Why a cultural Christmas sometimes struggles to celebrate

In the build-up to Christmas there's contrasting rhythms of ancient and modern ways to celebrate.

Alistair Reid

Alistair Reid is studying theology at Oxford University as part of training for Church of England ministry.

Looking down a red shiny christmas tree in the centre of a department store gallery.

Christmas at Galeries Lafayette department store, Paris.

Bing Hao on Unsplash.

Our lives dance to the rhythm of anticipation and fulfilment. The food in our fridge, the concert in our calendar, the holiday on the horizon. From daily pleasures to longer-term goals, we inhabit the familiar routine of journeying and arriving.

The build-up to Christmas offers such a rhythm on a much wider scale, moving beyond the personal to a culture-wide experience. We receive our early warning alert in September as the mince pies hit the supermarkets. But by November preparations are in full swing. Retailer John Lewis has coined ‘the 45 days of Christmas.’ Their biggest day of sales for Christmas decorations is on November 10th. By December, the Christmas ads, Christmas lights and Christmas music become relentless. We make plans, buy presents, prepare food in a bid to deliver the promised Christmas cheer. And, finally, the big day comes – with turkey and trimmings. The length, breadth and depth of anticipation channeled into a single day.

And then it’s Boxing Day.

Boxing Day can have its own pleasures, but there’s also a sense of nostalgia, and even sadness. The wrapping paper left scrumpled on the floor from the night before, the leftovers in the fridge, the home emptied of guests, whether welcome or not. At best, we have the sad realization that the next Christmas is as far away as it could possibly be. But more likely, the realization that it wasn’t quite as good as we’d hoped, anyway. As Sylvia Plath memorably wrote in The Bell Jar:

“I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.”

And so the cycle goes on. At least there’s New Year’s Eve to look forward to. Or Easter, as the supermarkets swap mince pies for hot cross buns.

Our cultural Christmas struggles to wait. The joys of Christmas extend ever earlier, with searches for Christmas trees surging from immediately after the summer holidays.

Our modern Christmas rhythm is, in many ways, parasitic upon an ancient Christian one. In Christian tradition, the four weeks building up to Christmas is known as Advent. The word means ‘coming,’ for Advent is a period of expectant waiting both for the birth of Christ at Christmas, and also the hope that Jesus will return to put all things right. As such, it is a time of preparation, self-examination and fasting, as Christians ready themselves to stand before the judgement seat of God. Advent is followed by Christmas, celebrated for twelve whole days (as in the famous carol), which is why Christmas decorations went up on Christmas Eve, and came down on January 6th, twelfth night.

In many ways, the ancient pattern is similar to the modern pattern. Both are liturgical rhythms that mark and measure our years, as we inhabit cultural, familial and personal routines. Both involve anticipation and fulfilment, build-up and joy.

And yet the differences are also stark. Our cultural Christmas struggles to wait. The joys of Christmas extend ever earlier, with searches for Christmas trees surging from immediately after the summer holidays. But, more surprisingly, our cultural Christmas struggles to celebrate. That might seem strange given the quantity of food, wrapping paper and presents that we get through. But rather than twelve days of Christmas, we barely make it through one.

By contrast, the Christian tradition emphasizes the discipline of waiting. But not as an ascetic end in itself, as if joy is bad. Rather, the denial of waiting is replaced by the sustained joy of celebration. Twelve days of Christmas celebration is almost impossible for us to imagine – wouldn’t we get bored? Given our longing for joy, it’s somewhat surprising just how hard it is to sustain.

More deeply, these two contrasting Christmases place their weight in very different places. Our modern Christmas expects Christmas to deliver what we’re looking for: through friends, family, food and fun. But while we catch glimpses of joy, we’re often disappointed: the turkey is overcooked, the presents are not what we wanted, the kids are bickering. It’s no wonder that sometimes Christmas can struggle to bear the weight put upon it. It’s no wonder that Christmas Day can descend into disappointment, self-pity, even acrimony.

But the ancient Advent-Christmas rhythm, while incorporating these joys, deliberately seeks to place them within a larger story. The baby born at Christmas brings salvation from sin and death, turning Advent meditation on our future judgement from fearful cowering into confident expectation and present joy. This is hope and joy that does not depend on the perfect lunch, or the most sparkling of conversation. Instead, the greatest gift of Christmas is, well, Christ. And he can generate twelve days of celebration. In fact, he can generate joy for eternity. Rightly, C.S. Lewis described joy as ‘the serious business of heaven.’

This is not to condemn our cultural Christmas. Who wouldn’t enjoy a cheeky mince pie in October? But what if it isn’t capable of delivering what we all want? Perhaps our capacity for joy is larger – and rooted deeper – than we thought. In this world of disappointment, sadness and suffering, perhaps the route to such sustained joy is through rhythming our lives to a larger story.

Explainer

Christmas culture

Creed

19 December 2023

4 min read

Why Christmas Day is Christmas Day

The seasons, festivals, historians and emperors have all influenced the date of Christmas.

Ryan Gilfeather

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

a had holds out a small wrapped Christmas present.

I came of age in the 2000s, a decade quite alien to us now. We saw ourselves as pioneers of technology, as the internet emerged in its prehistoric form. There was great optimism about the economy until it all went wrong in 2008. The New Atheism movement was roaring into public view, only to wane just as quickly the decade after. Growing up as a Christian, I remember spirited debates with my peers about whether science disproved Christianity and if God can be disproven. These questions have fallen out of view, just as many of its main proponents have too. Richard Dawkins rarely darkens the door of our TV screens anymore.

However, one such moment of conflict sticks out in my mind. A friend announced to me that he had disproved the origins of Christianity. The night before he had discovered that in the third century Roman Empire, before Christianity became legal and the official religion, there was already a festival celebrating a god on the 25th of December. Instead of the birth of the Son of God, the Romans celebrated the rebirth of the Unconquered Sun — Sol Invictus. Then, in 336 under the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, that date was first celebrated as the day of the birth of Christ. My friend considered the case to be closed; surely the birth of Christ was merely a repurposing of an existing festival?

Thankfully this shocking revelation did not pick away at the foundations of my faith. I continued, and still continue, to believe in and love the Christian God, as revealed in the Bible. Indeed, since that moment I have trained as a scholar in the history of the early Church, and have begun to see this question for what it is, a quirk of history.

We, therefore, celebrate Christ’s birth on the 25th December on account of a quirk of history, a result of the way that Romans mapped significant events on to the waxing and waning of the light.

The first claim that Christ was born on the 25th December appears in the third century. Sextus Julius Africanus, a Roman Christian historian, wrote an entire chronology of the world from creation to AD 221. He considered March 25th to be the date of creation, because it was the spring equinox in the Roman Calendar, a day which represents new life and new birth. For this reason, he likewise considered it to be the date of Christ’s conception in the womb. Crucially, nine months after that falls December 25th. Although I admire his logic, it is hardly a sound basis for establishing the date of our Lord’s birth. Indeed, other Christians didn’t accept this claim at the time either.

As already mentioned, December 25th was a significant date in the Roman calendar already. It was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, after which the days begin to lengthen. It also shortly followed the popular Roman festival of the Saturnalia. Already endowed with significance, it is unsurprising that the Romans began to celebrate the rebirth of Sol Invictus, and the birth of another god, Mithras, on that date.

At this time Christianity was an illegal religion, persecuted in some parts of the Roman Empire. However, in 312, the emperor Constantine converts to Christianity and in 313 makes it a legally tolerated religion. At this point he begins to invest the church and Christians with powers, wealth and privileges. Evidence from the Chronography of AD 354 suggests that Christmas was first celebrated on the 25th December in 336, during the reign of Constantine. Perhaps this was an attempt to dislodge existing pagan holidays, and replace it with a Christian one. Or, maybe the significance of the Winter solstice made that date most plausible. Indeed, it is easy to see how the commemoration of Christ coming into the world is particularly salient as the darkness begins to recede. The true answer is, of course, lost to history.

We, therefore, celebrate Christ’s birth on the 25th December on account of a quirk of history, a result of the way that Romans mapped significant events on to the waxing and waning of the light. The true lesson here though, is that it simply doesn’t matter what the actual date of Christ’s birth was. Our records, and those available in the early church were simply not good enough for us to ever know. What matters is that God loves us so much, that he became human to bring us back to his side in everlasting joy and peace. We have no idea on what date Christ was born. But, each year the 25th December presents a time for us to remember that God became man, so that we might have everlasting life.