Christmas

Christmas (IPA: /krɪsməs/), also referred to as Christmas Day, is an annual holidayDecember 25 or January 7 that commemorates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.^[2][3] The day marks the beginning of the larger season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days.^[4] The nativity of Jesus, which is the basis for the anno Domini system of dating, is thought to have occurred between 7 and 2 BC.^[5] December 25 is not thought to be Jesus' actual date of birth, and the date may have been chosen to correspond with either a Roman festival,^[6]winter solstice.^[7] or with the celebrated on

Modern customs of the holiday include gift-giving, Church celebrations, and the display of various decorations—including the Christmas tree, lights, mistletoe, nativity scenes, and holly. Santa Claus (also referred to as Father Christmas, although the two figures have different origins) is a popular mythological figure often associated with bringing gifts at Christmas for children. Santa is generally believed to be the result of a syncretization between Saint Nicholaspagan Nordic and Christian mythology, and his modern appearance is believed to have originated in 19th century media. and elements from

Christmas is celebrated throughout the Christian population, but is also celebrated by many non-Christians as a secular, cultural festival. Because gift-giving and several other aspects of the holiday involve heightened economic activity among both Christians and non-Christians, Christmas has become a major event for many retailers.

The word Christmas originated as a compound meaning "Christ's Mass". It is derived from the Middle English Christemasse and Old English Cristes mæsse, a phrase first recorded in 1038.^[3]Christos and "mæsse" is from Latin missa. In Greek, the letter Χ (chi), is the first letter of Christ, and it, or the similar Roman letter X, has been used as an abbreviation for Christ since the mid-16th century.^[8] Hence, Xmas is often used as an abbreviation for Christmas. "Cristes" is from Greek

History

For many centuries, Christian writers accepted that Christmas was the actual date on which Jesus was born.^[9] However, in the early eighteenth century, some scholars began proposing alternative explanations. Isaac Newton argued that the date of Christmas was selected to correspond with the winter solstice,^[7] which in ancient times was marked on December 25.^[10]1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that debased the true church.^[6] In 1889, Louis Duchesne suggested that the date of Christmas was calculated as nine months after the Annunciation on March 25, the traditional date of the conception of Jesus.^[11] In

In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas Day was overshadowed by Epiphany, which in the west focused on the visit of the magi. But the Medieval calendar was dominated by Christmas-related holidays. The forty days before Christmas became the "forty days of St. Martin" (which began on November 11, the feast of St. Martin of Tours), now known as Advent.^[27] In Italy, former Saturnalian traditions were attached to Advent.^[27] Around the 12th century, these traditions transferred again to the Twelve Days of Christmas (December 25 – January 5); a time that appears in the liturgical calendars as Christmastide or Twelve Holy Days.^[27]

The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after Charlemagne was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800. King Edmund the Martyr was anointed on Christmas in 855 and King William I of England was crowned on Christmas Day 1066.

By the High Middle Ages, the holiday had become so prominent that chroniclers routinely noted where various magnates celebrated Christmas. King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377 at which twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep were eaten.^[27] The Yule boar was a common feature of medieval Christmas feasts. Caroling also became popular, and was originally a group of dancers who sang. The group was composed of a lead singer and a ring of dancers that provided the chorus. Various writers of the time condemned caroling as lewd, indicating that the unruly traditions of Saturnalia and Yule may have continued in this form.^[27]New Year's Day, and there was special Christmas ale.^[27] "Misrule" — drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling — was also an important aspect of the festival. In England, gifts were exchanged on

Christmas during the Middle Ages was a public festival that incorporating ivy, holly, and other evergreens.^[28] Christmas gift-giving during the Middle Ages was usually between people with legal relationships, such as tenant and landlord.^[28]

During the Reformation, some Puritans condemned Christmas celebration as "trappings of popery" and the "rags of the Beast."^[29] The Roman Catholic Church responded by promoting the festival in a more religiously oriented form. Following the Parliamentarian victory over King Charles I during the English Civil War, England's Puritan rulers banned Christmas, in 1647.^[29]Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans.^[29] The Restoration Pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities, and for weeks of Charles II in 1660 ended the ban, but many clergymen still disapproved of Christmas celebration.

In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England disapproved of Christmas. Celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681. At the same time, Christian residents of Virginia and New York observed the holiday freely. Pennsylvania German Settlers, pre-eminently the MoravianBethlehem, Nazareth and Lititz in Pennsylvania and the Wachovia Settlements in North Carolina, were enthusiastic celebrators of Christmas. The Moravians in Bethlehem had the first Christmas trees in America as well as the first Nativity Scenes. Christmas fell out of favor in the United States after the American Revolution, when it was considered an English custom.^[30]George Washington attacked Hessian mercenaries on Christmas during the Battle of Trenton in 1777. (Christmas being much more popular in Germany than in America at this time.) By the 1820s, sectarian tension had eased and British writers, including William Winstanly, began to worry that Christmas was dying out. These writers imagined Tudor Christmas as a time of heartfelt celebration, and efforts were made to revive the holiday. Charles Dickens's book A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, played a major role in reinventing Christmas as a holiday emphasizing family, goodwill, and compassion as opposed to communal celebration and hedonistic excess.^[31] In America, interest in Christmas was revived in the 1820s by several short stories by Washington Irving which appear in his The Sketch Book of Geoffrey CrayonClement Clarke Moore's 1822 poem A Visit From St. NicholasTwas the Night Before Christmas).^[32] Irving's stories depicted harmonious warm-hearted holiday traditions he claimed to have observed in England. Although some argue that Irving invented the traditions he describes, they were widely imitated by his American readers. The poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas popularized the tradition of exchanging gifts and seasonal Christmas shopping began to assume economic importance.^[33] In reaction, this also started the cultural conflict of the holiday's spiritualism and its commercialismHarriet Beecher Stowe includes a character who complains that the true meaning of Christmas was lost in a shopping spree.^[34] Christmas was declared a United States Federal holiday in 1870, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant. settlers of and "Old Christmas", and by (popularly known by its first line: that some see as corrupting the holiday. In her 1850 book "The First Christmas in New England",