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Christmas (literally, the Mass of Christ) is a traditional holiday in the Christian calendar which takes place around the end of December and celebrates the nativity of Jesus Christ. Christmas is also celebrated as a secular holiday throughout much of the world, including countries with small Christian populations, such as Japan. The precise date of the birth and historicity of Jesus are much debated (see Jesus).

The word Christmas is often abbreviated to Xmas, possibly because the letter X resembles the Greek letter Χ, which is the first letter of Christ's name as spelled in Greek.

Dates of celebration

Christmas is celebrated on December 25 in all Christian churches (Eastern Rite, Roman & Protestant). Since most Eastern Orthodox churches have not accepted either the Gregorian calendar or the Revised Julian Calendar reforms, the Ecclesiastic December 25 will fall on the civil date of January 7 for the years from 1900 to 2099. The date derives from the tradition that Jesus was born during the Jewish Festival of Lights (Hanukkah, the 25th of Kislev and the beginning of Tevet). Kislev is generally accepted as corresponding with our December. Under the Old Julian calendar, the popular choice of 5 BC for the year of Jesus's birth would place the 25th of Kislev on the 25th of November.

Traditionally in the United Kingdom the Christmas season ran 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.

The Christmas period in some countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, in practice now begins many weeks before Christmas, which allows for shopping and get-togethers, and extends beyond Christmas Day up to New Year's Day. This later holiday has its own parties, and in Scotland, Hogmanay&mdash, which occurs at the New Year&mdash, is celebrated more than Christmas.

Countries that celebrate Christmas on December 25th recognize the previous day as Christmas Eve, and some of them follow Christmas day with Boxing Day. In the Netherlands, Germany, and Scandinavia, Christmas Day and Boxing Day are called First and Second Christmas Day.

Customs and celebrations

An enormous number of customs surround Christmas, and vary from country to country. Many aspects, such as the Christmas tree, the Yule Log, and the giving of presents, were taken from the earlier pagan holiday of Yule and the traditional celebrations of the Winter solstice. A few Christian churches, most notably the Jehovah's Witnesses and some Puritan groups, thus view Christmas as a pagan holiday not sanctioned by the Bible and do not celebrate it.

In most Western countries, Christmas celebrations have both religious and secular aspects.

Secular customs

A house decorated for Christmas in Yate, England

Some of the more popular customs of British, North American, and Japanese Christmas are Santa Claus (or Father Christmas), who brings gifts to children on a sleigh pulled by reindeer; the giving of gifts to friends and family; decorating a Christmas tree with lights and ornaments; and the decoration of the interior (and sometimes exterior) of the home with evergreen foliage, particularly holly and mistletoe. In North America and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, it is traditional to decorate the outside of houses with large numbers of lights.

In many countries, children leave empty containers on Christmas Eve for Santa to fill with small gifts such as toys, candy, or fruit. In the United States, the tradition is to hang a Christmas stocking by the fireplace, 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's visit.

Christmas is also often used as an opportunity to catch up with one's extended family. In many countries it is a time for giving gifts, exchanging Christmas cards, and having Christmas parties and dances in schools or workplaces. These often take place during the several weeks before Christmas Day.

In the United Kingdom, another aspect of the Christmas season popular with young families is the pantomime.

Timing of Christmas gifts

For most of the world, Christmas gifts are given on Christmas Eve (24 December) or Christmas Day.

For those countries who recognize Saint Nicholas as the bearer of gifts, presents are given on 5 December or 6 December. In Spain, and in countries with a similar tradition, gifts are brought by the three Kings (Magi or Wise Men) at Epiphany on 6 January. In the UK, it was traditional to give gifts to non-family members on Boxing Day, 26 December, but this is less common now. Some families choose to give presents more than once during the winter season.

The song The Twelve Days of Christmas suggests an old tradition of gifts each day from Christmas to Epiphany.

Symbols and images

The traditional Christmas flower is the poinsettia.

Since Christmas has become associated with the Northern Hemisphere winter, motifs of this season are prominent in Christmas decorations and in the Santa Claus myth.

Food

On Christmas Day, a special meal of Christmas dishes is usually served, for which there are traditional menus in each country. In the United Kingdom, the traditional meal consists of roast turkey or goose, served with roast potatoes and other vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding, a heavy boiled pudding made with dried fruit (traditionally plums) and flour.

Religious customs and celebrations

The religious celebrations begin with Advent, the anticipation of Christ's birth, around the start of December, and are marked by special church services. Advent services often include Advent carols, and the period is also celebrated with Advent calendars, sometimes containing sweets and chocolate for children. Immediately before Christmas, there are many Christmas services at churches at which Christmas hymns and Christmas carols are sung. There also are special services, typified by the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at Cambridge. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, special services often include a Midnight Mass, or a Mass of the Nativity. The church's season of Christmas ends on the feast of the Epiphany, also known as Twelfth Night, the traditional date of the visit of the Three Kings to the child Jesus.

The holiday's popularity is so pronounced that other faiths have emphasized their own winter holidays to serve as a Christmas surrogate. The most obvious example is Judaism's Chanukah, which in the 20th century has evolved a similar family gift-giving tradition.

International customs and celebrations

The Striezelmarkt, Germany's oldest Christmas market, boasting the specialities of the Dresden region, is arguably a worldwide Christmas gift production center which continues for nearly one month. This is the time when Dresden Stollen fruitcake, Puslnitzer gingerbread, wood carvings from the Erzgebirge Mountains, Dresden Pflaumentoffel, Lusatian indigo print, Silesian ceramics, Bohemian glass, and Meissen porcelain dominate the lives of visitors who come from all over to thoroughly immerse themselves in Christmas.

Encouraged by the commercial sector, the non-religious celebration of Christmas is also popular in Japan, where gift giving is done between family members and between close friends. The Japanese also adopt the character of Santa Claus in their celebration. However, Christmas is not as important as New Year's Day, and is not an official holiday.

In the Republic of China and Taiwan, Christmas is not officially celebrated. However, coincidentially, December 25 is the date of the signing of the Constitution of the Republic of China in 1947. Hence there is already an official holiday on that date, which is largely treated as if it were Christmas.

In commonwealth countries in the southern hemisphere, Christmas is still celebrated on December 25, despite the fact that this is the height of their summer season. This rather clashes with the traditional winter based iconography, resulting in anachronisms such as a red fur-coated Santa Claus surfing in for a turkey barbecue on Bondi Beach.

Christmas in the arts

A large number of fictional Christmas stories have been written, usually involving heart-touching tales that involve a Christmas miracle. Several of these stories have passed into popular culture and been accepted as part of the tradition of Christmas.

Perhaps the most popular is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the tale of curmudgeonly miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge rejects compassion and philanthropy, and Christmas as a symbol of both, until he is visited by the "Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future", who show him the consequences of his ways. Through this tale and other Christmas-related stories, Dickens is sometimes credited with shaping the modern celebration of Christmas (tree, plum pudding, carols).

If Dickens shaped the wider traditions of Christmas, Thomas Nast and Clement Moore provided us with the popular images of Santa Claus. Nash's 19th century cartoons gave Santa his familiar form, while Moore's poem A Visit from Saint Nicholas (popularly known as The Night Before Christmas) gave us the image of a rotund Santa and his sleigh landing on rooftops on Christmas Eve.

Another Christmas story is the acclaimed film, It's a Wonderful Life whose theme mirrors A Christmas Carol. Its hero, George Bailey, is a businessman who sacrificed his dreams to help his community. On Christmas Eve, a guardian angel finds him in despair, and prevents him from committing suicide, by magically showing him how much he meant to the world around him.

File:Newsdenverxmas.jpg

John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together

Christmas in the media

Radio and TV stations popularise Christmas by broadcasting Christmas carols and Christmas songs.

Many TV shows celebrate the holiday with a 'Christmas Special' episode. In the United Kingdom this is usually of extended length, allowing some popular shows to gain high ratings and essentially become Christmas institutions (for example, Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies, Only Fools and Horses, Top of the Pops). HM Queen Elizabeth II annually broadcasts a 10-minute speech on Christmas Day at 3 p.m., charting her views of the past year and giving her own reflections and advice. Also, the popular animated tale The Snowman is screened every Christmas on Channel 4, and a new story, The Bear, by the same artist and company, is usually broadcast around the same time.

In the United States, most family-oriented TV series also produce a Christmas special. Stand-alone Christmas specials are also popular, from newly created animated shorts and movies to repeats of those that were popular in previous years, such as Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

In the United Kingdom, the music industry features the battle of bands and artists to make it to the 'Christmas No. 1' spot, which is always recognised on the first Sunday before, or on, Christmas Day. Many of these songs are extremely festive (for example, Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" from 1973), while others are novelty songs that remain at the top of the chart for one week only (such as Mr. Blobby's "Mr. Blobby" from 1993). Gospel singer Cliff Richard has been recognised as a fixture of Christmas charts, appearing nearly every year in the run-up to Christmas and subsequently being mocked for doing so.

Economics of Christmas

Christmas is typically the largest annual economic stimulus for the economies of celebrating Christian nations. Sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas, as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies for parties and for visiting guests. Shops introduce new products that are sold at premium prices, as customers take advantage of the many marketing opportunities. In the United States, the day after Thanksgiving (beginning the Christmas shopping season) is the biggest shopping day of the year, with Christmas Eve close behind.

For some shops and other businesses, Christmas Day is the only day in the year that they are closed.

The economic aspects of Christmas continue after the holiday, with Christmas sales and New Year's sales, when stores sell off goods that were not sold before Christmas. They also use this opportunity to clear out goods, or to take advantage of the many shoppers who go to these events, to increase their sales.

Because of the focus on celebration, friends, and family, people who are without these, or who have recently suffered losses, are more likely to suffer from depression during the holidays. This increases the pressure on counseling services during the period.

History of Christmas

December 25th is said to be the birthday of many gods such as Nimrod, Osiris, Jupiter, Mithras, and all the other reincarnations of the child-god of the Babylonian religious system, including the baby "Jesus" who is held in the arms of the Roman Catholic Madonna. Genesis 10:8-10 gives us some insight into who exactly Nimrod is. It says, "And Kush brought forth Nimrod, he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before The Lord, therefore it is said, "Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before The Lord." And the beginning of his reign was Babel, and Erek and Akkad and Kalned, in the land of Shin'ar."

The Bible does not say who Nimrod's mother was, or identify his date of birth, but Egyptian and Babylonian antiquities recognize his mother as Semiramis, and his birthday is celebrated on December 25. Sometimes Semiramis is referred to as the mother of Nimrod, and sometimes as his wife, leading to the belief that Nimrod married his mother.

Nimrod was looked upon as a great leader, protector and even savior of his time. His being a hunter and protector of the small villages from wild animals gave more reason for him to be viewed as their savior. Nothing in the Bible mentions the death of Nimrod, but the ancient traditions suggest that he died a violent death. One tradition says that he was killed by a wild animal. Another says that Shem killed him because he had led the people into the worship of Baal.

His wife/mother, Semiramis, who rose to greatness because of her son, was presented with a difficulty when her son died, so instead she pronounced him to be a god, so that she herself would become a goddess. One tradition says that when Nimrod died she collected all of his pieces (or Shem cut him into several pieces), but she was never able to find his sexual organ, so she came up with the symbol of the obelisk (which is a tall, four-sided stone pillar which tapers toward a pyramidal top) to represent that part. She claimed that an evergreen tree sprouted from a tree stump, which she said indicated the entry of new life into the deceased Nimrod. Every year on the anniversary of Nimrod's birth (December 25th) they would leave gifts at this evergreen tree, which explains the origin of the Christmas tree. So essentially you can say that Christmas trees are a representation of Nimrod's sexual organ. This is standard throughout Babylonian sun worship; other objects that have the same symbolization are steeples, obelisks, and pyramids.

Jeremiah 10:1-5 speaks of this custom, "Hear the word which The Lord speaks to you, O house of Yisrael. Thus said The Lord, 'Do not learn the way of the nations, and do not be awed by the signs of the heavens, for the nations are awed by them. For the prescribed customs of these peoples are worthless, for one cuts a tree from the forest, work for the hands of a craftsman with a cutting tool. They adorn it with silver and gold, they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it does not topple. They are like a rounded post, and they do not speak. They have to be carried because they do not walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they do no evil, nor is it in them to do any good.'" The Bible describes the Christmas tree as an idol. It might not be by chance that at Christmas we place our gifts at the foot of the tree just as many other idols are offered gifts at their feet.

Now even though Semiramis claimed to be a virgin she had another son, named Tammuz, who she said was the reincarnation of Nimrod. She became known as the "Virgin Mother", "Holy Mother" and the "Queen of Heaven" and was symbolized by the moon. So began the worship of Semiramis and the child-god, and the whole paraphernalia of the Babylonian religious system. After the decline of Babylon, the religion was transported to Egypt where the people worshipped Isis and her son Osiris (otherwise known as Horus). The same mother and child deities appeared in Pagan Rome as Fortuna and Jupiter, and in Greece as Ceres, the Great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms. Mithras, known as a god of light, was regarded as a sun-god or rather the "unconquerable Sun god" whose birth was also celebrated on the winter solstice, December 25th.

We read in Ezekiel 8:15-16, how the women were weeping for Tammuz and the Israelites worshiping the sun. It says, "And He brought me to the door of the north gate of the House of The Lord, and I saw women sitting there, weeping for Tammuz. Then He said to me, 'Have you seen this, O son of man? You are to see still greater abominations than these.' And He brought me into the inner court of the House of The Lord, between the porch and the altar, where there were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the Hekal of The Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were bowing themselves eastward toward the sun."

When Constantine, who was a self-proclaimed Sun-worshipper all his life, came into the picture, he created the Catholic Church (Catholic meaning Universal), revealing that his true intention was to allow numerous pagan rituals and ideologies to be intermixed with belief in the Creator. This made room for the pagans without forcing them to drop their pagan practices and accept Christianity. The Pagans had no difficulty worshipping the Catholic Madonna and child because they were just seen as another manifestation of the Queen of Heaven and her son. The Pagans made no compromises; they didn't need to, they just continued their Pagan worship within the church.

History of the date of Christmas

Main Article: Chronology of Jesus' birth and death

Many different dates have been suggested for the celebration of Christmas throughout the years. December 25 was generally favored in the West, and January 6 in the East. The selection of December 25 seems to be connected with the Roman feast of the Unconquered Sun, celebrated on the day after the winter solstice.