Every December, we step into habits that feel older than we are. We hang lights. We bring trees into our living rooms. We talk about a baby in a manger and a man in a red suit.
At some point, if you are wired like I am, you pause and ask:
How did all of this start?
Where did December 25 come from?
Is this really when Jesus was born?
Did the church baptize a pagan holiday?
And how on earth did a fourth century bishop become “Santa”?
The answers are far more interesting than the internet arguments. They show how God’s people, across centuries and cultures, tried to honor the miracle of the Incarnation while living in the real world: with solstices, emperors, folk customs, and the simple human longing for light in the dark.
Let’s walk the story slowly.
Selah.
How Did Christmas Start?
If you could drop into a Christian gathering in the second century, you would hear about the cross and the empty tomb. You would see the Lord’s Supper. You would not hear anything about “Christmas.”
The New Testament never tells us the date of Jesus’s birth. The first generations of Christians did not seem interested in marking it annually. Origen in the third century actually mocked the Roman habit of celebrating birthdays and treated it as a pagan thing, not a Christian practice (Origen, as cited in McGowan, 2011). Clement of Alexandria noted that some believers tried to calculate Christ’s birth and came up with dates in April, May, and other months, but there was no agreement and no December 25 (Clement, as cited in McGowan, 2011).
For almost three centuries, there was no formal Christmas feast at all.
That began to change in the fourth century. Christianity was emerging from persecution into legal status. The church was shaping a yearly rhythm of worship. At some point, believers in Rome began to set aside a day to honor Christ’s birth.
Our first solid evidence comes from an ancient Roman almanac called the Chronography of 354. Under the year 336 it records:
“25 Dec: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae”
“December 25: Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea” (Chronography of 354, 4th c.; Graves, n.d.).
That little line is the earliest record we have of Christmas as a dated feast.
Around the same time, Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire began celebrating the birth of Jesus on January 6, a date they also associated with His baptism and later called Epiphany (McGowan, 2011). By the late fourth century, two dates were widely recognized as “Christmas”: December 25 in the West and January 6 in the East. The stretch between those dates eventually became the “twelve days of Christmas” in the church calendar.
Once the Nativity feast took hold, it spread quickly. Within a generation, Augustine in North Africa and Gregory of Nyssa in Cappadocia were preaching and writing about the celebration. By the end of the fourth century, Christmas was firmly established as a major feast, second only to Easter, focused on the Incarnation, God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ (McGowan, 2011).
From that relatively late start in the 300s, Christmas grew in popularity and began to absorb local customs. Not everyone approved. Centuries later, in the seventeenth century, Puritans in England and New England famously tried to ban Christmas as unscriptural and too tangled with old pagan revelry (Graves, n.d.). They lost that battle. The feast endured and, over time, became one of the most beloved annual celebrations in Christian life.
Was Jesus Really Born on December 25?
Let’s be candid. There is no historical proof that Jesus was born on December 25.
The Bible gives us no exact date, and not even a clear time of year. Luke tells us there were shepherds in the fields at night when Jesus was born (Luke 2:8). Some have argued that this points to a milder season like spring, since flocks might not stay out overnight in the coldest part of winter, but that line of reasoning is thin. Climate can vary, and flocks may be outside for different reasons. Most scholars warn against trying to reverse engineer a calendar date from this detail (McGowan, 2011).
By the late second and early third centuries, Christians proposed many dates for Christ’s birth. Clement of Alexandria mentions guesses in April, May, and other months, but still no consensus and no December 25 (Clement, as cited in McGowan, 2011). It is not until the fourth century that the Western church settles on December 25 as the liturgical date for celebrating the Nativity (McGowan, 2011).
Even medieval Christians understood that the exact date of Christ’s birth was uncertain. The date on the calendar was chosen to mark the mystery and meaning of His coming, not because anyone had preserved His actual birthday.
Theologically, that makes sense. The point of Christmas is not the precision of the calendar but the reality of the event. We celebrate the coming of Jesus as the Light of the World. That symbolism fits well with the timing near the winter solstice, when in the northern hemisphere the daylight begins to lengthen again.
So it is best to say this: December 25 is the traditional date for celebrating the birth of Christ, not the verified date of His birth. The real day is unknown. The range could be from early winter to spring. The Gospels simply do not tell us, and the early church did not preserve that information.
Why December 25? Pagan Holiday or Christian Calculation?
Now we get to the question that lights up comment sections every December.
December 25 falls near the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and overlaps with several ancient pagan festivals. Saturnalia, a popular Roman festival for the god Saturn, was marked by feasting, gift giving, and social role reversals in late December. In AD 274, the emperor Aurelian further established December 25 as the feast of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun (McGowan, 2011).
Because of this, a popular theory claims that Christians picked December 25 as a way to co-opt or “Christianize” existing pagan celebrations. In this telling, the church slid Jesus into the slot previously filled by the sun god so that former pagans could keep their winter festival with a new, Christian veneer.
There is a problem. The actual historical record does not say that.
No early Christian writer explains December 25 as a deliberate replacement for Saturnalia or Sol Invictus. When church fathers discuss the timing, they tend to focus on theological symbolism: Christ as the “Sun of Righteousness” who rises after the darkest day, the light that no darkness can overcome. They do not describe a missionary strategy to rebrand a pagan holiday (McGowan, 2011).
Ambrose of Milan, for example, spoke of Christ as the true sun who outshines the old gods, but gave no hint that the date was chosen to mirror or supplant pagan worship (Ambrose, as cited in McGowan, 2011). To believers of that period, the overlap with solstice symbolism looked like providence, not compromise.
Modern scholarship notes that the idea of Christians selecting December 25 specifically to hijack pagan festivals does not appear in writing until the twelfth century and was popularized much later by eighteenth and nineteenth century comparative religion scholars (McGowan, 2011). In the third century, when Christmas began to emerge, the church had just come through waves of persecution. Christians were generally very careful to separate themselves from pagan public holidays, not align with them.
It is only after Christianity becomes tolerated and then dominant in the empire, especially after AD 312, that we see intentional Christianization of pagan sites and practices. Gregory the Great’s instructions in AD 601 to repurpose pagan temples and feast days for Christian worship are a classic example. By that time, however, evidence suggests that December 25 as a Christmas feast was already known, even in places like North Africa (McGowan, 2011).
So if not a pagan hijack, what led believers to December 25?
The “Calculation Theory”: A Theological Clock
An alternative explanation, one that actually circulated among early Christians, is often called the “Calculation Theory.”
In some Jewish and early Christian circles, there was a traditional belief that great prophets died on the same calendar date as their conception. Life and mission were seen as a perfect, complete circle. This idea shows up in Christian thought by the third century (McGowan, 2011).
In the Western church, the date of Jesus’s crucifixion was traditionally placed on March 25, near the spring equinox. Tertullian of Carthage, writing around AD 200, calculated that 14 Nisan, the Passover date of the crucifixion, fell on March 25 in the Roman calendar (Tertullian, as cited in McGowan, 2011).
If Jesus died on March 25 and if He was conceived on the same date, then His conception and passion coincide. Add nine months. You land on December 25.
A fourth century North African treatise spells this out plainly:
“Our Lord was conceived on the 8th of the Kalends of April [March 25], the day of the passion of the Lord and of His conception … and nine months later, on December 25, He was born” (as cited in McGowan, 2011).
March 25 became the Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of Gabriel’s announcement to Mary, and nine months later, December 25, the Feast of the Nativity.
In the East, a similar calculation using a slightly different calendar placed the crucifixion on April 6, which produced a January 6 birthdate, the origin of the Eastern Christmas-Epiphany date (McGowan, 2011).
In other words, the date of Christmas appears to have flowed from theological reflection, not from pagan borrowing. Believers were trying to tie together the great moments of Christ’s life into a meaningful pattern.
Is that the whole story? Probably not. Symbolism, solstice timing, and pastoral practicality all likely played a part. But “Christians stole Saturnalia” is too simple and not well supported by the early evidence.
At the same time, we should be honest about what happened later. As the gospel spread into Europe, many beloved winter customs eventually attached themselves to Christmas. Roman feasting and gift giving, northern European Yule logs and greenery, and all sorts of local habits were gradually absorbed and reinterpreted in the light of Christ.
What emerged is what we now recognize: Christmas as both a Christian holy day and a cultural winter festival. Some believers celebrated that blending. Others, like the Puritans, tried to pull the plug. But at the center, for Christians, the purpose stayed the same. Christmas is about honoring and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, regardless of the exact day it happened.
The Origin of Santa Claus: St. Nicholas and the Coca-Cola Myth
Ask a room full of people, “Where did Santa come from?” and at least one person will say, “Coca Cola invented him.”
They did not.
The beloved figure of Santa Claus has a very real historical root: Saint Nicholas of Myra, a Christian bishop in the fourth century in what is now Turkey. Nicholas was known for his generosity and courage. Over time, stories multiplied about his kindness and miracles. One of the most famous tells how he secretly provided gold for three impoverished daughters so they would not be sold into slavery, an act that will matter when we get to stockings (History.com, 2014; St. Nicholas Center, n.d.).
Nicholas’s reputation for charity made him one of the most popular saints in medieval Europe. His feast day, December 6, became a day for giving small gifts, especially to children.
In the Netherlands, he was called Sinterklaas, a Dutch form of “Saint Nikolaas.” Dutch tradition pictured him as a dignified bishop with a white beard, wearing red vestments, arriving by boat and then traveling by horse or wagon, often entering homes via the chimney. Dutch immigrants later carried these Sinterklaas customs to New Amsterdam, the city that would become New York (History.com, 2014).
In English-speaking lands, there was also a figure known as Father Christmas, a personification of holiday cheer. Over time, Sinterklaas and Father Christmas began to merge.
The American transformation of this figure took a decisive turn in the early nineteenth century. In 1809, Washington Irving wrote a playful “history” of New York in which he described St. Nicholas as a jolly Dutchman who flew over rooftops in a wagon and dropped gifts down chimneys (Irving, 1809). It was satire, but the image stuck.
Then, in 1823, a poem appeared that would shape Christmas imagination for generations: “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” It recast St. Nicholas not as a bishop, but as a plump, merry, elf-like figure driving a sleigh pulled by eight flying reindeer and slipping down chimneys to leave toys for children. It named each reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder, and Blixem, the last two later popularized as Donner and Blitzen, meaning “thunder” and “lightning” (Moore, 1823).
That poem did for Santa what the Chronography of 354 did for Christmas. It nailed him to a date and gave him a shape.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the image continued to evolve through art and literature. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew Santa again and again in Harper’s Weekly from the 1860s to the 1880s. He showed Santa as a round, jovial man with a full white beard, often in a fur-trimmed coat. In later work, Nast settled on the now classic red suit and even located Santa’s home at the North Pole in an 1879 drawing (Nast, 1881). The idea of Santa’s lists of good and bad children and his workshop of toys all grew in this period.
By the end of the nineteenth century, the American Santa and the British Father Christmas had blended into one character. Santa Claus had become the jolly gift-bringer with reindeer, a sleigh, a Christmas Eve route, and a home at the top of the world.
So where does Coca Cola fit?
Beginning in the 1930s, Coca Cola commissioned illustrator Haddon Sundblom to create Christmas ads featuring Santa drinking Coke. Sundblom built on the existing Santa tradition and painted him as a roly-poly, rosy-cheeked grandfather in a red and white suit. Those full-color ads were wildly successful and helped standardize that particular look of Santa around the world. But they did not create it. Santa had already been appearing in a red suit in nineteenth century art and advertising, including an 1881 confectionery ad and an 1868 magazine cover (The Ferret, 2017).
As one fact-checking article concludes, the red-suited Santa “has been in existence since at least the 19th century … Coca Cola’s 1930s ads helped popularize this version of Santa Claus, but they did not invent it” (The Ferret, 2017).
In short, Santa Claus “comes from” St. Nicholas, but his story passes through Dutch Sinterklaas, English Father Christmas, American humorists, children’s poets, illustrators, and finally global marketing. He is a long, layered, cultural echo of Christian generosity.
Was Saint Nicholas a Real Person?
Yes. Saint Nicholas was almost certainly a real historical person, a Christian bishop whose life later became covered in legend.
According to tradition, Nicholas served as bishop of Myra, a city in Lycia, Asia Minor, and died around AD 343. We do not have writings from Nicholas himself, and the earliest accounts of his life were written later, which has led some historians to be cautious. Even so, lists of bishops and early church records point to a historical Nicholas, and by the sixth century his veneration was widespread in the Eastern empire (History.com, 2014).
Stories of his kindness multiplied. He was said to have rescued sailors in a storm, provided food during famine, defended the wrongly condemned, and, most famously, secretly provided dowries of gold to save three daughters from a desperate fate (St. Nicholas Center, n.d.).
His remains were later moved to Bari, Italy, in the eleventh century, which only increased Western devotion. By the Middle Ages, Nicholas was one of the best loved saints in Europe.
The details of his miracles cannot be verified with modern standards, but the broad picture is clear. There was a bishop named Nicholas. He was remembered as a man of remarkable charity and courage. His reputation for generosity gave rise to centuries of folklore that eventually fed into our modern Santa.
Why Do We Hang Stockings by the Chimney?
The custom of hanging stockings for Santa traces directly to the famous legend of Nicholas and the three daughters.
As the story goes, a poor man had three daughters and no money for dowries. Without dowries, his daughters faced the prospect of slavery or prostitution. Nicholas heard of their situation and decided to help in secret. Under the cover of night, he went to their house and tossed a bag of gold through the window. In one version of the tale, the bag fell into a stocking the daughters had hung by the fireplace to dry (St. Nicholas Center, n.d.).
The next morning, the family found the gold. The eldest daughter was saved. Nicholas repeated the secret gift two more times until all three daughters had dowries. On the third visit, the father caught Nicholas and tried to thank him. Nicholas begged him not to tell anyone. He wanted the glory to go to God.
That story spread across Europe and eventually formed the folk memory behind the stocking tradition. Children began hanging stockings or leaving shoes by the hearth, originally on the eve of St. Nicholas’s feast day, December 6, hoping for a surprise gift. In the Netherlands, children set out shoes by the fireplace to be filled by Sinterklaas. Over time, especially in the English-speaking world, the custom shifted to Christmas Eve and attached itself to Santa Claus.
When we hang stockings by the chimney today, we are rehearsing that old story of anonymous grace. The simple image of Santa filling stockings by the fire is a cultural descendant of Nicholas’s quiet acts of mercy.
Why Does Santa Have Reindeer?
Santa’s reindeer are not ancient. They are early nineteenth century American creativity.
The first known reference to Santa using a reindeer-drawn sleigh appears in an 1821 illustrated booklet titled “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight.” That little poem shows “Santeclaus” riding a sleigh pulled by a single reindeer, delivering gifts on Christmas Eve. An illustration depicts a sleigh and reindeer on a rooftop, the beginning of the now classic imagery (Hearthstone Museum, n.d.).
Two years later, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” expanded the idea. The poem described a miniature sleigh with “eight tiny reindeer” and gave them names: “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen! / On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Dunder and Blixem!” (Moore, 1823). The original Dutch-derived names Dunder and Blixem later became Donner and Blitzen.
That poem was reprinted over and over, and by the mid-1800s, illustrators routinely depicted Santa flying through the sky behind a team of reindeer. The concept became woven into the fabric of Christmas mythology.
Why reindeer rather than horses? Reindeer are native to the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions and were used for centuries by northern peoples to pull sleds. As information about these animals traveled south, they made perfect sense for a magical winter sleigh story. They were strong, cold-resistant, and close enough to reality to feel plausible, yet exotic enough to feel magical.
In 1939, the team grew by one. Robert L. May, an employee of the Montgomery Ward department store, wrote a story-poem about a small, odd reindeer with a glowing red nose. The booklet, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” was handed out to millions of children. A decade later, the Rudolph song turned that story into a cultural giant and added a ninth reindeer to Santa’s team (CUA Library, n.d.).
So the reindeer are not ancient folklore. They are a relatively modern literary invention that caught the imagination of children and never let go.
Where Did the Christmas Tree Come From?
The Christmas tree is a newer tradition than many people realize, and its roots are very specific. It began in medieval German-speaking lands.
On December 24, the church in that region remembered not only Christmas Eve but also the feast of Adam and Eve. In popular religious plays and home customs, people used a green tree to symbolize the Garden of Eden. They would bring a fir or pine tree indoors and decorate it with apples to represent the forbidden fruit (Tikkanen, 2025).
This “paradise tree” stood as a visual reminder of humanity’s fall and the need for redemption.
Over time, additional decorations were added. By the sixteenth century, some traditions credit the reformer Martin Luther with adding candles to a tree to mimic stars shining through an evergreen forest. Whether or not that specific story is historically accurate, by the 1500s there are records of trees decorated with apples, sweets, gilded nuts, paper flowers, and later candles in parts of Germany (Tikkanen, 2025).
The first documented Christmas trees appear in Alsace in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. A 1605 account describes a family that set up a tree in their parlor and decorated it with paper roses, apples, and sweets (Tikkanen, 2025).
The tradition remained mostly German until the nineteenth century. Queen Charlotte, a German-born queen of Britain, reportedly had a Christmas tree at Windsor in the 1790s. The real breakthrough came in 1848 when the Illustrated London News published an engraving of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert (who was German), and their children gathered around a decorated tree at Windsor Castle. That image captured the Victorian imagination, and the Christmas tree soon became fashionable across Britain (Tikkanen, 2025).
German immigrants brought the custom to the United States. In the early 1800s, some communities in Pennsylvania and elsewhere had Christmas trees, although many Americans initially viewed the practice as foreign. New England Puritans, who were suspicious of Christmas in general, saw trees as wasteful or pagan. Over time, especially after American magazines reprinted the royal Christmas tree image, the idea took hold. By the 1870s, Christmas trees were becoming common in American homes (Tikkanen, 2025).
Unlike some winter customs that clearly predate Christianity, the Christmas tree appears to have emerged from these medieval Christian practices rather than from a direct pagan ritual. It is a Christian re-imagining of the evergreen, rooted in the story of Eden and the longing for restored life.
Today the Christmas tree, real or artificial, is almost universal. It represents festivity, life, and light in the darkest weeks of the year. Every time we light a tree, we step into a tradition that brings together Christian symbolism and cultural joy.
Conclusion
When you put all of this together, the picture that emerges is rich and deeply human.
Christmas did not drop from the sky fully formed. It grew. It began as a fourth century decision to honor the birth of Jesus with a feast day. That date, December 25, likely flowed from theological calculation and symbolism more than from any pagan festival. Over time, that feast drew around itself stories and customs: the memory of a real bishop named Nicholas, the stockings tied to his secret generosity, the reindeer born out of American poetry, and the tree that grew from German “paradise” plays into a global symbol of hope.
At the center of all of this stands the same announcement:
“Good news of great joy … a Savior has been born … Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10–11).
The theology and the traditions coexist. The holy day and the holiday sit side by side. One speaks of the God who took on flesh and stepped into history. The other reflects the way that different cultures, across many centuries, have responded with creativity, generosity, and light.
Even the “crazy” questions about dates, pagan influences, reindeer, or Coca Cola do not need to unsettle us. When we look at the evidence carefully, we find that Christmas is historically deeper and theologically stronger than many skeptics assume. Our understanding of the season can be both joyful and well informed.
In the end, Christmas is exactly what you see in a quiet living room late at night, when the tree is lit and the house is still. A mingling of memory, story, and light. A human response to the God who came near.
Selah.
References
Ambrose. (4th century). As cited in McGowan, A. (2011). How December 25 became Christmas. Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(6).
Chronography of 354. (4th century). Philocalian Calendar, entry for December 25.
Clement of Alexandria. (ca. 200). Stromata. As cited in McGowan, A. (2011). How December 25 became Christmas. Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(6).
CUA Library. (n.d.). Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. American Christmas Songbook Collection. Catholic University of America Libraries.
Graves, D. (n.d.). The first recorded celebration of Christmas (336 AD). Christianity.com.
Hearthstone Museum. (n.d.). Santa and reindeer. Hearthstone Historic House Museum.
History.com Editors. (2014, updated 2025). Who was St. Nicholas? History.com.
Irving, W. (1809). A history of New York. Inskeep and Bradford.
McGowan, A. (2011). How December 25 became Christmas. Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(6), 42–47.
Moore, C. C. (1823). A visit from St. Nicholas.
Nast, T. (1881). Merry Old Santa Claus. Harper’s Weekly.
Origen. (3rd century). As cited in McGowan, A. (2011). How December 25 became Christmas. Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(6).
St. Nicholas Center. (n.d.). The legend of the three impoverished maidens. StNicholasCenter.org.
The Ferret Fact Service. (2017). No, Santa Claus was not first dressed in red by Coca-Cola. The Ferret.
Tikkanen, A. (2025). Tradition of Christmas trees. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Tertullian. (ca. 200). As cited in McGowan, A. (2011). How December 25 became Christmas. Biblical Archaeology Review, 37(6).
