*rubs hands together* I can’t wait to own the pagans on here about how actually the date of Christmas has literally 0 to do with like, Yule and all those ideas was just Protestant nonsense to devalue Catholic feast days

In fact the first recorded mention of Yule (1475 AD) happens over a thousand years after the first recorded celebration of Christmas on Dec 25 (336 AD) - PEOPLE FORGET THIS BUT CHRISTIANITY IS OLD AS BALLS

The Ancients were actually INSANELY FIXATED on what actual day Christ was born, it was like, A Debate

Some people in like the 200s got super fixated on the idea of Christ having a spring birth, but the general idea is that he was born exactly nine months after the Annunciation, which then happened to be the spring (march 25) and winter (dec 25) equinox

Now you could maybe get a LITTLE closer to sensibility if you think it was meant to replace Saturnalia, but really even this is highly suspect, as the original Saturnalia feast was December 17, and was only moved to Dec 25 like, fifty years after the death of Christ

IN FACT IN A HILARIOUS TURN OF EVENTS, EMPEROR DOMITION, WHO MOVED THE DATE OF SATURNALIA TO DEC 25, WAS KNOWN FOR HEAVILY PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS

And since the December 25 date got its start in Rome and the written record was documenting an already established tradition , it’s not completely unbelievable that it’s actually the opposite and Saturnalia got moved to Dec 25 to own the Christians, not the other way around

Although I completely admit this is pure conjecture: Domition also just like, hated fun and Saturnalia had become a huge thing which encroached on state power, which he was NOT a fan of

But Mikhayla, you ask, if this is true why does the common culture invalidate Christmas as a continuation of pagan feasts

To which I answer: As with most things, it is the Puritans fault

The Puritans, like Domition, hated fun and also Catholics - and to them, the entire NOTION of Christmas was a luxury which was proof of Catholics drunkenness and lechery

The Puritans actually totally banned the holiday for a while in New England during the 17th century, if you can believe it. That’s right - the war on Christmas was actually originally started by *checks notes* evangelicals

What did they use to justify their decision. Well, they held that Christmas was a Catholic Idolatry Day, which had its roots in, YOU GUESSED IT, pagan celebrations!!!!

So in an absolutely HILARIOUS turn of events, when western pagans and atheists accuse Christians of hijacking their feasts as some sort of long form oppression, not only are they being completely ahistorical, they’re in fact taking on ANTI-PAGAN EXTREMISM

There are records showing Puritan legacy communities in New England punishing children for staying home on Christmas bc it wasn’t seen as a real holiday up until THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1870

By that time, it was made a federal holiday, where it became rapidly commercialized and secularized. But because there was never any purposeful rebuilding of the /spiritual/ attitudes of Christmas in Protestantism, the myth of Christmas being a pagan trick never died out.

So now every year we have to deal with pagans who have never read a single book about the actual ancients coming onto twitter claiming that somehow a 2000 year old religion chose the date of one of their most sacred feasts to spite a few 16th century pine tree worshippers