Christmas is an
annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus
Christ, observed primarily on December
25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around
the world. A feast central to the
Christian liturgical year, it is preceded by the season of Advent or the Nativity Fast
and initiates the season of Christmastide,
which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night; in some traditions, Christmastide includes an octave. Christmas
Day is a public holiday in many of the world's nations, is celebrated
religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as culturally by many
non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the holiday season centered
around it.
The traditional Christmas
narrative, the Nativity of Jesus,
delineated in the New Testament says
that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in accordance with messianic
prophecies. When Joseph and Mary arrived
in the city, the inn had no room and so they were offered a stable where the Christ Child was soon born, with angels
proclaiming this news to shepherds who then further disseminated the
information.
Although the month and date of Jesus' birth are unknown, the
church in the early fourth century fixed the date as December 25. This corresponds
to the date of the winter solstice on the Roman calendar. Most Christians
celebrate on December 25 in the Gregorian calendar, which has been adopted
almost universally in the civil calendars used in countries throughout the
world. However, some Eastern Christian Churches celebrate Christmas on December
25 of the older Julian calendar, which currently corresponds to a January date
in the Gregorian calendar. For Christians, believing that God came into the
world in the form of man to atone for the sins of humanity, rather than knowing
Jesus' exact birth date, is considered to be the primary purpose in celebrating
Christmas.
The celebratory customs associated in various countries with
Christmas have a mix of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular themes and
origins. Popular modern customs of the
holiday include gift giving; completing an Advent calendar or Advent wreath;
Christmas music and caroling; viewing a Nativity play; an exchange of Christmas
cards; church services; a special meal; and the display of various Christmas
decorations, including Christmas trees, Christmas lights, nativity scenes,
garlands, wreaths, mistletoe, and holly. In addition, several closely related
and often interchangeable figures, known as Santa Claus, Father
Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and Christkind, are associated with
bringing gifts to children during the Christmas season and have their own body
of traditions and lore. Because
gift-giving and many other aspects of the Christmas festival involve heightened
economic activity, the holiday has become a significant event and a key sales
period for retailers and businesses. The economic impact of Christmas has grown
steadily over the past few centuries in many regions of the world.
Etymology
"Christmas"
is a shortened form of "Christ's
mass". The word is recorded as Crīstesmæsse in 1038 and Cristes-messe
in 1131. Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is
from Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation of Hebrew Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ),
"Messiah", meaning "anointed"; and mæsse is from Latin
missa, the celebration of the Eucharist.
The form Christenmas was also historically used, but is now
considered archaic and dialectal. The
term derives from Middle English Cristenmasse, meaning "Christian
mass". Xmas is an abbreviation of
Christmas found particularly in print, based on the initial letter chi (Χ) in
Greek Khrīstos (Χριστός), "Christ", though numerous style guides
discourage its use. This abbreviation
has precedent in Middle English Χρ̄es masse (where "Χρ̄" is an
abbreviation for Χριστός).
Other names
In addition to "Christmas", the holiday has been
known by various other names throughout its history. The Anglo-Saxons referred
to the feast as "midwinter", or, more rarely, as Nātiuiteð (from Latin
nātīvitās below). "Nativity",
meaning "birth", is from Latin nātīvitās. In Old English, Gēola (Yule) referred to the
period corresponding to December and January, which was eventually equated with
Christian Christmas. "Noel"
(or "Nowel") entered English in the late 14th century and is from the
Old French noël or naël, itself ultimately from the Latin nātālis (diēs)
meaning "birth (day)".
Nativity
The gospels of Luke and Matthew describe Jesus as being born
in Bethlehem to the Virgin Mary. In Luke, Joseph and Mary travel from Nazareth
to Bethlehem for the census, and Jesus is born there and laid in a manger. Angels proclaimed him a savior for all people,
and shepherds came to adore him.
Matthew adds that the magi follow a star to Bethlehem to
bring gifts to Jesus, born the king of the Jews. King Herod orders the massacre
of all the boys less than two years old in Bethlehem, but the family flees to
Egypt and later returns to Nazareth.
History
The nativity sequences included in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke
prompted early Christian writers to suggest various dates for the anniversary. Although no date is indicated in the gospels,
early Christians connected Jesus to the Sun through the use of such phrases as
"Sun of righteousness." The
Romans marked the winter solstice on December 25. The first recorded Christmas celebration was
in Rome on 25 December 336. In the 3rd
century, the date of the nativity was the subject of great interest. Around AD
200, Clement of Alexandria wrote:
There are those who
have determined not only the year of our Lord's birth, but also the day; and
they say that it took place in the 28th year of Augustus, and in the 25th day
of [the Egyptian month] Pachon [May 20] ... Further, others say that He was
born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi [April 20 or 21].
Various factors contributed to the selection of December 25
as a date of celebration: it was the date of the winter solstice on the Roman
calendar and it was about nine months after March 25, the date of the vernal
equinox and a date linked to the conception of Jesus (now Annunciation).
Christmas played a role in the Arian controversy of the
fourth century. After this controversy ran its course, the prominence of the
holiday declined for a few centuries. The feast regained prominence after 800
when Charlemagne was crowned emperor on Christmas Day. Later during the
Protestant Reformation, the Puritans banned Christmas in England, associating
it with drunkenness and other misbehavior. It was restored as a legal holiday in England
in 1660, but remained disreputable in the minds of many people. In the early
19th century, Christmas was reconceived by Washington Irving, Charles Dickens,
and other authors as a holiday emphasizing family, children, kind-heartedness,
gift-giving, and Santa Claus.
Introduction of the
festival
Christmas does not appear on the lists of festivals given by
the early Christian writers Irenaeus and Tertullian. Origen and Arnobius both fault the pagans for
celebrating birthdays, which suggests that Christmas was not celebrated in
their time. Arnobius wrote after AD 297.
The Chronography of 354 records that a Christmas celebration took place in Rome
in 336.
In the East, the birth of Jesus was celebrated in connection
with the Epiphany on January 6. This
holiday was not primarily about the nativity, but rather the baptism of
Jesus. Christmas was promoted in the East as part of
the revival of Orthodox Christianity that followed the death of the pro-Arian
Emperor Valens at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. The feast was introduced in
Constantinople in 379, in Antioch by John Chrysostom towards the end of the
fourth century, probably in 388, and in Alexandria in the following century.
Solstice date
Mosaic of Jesus as Christus Sol (Christ the Sun) in
Mausoleum M in the pre-fourth-century necropolis under St Peter's Basilica in
Rome.
December 25 was the date of the winter solstice on the Roman
calendar. A late fourth-century sermon
by Saint Augustine explains why this was a fitting day to celebrate Christ's
nativity: "Hence it is that He was
born on the day which is the shortest in our earthly reckoning and from which
subsequent days begin to increase in length. He, therefore, who bent low and
lifted us up, chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to
increase."
Linking Jesus to the Sun was supported by various Biblical
passages. Jesus was considered to be the "Sun of righteousness"
prophesied by Malachi: "Unto you
shall the sun of righteousness arise, and healing is in his wings."
Such solar symbolism could support more than one date of
birth. An anonymous work known as De Pascha Computus (243) linked the idea that
creation began at the spring equinox, on March 25, with the conception or birth
(the word nascor can mean either) of Jesus on March 28, the day of the creation
of the sun in the Genesis account. One translation reads: "O the splendid and divine providence of the
Lord, that on that day, the very day, on which the sun was made, March 28, a
Wednesday, Christ should be born.
In the 17th century, Isaac Newton argued that the date of
Christmas was selected to correspond with the solstice.
According to Steven Hijmans of the University of Alberta,
"It is cosmic symbolism ... which
inspired the Church leadership in Rome to elect the southern solstice, December
25, as the birthday of Christ, and the northern solstice as that of John the
Baptist, supplemented by the equinoxes as their respective dates of conception."
Calculation
hypothesis
The calculation hypothesis suggests that an earlier holiday
held on March 25 became associated with the Incarnation. Modern scholars refer to this feast as the Quartodecimal.
Christmas was then calculated as nine months later. The calculation hypothesis
was proposed by French writer Louis Duchesne in 1889. In modern times, March 25 is celebrated as
Annunciation. This holiday was created in the seventh century and was assigned
to a date that is nine months before Christmas, in addition to being the
traditional date of the equinox. It is unrelated to the Quartodecimal, which
had been forgotten by this time.
Early Christians celebrated the life of Jesus on a date
considered equivalent to 14 Nisan (Passover) on the local calendar. Because
Passover was held on the 14th of the month, this feast is referred to as the
Quartodecimal. All the major events of Christ's life, especially the passion,
were celebrated on this date. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul mentions
Passover, presumably celebrated according to the local calendar in Corinth. Tertullian
(d. 220), who lived in Latin-speaking North Africa, gives the date of passion
celebration as March 25. The date of the
passion was moved to Good Friday in 165 when Pope Soter created Easter by
reassigning the Resurrection to a Sunday. According to the calculation
hypothesis, the celebration of the quartodecimal continued in some areas and
the feast became associated with Incarnation.
The calculation hypothesis is considered academically to be
"a thoroughly viable hypothesis", though not certain. It was a traditional Jewish belief that great
men were born and died on the same day, so lived a whole number of years,
without fractions: Jesus was therefore considered to have been conceived on
March 25, as he died on March 25, which was calculated to have coincided with
14 Nisan. A passage in Commentary on the
Prophet Daniel (204) by Hippolytus of Rome identifies December 25 as the date
of the nativity. This passage is generally considered a late interpellation.
But the manuscript includes another passage, one that is more likely to be
authentic, that gives the passion as March 25.
In 221, Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 – c. 240) gave March
25 as the day of creation and of the conception of Jesus in his universal
history. This conclusion was based on solar symbolism, with March 25 the date
of the equinox. As this implies a birth in December, it is sometimes claimed to
be the earliest identification of December 25 as the nativity. However,
Africanus was not such an influential writer that it is likely he determined
the date of Christmas.
The tractate De solstitia et aequinoctia conceptionis et nativitatis
Domini nostri Iesu Christi et Iohannis Baptistae, falsely attributed to John
Chrysostom, also argued that Jesus was conceived and crucified on the same day
of the year and calculated this as March 25. This anonymous tract also states: "But Our Lord, too, is born in the month of
December ... the eight before the calends of January [25 December] ..., But
they call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who indeed is so unconquered as
Our Lord...? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, He is the Sun
of Justice."
History of religions
hypothesis
The rival "History of Religions" hypothesis
suggests that the Church selected December 25 date to appropriate festivities
held by the Romans in honor of the Sun god Sol Invictus. This cult was established by Aurelian in 274.
An explicit expression of this theory appears in an annotation of uncertain
date added to a manuscript of a work by 12th-century Syrian bishop Jacob
Bar-Salibi. The scribe who added it wrote:
"It was a custom
of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at
which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and
revelries, the Christians also took part. Accordingly, when the doctors of the
Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took
counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that
day."
In 1743, German Protestant Paul Ernst Jablonski argued
Christmas was placed on December 25 to correspond with the Roman solar holiday
Dies Natalis Solis Invicti and was therefore a "paganization" that
debased the true church. It has been
argued that, on the contrary, the Emperor Aurelian, who in 274 instituted the
holiday of the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, did so partly as an attempt to give
a pagan significance to a date already important for Christians in Rome.
Hermann Usener and others proposed that the Christians chose
this day because it was the Roman feast celebrating the birthday of Sol
Invictus. Modern scholar S. E. Hijmans, however, states that "While they were aware that pagans called
this day the 'birthday' of Sol Invictus, this did not concern them and it did
not play any role in their choice of date for Christmas." Moreover,
Thomas J. Talley holds that the Roman Emperor Aurelian placed a festival of Sol
Invictus on December 25 in order to compete with the growing rate of the Christian
Church, which had already been celebrating Christmas on that date first. In the judgement of the Church of England
Liturgical Commission, the History of Religions hypothesis has been challenged
by a view based on an old tradition, according to which the date of Christmas
was fixed at nine months after March 25, the date of the vernal equinox, on
which the Annunciation was celebrated.
With regard to a December religious feast of the deified Sun
(Sol), as distinct from a solstice feast of the birth (or rebirth) of the
astronomical sun, one scholar has commented that "while the winter solstice on or around December 25 was well established
in the Roman imperial calendar, there is no evidence that a religious
celebration of Sol on that day antedated the celebration of Christmas".
"Thomas Talley has shown that,
although the Emperor Aurelian's dedication of a temple to the sun god in the
Campus Martius (C.E. 274) probably took place on the 'Birthday of the
Invincible Sun' on December 25, the cult of the sun in pagan Rome ironically
did not celebrate the winter solstice nor any of the other quarter-tense days,
as one might expect. The Oxford
Companion to Christian Thought remarks on the uncertainty about the order of
precedence between the religious celebrations of the Birthday of the
Unconquered Sun and of the birthday of Jesus, stating that the hypothesis that
December 25 was chosen for celebrating the birth of Jesus on the basis of the
belief that his conception occurred on March 25 "potentially establishes 25 December as a Christian festival before
Aurelian's decree, which, when promulgated, might have provided for the
Christian feast both opportunity and challenge".
Post-classical
history
In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas Day was overshadowed by
Epiphany, which in western Christianity focused on the visit of the magi. But
the medieval calendar was dominated by Christmas-related holidays. The forty
days before Christmas became the "forty days of St. Martin" (which
began on November 11, the feast of St. Martin of Tours), now known as Advent. In Italy, former Saturnalian traditions were
attached to Advent. Around the 12th
century, these traditions transferred again to the Twelve Days of Christmas
(December 25 – January 5); a time that appears in the liturgical calendars as
Christmastide or Twelve Holy Days.
The prominence of Christmas Day increased gradually after
Charlemagne was crowned Emperor on Christmas Day in 800. King Edmund the Martyr
was anointed on Christmas in 855 and King William I of England was crowned on
Christmas Day 1066.
By the High Middle Ages, the holiday had become so prominent
that chroniclers routinely noted where various magnates celebrated Christmas.
King Richard II of England hosted a Christmas feast in 1377 at which
twenty-eight oxen and three hundred sheep were eaten. The Yule boar was a
common feature of medieval Christmas feasts. Caroling also became popular, and
was originally performed by a group of dancers who sang. The group was composed
of a lead singer and a ring of dancers that provided the chorus. Various
writers of the time condemned caroling as lewd, indicating that the unruly
traditions of Saturnalia and Yule may have continued in this form.[83]
"Misrule"—drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling—was also an important
aspect of the festival. In England, gifts were exchanged on New Year's Day, and
there was special Christmas ale.
Christmas during the Middle Ages was a public festival that
incorporated ivy, holly, and other evergreens. Christmas gift-giving during the Middle Ages
was usually between people with legal relationships, such as tenant and
landlord. The annual indulgence in
eating, dancing, singing, sporting, and card playing escalated in England, and
by the 17th century the Christmas season featured lavish dinners, elaborate
masques, and pageants. In 1607, King James I insisted that a play be acted on
Christmas night and that the court indulge in games. It was during the Reformation in
16th–17th-century Europe that many Protestants changed the gift bringer to the
Christ Child or Christkindl, and the date of giving gifts changed from December
6 to Christmas Eve.
Modern history
Associating it with drunkenness and other misbehavior, the
Puritans banned Christmas in England in the 17th century. It was restored as a legal holiday in 1660,
but remained disreputable. In the early 19th century, the Oxford Movement in
the Anglican Church ushered in "the
development of richer and more symbolic forms of worship, the building of neo-Gothic
churches, and the revival and increasing centrality of the keeping of Christmas
itself as a Christian festival" as well as "special charities for the poor" in addition to "special services
and musical events". Charles
Dickens and other writers helped in this revival of the holiday by
"changing consciousness of Christmas and the way in which it was
celebrated" as they emphasized family, religion, gift-giving, and social
reconciliation as opposed to the historic revelry common in some places.
18th century
Following the Protestant Reformation, many of the new
denominations, including the Anglican Church and Lutheran Church, continued to
celebrate Christmas. In 1629, the
Anglican poet John Milton penned On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, a poem
that has since been read by many during Christmastide. Donald Heinz, a professor at California State
University, states that Martin Luther "inaugurated
a period in which Germany would produce a unique culture of Christmas, much
copied in North America." Among
the congregations of the Dutch Reformed Church, Christmas was celebrated as one
of the principal evangelical feasts.
However, in 17th century England, some groups such as the Puritans
strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic
invention and the "trappings of popery" or the "rags of the
Beast". In contrast, the
established Anglican Church "pressed
for a more elaborate observance of feasts, penitential seasons, and saints'
days. The calendar reform became a major point of tension between the Anglican
party and the Puritan party." The Catholic Church also responded, promoting
the festival in a more religiously oriented form. King Charles I of England
directed his noblemen and gentry to return to their landed estates in midwinter
to keep up their old-style Christmas generosity. Following the Parliamentarian victory over
Charles I during the English Civil War, England's Puritan rulers banned
Christmas in 1647.
Protests followed as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in
several cities and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who
decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans.[48] The book, The
Vindication of Christmas (London, 1652), argued against the Puritans, and makes
note of Old English Christmas traditions, dinner, roast apples on the fire,
card playing, dances with "plow-boys" and "maidservants",
old Father Christmas and carol singing.
The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 ended the ban,
but many Calvinist clergymen still disapproved of Christmas celebration. As
such, in Scotland, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland discouraged the
observance of Christmas, and though James VI commanded its celebration in 1618,
attendance at church was scant. The
Parliament of Scotland officially abolished the observance of Christmas in
1640, claiming that the church had been "purged of all superstitious
observation of days". It was not until 1958 that Christmas again
became a Scottish public holiday.
Following the Restoration of Charles II, Poor Robin's
Almanack contained the lines: "Now
thanks to God for Charles return, / Whose absence made old Christmas mourns. /
For then we scarcely did it know, / Whether it Christmas were or no." The diary of James Woodforde, from the latter
half of the 18th century, details the observance of Christmas and celebrations
associated with the season over a number of years.
In Colonial America, the Pilgrims of New England shared
radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas. The Plymouth Pilgrims put their
loathing for the day into practice in 1620 when they spent their first
Christmas Day in the New World working – thus demonstrating their complete
contempt for the day. Non-Puritans in
New England deplored the loss of the holidays enjoyed by the laboring classes
in England. Christmas observance was outlawed
in Boston in 1659. The ban by the
Puritans was revoked in 1681 by English governor Edmund Andros, however it was
not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in
the Boston region.
At the same time, Christian residents of Virginia and New
York observed the holiday freely. Pennsylvania German Settlers, pre-eminently
the Moravian settlers of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Lititz in Pennsylvania and the
Wachovia Settlements in North Carolina, were enthusiastic celebrators of
Christmas. The Moravians in Bethlehem had the first Christmas trees in America
as well as the first Nativity Scenes. Christmas fell out of favor in the United
States after the American Revolution, when it was considered an English custom.
George Washington attacked Hessian
(German) mercenaries on the day after Christmas during the Battle of Trenton on
December 26, 1776, Christmas being much more popular in Germany than in America
at this time.
With the atheistic Cult of Reason in power during the era of
Revolutionary France, Christian Christmas religious services were banned and
the three kings cake was renamed the "equality cake" under
anticlerical government policies.
19th century
In the UK, Christmas Day became a bank holiday in 1834.
Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, was added in 1871.
In the early-19th century, writers imagined Tudor Christmas
as a time of heartfelt celebration. In 1843, Charles Dickens wrote the novel A
Christmas Carol that helped revive the "spirit" of Christmas and
seasonal merriment. Its instant
popularity played a major role in portraying Christmas as a holiday emphasizing
family, goodwill, and compassion.
Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered
festival of generosity, linking "worship and feasting, within a context of
social reconciliation." Superimposing his humanitarian vision of the
holiday, in what has been termed "Carol Philosophy", Dickens influenced many aspects of Christmas
that are celebrated today in Western culture, such as family gatherings,
seasonal food and drink, dancing, games, and a festive generosity of spirit. A prominent phrase from the tale, "Merry
Christmas", was popularized following the appearance of the story. This coincided with the appearance of the
Oxford Movement and the growth of Anglo-Catholicism, which led a revival in
traditional rituals and religious observances.
The term Scrooge became a synonym for miser, with "Bah!
Humbug!" dismissive of the festive spirit. In 1843, the first commercial Christmas card
was produced by Sir Henry Cole. The
revival of the Christmas Carol began with William Sandys's "Christmas
Carols Ancient and Modern" (1833), with the first appearance in print of
"The First Noel", "I Saw Three Ships", "Hark the
Herald Angels Sing" and "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen",
popularized in Dickens' A Christmas Carol.
In Britain, the Christmas tree was introduced in the early
19th century following the personal union with the Kingdom of Hanover by
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III. In 1832, the future
Queen Victoria wrote about her delight at having a Christmas tree, hung with
lights, ornaments, and presents placed round it. After her marriage to her German cousin Prince
Albert, by 1841 the custom became more widespread throughout Britain.
An image of the British royal family with their Christmas
tree at Windsor Castle created a sensation when it was published in the
Illustrated London News in 1848. A modified version of this image was published
in the United States in 1850. By the
1870s, putting up a Christmas tree had become common in America.
In America, interest in Christmas had been revived in the
1820s by several short stories by Washington Irving which appear in his The
Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. and "Old Christmas". Irving's
stories depicted harmonious warm-hearted English Christmas festivities he
experienced while staying in Aston Hall, Birmingham, England, that had largely
been abandoned, and he used the tract Vindication of Christmas (1652) of Old
English Christmas traditions, that he had transcribed into his journal as a
format for his stories.
In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore wrote the poem A Visit From
St. Nicholas (popularly known by its first line: Twas the Night Before
Christmas). The poem helped popularize
the tradition of exchanging gifts, and seasonal Christmas shopping began to
assume economic importance. This also
started the cultural conflict between the holiday's spiritual significance and
its associated commercialism that some see as corrupting the holiday. In her
1850 book The First Christmas in New England, Harriet Beecher Stowe includes a
character who complains that the true meaning of Christmas was lost in a shopping
spree.
While the celebration of Christmas was not yet customary in
some regions in the U.S., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow detected "a
transition state about Christmas here in New England" in 1856. "The old puritan feeling prevents it from
being a cheerful, hearty holiday; though every year makes it more so."
In Reading, Pennsylvania, a newspaper
remarked in 1861, "Even our Presbyterian
friends who have hitherto steadfastly ignored Christmas—threw open their church
doors and assembled in force to celebrate the anniversary of the Savior's birth."
The First Congregational Church of Rockford, Illinois,
"although of genuine Puritan stock", was 'preparing for a grand
Christmas jubilee', a news correspondent reported in 1864. By 1860, fourteen states including several
from New England had adopted Christmas as a legal holiday. In 1875, Louis Prang introduced the Christmas
card to Americans. He has been called the "father of the American
Christmas card". On June 28, 1870,
Christmas was formally declared a United States federal holiday.
20th century
Up to the 1950s in the UK, many Christmas customs were
restricted to the upper classes and better-off families. The mass of the
population had not adopted many of the Christmas rituals that later became
general. The Christmas tree was rare. Christmas dinner might be beef or goose —
certainly not turkey. In their stockings children might get an apple, orange,
and sweets. Full celebration of a family Christmas with all the trimmings only
became widespread with increased prosperity from the 1950s. National papers were published on Christmas
Day until 1912. Post was still delivered on Christmas Day until 1961. League
football matches continued in Scotland until the 1970s while in England they
ceased at the end of the 1950s.
Under the state atheism of the Soviet Union, after its
foundation in 1917, Christmas celebrations—along with other Christian holidays—were
prohibited in public. During the 1920s,
'30s, and '40s, the League of Militant Atheists encouraged school pupils to
campaign against Christmas traditions, such as the Christmas tree, as well as
other Christian holidays, including Easter; the League established an
antireligious holiday to be the 31st of each month as a replacement. At the height of this persecution, in 1929, on
Christmas Day, children in Moscow were encouraged to spit on crucifixes as a
protest against the holiday. It was not
until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the persecution ended
and Orthodox Christmas became a state holiday again for the first time in Russia
after seven decades.
European History Professor Joseph Perry wrote that likewise,
in Nazi Germany, "because Nazi ideologues saw organized religion as an
enemy of the totalitarian state, propagandists sought to deemphasize—or
eliminate altogether—the Christian aspects of the holiday" and that "Propagandists tirelessly promoted numerous
Nazified Christmas songs, which replaced Christian themes with the regime's
racial ideologies."
As Christmas celebrations began to be held around the world
even outside traditional Christian cultures in the 20th century, some Muslim-majority
countries subsequently banned the practice of Christmas, claiming it undermines
Islam.
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