Was the date of Christmas just derived from Saturnalia and other winter pagan festivals?
Upvote:2
The answer to the title question is no, it was not. Tim O'Neill is an atheist historian devoted to debunking poor historical takes that turn into atheist memes. This is one of them. You can read his blog entry here discussing why this common meme is fake.
Some highlights
[W]e get the same claims repeated endlessly, with the usual level of historical research put into them that we would expect for this low level journalistic chore; i.e. pretty much none. It would not be too hard for these poor journalists to work out that most of the claims about pagan origins of Christmas and its customs are nonsense – after all, there are excellent resources available on the internet which do this in some detail. But journalists assigned to this kind of task are not likely to go against the grain and debunk the standard pieces of this type and most of their readers do not like debunkings anyway. So each “pagan Christmas” article echoes the previous ones, like an endless succession of ghosts of Christmas past.
Spencer Alexander McDaniel’s Tales of Times Forgotten blog has a very detailed analysis on the subject which shows that, in fact, most elements of Christmas claimed as “pagan” actually are not
He goes on to list a number of relevant articles from the Tales of Times Forgotten blog
On the non-paganess of Christmas: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/12/08/just-how-pagan-is-christmas-really/
On Saturnalia specifically: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/18/how-was-saturnalia-celebrated-in-ancient-rome/
Ultimately, your infographic is correct. We celebrate the annunciation on March 25th, and 9 months later is December 25th. Whether or not the annunciation actually took place on March 25th is irrelevant (and sometimes contested), as the date of Christmas is derived from the date of the annunciation, not any days of pagan importance.
About the author for the History for Atheists website, which is a great resource that should be bookmarked by any Christian apologists.
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