jan. 5, which was known as Twelfth Night.
That’s where we get the title of Shakespeare’s play of the same name, which has nothing to do with Twelfth Night, Epiphany, or Christmas, but was created to be performed during the celebrations that took place through the middle of winter around those holidays.
Those partiers got Christmas in trouble in England in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Puritans, in particular, took a dim view of Christmas, which had evolved into an excuse for some raucous parties through the years. There was far too much wassail (hard apple cider) and frivolity, and not enough silent prayer and eating tasteless gruel!
Which is why the Puritans banned the holiday entirely from 1644 to 1660. They even banned attending mass on Christmas. But, holly and pies and feasts, singing and dancing? Those were really suppressed.
Russia launched a bizarre two-front attack on Christmas, and specifically Christmas trees, in the 20th century. First, Czarist Russia banned the trees in 1916, after centuries of holiday displays of boughs and trees, because they were an imported German custom. (Britain and the English-speaking world also got the Christmas tree from Germany, via Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert.)
Two years after that ban, the Bolsheviks began their rise to power, and with Soviet Russia officially an atheist nation by the early 1920s, they re-branded the trees as a secular, state-controlled New Year’s tradition.
The holiday we know today is mostly a creation of the Victorians. From Christmas cards and widespread gift-giving to the family-friendly aspects, we can trace a lot of them to the mid- to late-1800s. Sprinkle with a generous helping of 20th century pop culture via Hollywood, Nat King Cole, and Bing Crosby, and we have our modern Christmas.