Continuing with the 12 words for Christmas, the second word in my set of obscure terms that may help to understand how Christmas evolved to its current form is Burmalia.
2. Brumalia.
Many of the trappings of Christmas; the tree, the holly, the mistletoe and the Yule log (symbolic of burning Baldur), can be traced to Norse and Celtic sources. But those are not the only pagan sources that shaped our Christmas celebrations. We may have a deal of respect for the Greeks and the Romans, but let’s face it, they were pagans too. And being pagans, they had no idea what Christmas was or should be.
Instead they celebrated Brumalia. And Brumalia is, well, it’s Hweolor-tid or Yuletide. The word brumalia comes from the Latin bruma which means, shortest day. Brumalia fell on 25th December in the Roman calendar. Initially, it was a festival in honor of Dionysus (if you were Greek) or Bacchus (if you were Roman) who were not sun gods but gods of revelry, so celebrations could well be orgiastic.
On Dec. 25th, AD 274, this changed. That was when Roman Emperor Aurelian officially fixed December 25th as the winter solstice, and declared Sol, the sun-god, to be principal patron of the empire. Sol was also known as Sol Invictus – the unconquered sun and had been part of the Roman pantheon since Romulus and Remus were in swaddling clothes. December 25th was officially designated as the “birth of Sol.”
At that time, the Christians had no interest in Christmas and never celebrated Christ’s birth. Indeed Origen, one of the early fathers of the church even opined; “It is only sinners like Pharaoh and Herod who make great rejoicings over the day in which they were born into this world.”
So who put the Christ in Christmas?
The earliest record of Christmas comes from an AD 336 calendar, found in Rome, and Christmas Day was the familiar December 25th. The year AD 336 was towards the end of the reign of Emperor Constantine, who converted himself and his still proud empire to Christianity.
Constantine paved the way for establishing Christmas. He dethroned Sol, the sun god favored by Aurelian, replacing him with Christ. He gave Sol’s day (Sunday) to the Christians by moving the Christian sabbath from Saturday to Sunday (the day of the sun), in effect aligning Christ with the Sun god. Constantine might as well have been a pope.
However it was not him, but Pope Julius, (AD 337 to AD 352), who, after long deliberations and on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, determined that Christ must have been born on or about December 25th. Of course he may simply have concluded that since Horus, Mithra, Attis, Dyonisus and Krishna were born on the winter solstice, it was unlikely that Christ would choose any other day to don his mortal coil. In any event, by the fifth century, the Roman Catholic Church officially sanctioned the celebration of the birth of Christ be observed on December 25.
As to when Christ was actually born; that’s a mystery. Some authorities, consulting the scant evidence available in the New Testament (shepherds don’t watch their flocks much in Winter) maintain that it must have been Spetmeber or October, which others argue with equal conviction that it was between March and May. And most estimate the year to have been about 5BC – which seems a little absurd, Christ being born 5 years before he was officially born. However there’s no evidence of comets or unusual celestial events around AD 1.
In any event, Brumalia was hijacked. Brumalia is Christmas, and Christmas is Brumalia and so is Hweolor-tid.
The following are links to all the Xmas words: #1 Hwoelor-tid, #2 Brumalia, #3 Protomartyr, #4 Dulocracy, #5 Pohutukawa, #6 Hagiolatry, #7 Sinterklaas, #8 Prolicide, #9 Apophoret,#10 Kenosis,#11 Psilanthropy,#12 Parepochism
~ Napoleon Bonaparte
