Thread by @ks_NotANiceGirl

Just a brief history of how Christmas came to be.

- To early Christians (and to many Christians today), the most important holiday on the Christian calendar was Easter, which commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

- However, as Christianity began to take hold in the Roman world, in the early 4th century, church leaders had to contend with a popular Roman pagan holiday commemorating the “birthday of the unconquered sun” (natalis solis invicti)–the Roman name for the winter solstice.

- This festival is as called Saturnalia. Every winter, Romans honored the pagan god Saturn, god of agriculture, with a festival that began on December 17 & usually ended on or around December 25 with a winter-solstice celebration in honor of the beginning of the new solar cycle.

- After the Roman Emperor Constantine I converted to Christianity in 312 AD and sanctioned Christianity, church leaders made efforts to appropriate the winter-solstice holidays and thereby achieve a more seamless conversion to Christianity for the emperor’s subjects.

- From Rome, it spread to other Christian churches to the west & east, & soon most were celebrating Christ’s birth on Dec 25. Late other rituals observed by various pagan groups were added, such as the lighting of the Yule log & decorations with evergreens by Germanic tribes.

- A popular medieval feast was that of St. Nicholas of Myra, a saint said to visit children with gifts just before Christmas. This story evolved into the modern practice of leaving gifts for kids said to be brought by “Santa Claus,” from Dutch name for St. Nicholas–Sinterklaas.

- So most of the “stuff” that happens on Christmas today, has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with merriment, celebrations, happiness, gifting and sharing, brotherhood, charity. If that’s what you stand against - then, well, shame on you.