Christmas Was Not a Pagan Holiday: How To Shut Down Family Idiot Arguing Otherwise

In this episode, we delve into the origins of Christmas traditions, debunking the commonly held belief that many of them stem from pagan practices. We examine historical evidence that suggests the celebration of Jesus's birth on December 25th predates the Sol Invictus festival, discuss the origins of the Christmas tree and its late entry into Christian tradition, and clarify the role of Santa Claus, who originated from the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas. From an exploration of early Christian documents to exposing myths perpetuated by 19th-century German nationalist ideologies, this episode sets the record straight on what truly influenced our beloved Christmas customs.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] The earliest evidence for Christians marking December 25th as Jesus's birthday predates the earliest evidence of a Sol Invictus festival on that date.

, and keep in mind, the earliest evidence and the only evidence of a Sol Invictus holiday on that date was written by Christians. So it would have been practiced around Christian communities that were already practicing a celebration tied to Jesus's birth on that day.

Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah, who's to say that, yeah, it wasn't because of Christmas,

Speaker: My life has been a lie! God is dead! The government's lame! Thanksgiving is about killing Indians! Jesus wasn't born on Christmas! They moved the date, it was a pagan holiday!

Malcolm Collins: Santa Claus was a saint festival that was moved to correspond with. Jesus's birthday. It was not that some, it's not that Jesus's birthday was moved to correspond with a pagan celebration.

It was an already totally Christian saints festival was moved to correspond with a totally Christian [00:01:00] Jesus's birthday as by early church leaders. Right. So it's just some

Simone Collins: religious musical chairs, but all within the faith.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today. We are going to be discussing the pernicious myth. Many Christian celebrations around Christmas came or are descended from pagan celebrations. What? They are not? I thought they always Yeah, you must have heard this growing up where people are like, Oh, this came from a pagan celebration.

This came from a pagan celebration. And in almost every case, There not only is literally zero strong evidence that they are, there is very strong evidence they did not. And there is actually also evidence in a number of cases that some celebrations that they're like, yeah, but pagans did practice this.

And you're like, Yeah, and they started about [00:02:00] 200 years after Christians did. Are you kidding me? They borrowed it from Christians, not the other way around.

Simone Collins: What? This is crazy. Every year I get in the Christmas spirit and I watch a ton of videos on the history of Christmas and the pagan origins of Christmas and you're subverting that all right

Malcolm Collins: now?

I am. But hold on. I couldn't subvert this on so many levels. So the specific ones that we're going to be addressing are is Christmas copied from Sol Invictus celebration or did it get its date from a Sol Invictus celebration

Simone Collins: or Saturnalia

Malcolm Collins: or Saturnalia?

We're also going to be discussing Saturnalia separately.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And is the Christmas tree pagan? . Specifically, we'll be arguing in the case of the Christmas tree that the tradition of the Christmas tree is not ancient, it's not derived from Saturnalia, Yule, or Norse mythology.

And then, finally we will touch briefly on Santa Claus being Christian. But, we're gonna hit this from a really weird angle. Because What may surprise you is I thought [00:03:00] that all of this propaganda about this stuff not being Christian in origin Yeah, came from the modern new age pagan like counterculture movement

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, like I'm a Wiccan or I like my druid ceremony and I want to feel like I'm being I'm doing the real Christmas Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I'm doing the real Christmas.

Turns out it didn't come from them

What? So, well, but who is Oh, hold on, hold on.

Simone, obviously, can you guess who it came from? This whole Christmas Oh, our ancestors. I'll give you a clue. They're one of our ancestral groups.

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: Puritans. Yeah. The Puritans in the 16th and 17th century. Because they were

Simone Collins: trying to be like, well, we don't want to celebrate Christmas, because that's some like pure, that's some like, pagan nonsense.

Actually,

Malcolm Collins: Massachusetts outlawed the celebration of Christian for 22 years.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That, that I understood. I knew that the Puritans were all, we don't do Christmas.

Malcolm Collins: What I would say is they were not crazy not to, [00:04:00] to see it as pagan either. So think about it from a Puritan perspective. Okay. You have like many people today where they're like, wait, like when.

When COVID happened and everything like that, they were like, wait, the government's been gaslighting me for a long time. Like they're just been lying to me about stuff. Like I doubt everything. And then they went into like QAnon spiral conspiracy theory mode. With the Puritans, you know, the, the, the Bible was being printed.

They were like, Hey, this doesn't align with what the Catholic church says. You know, let's look to the Bible for what is Christian. And you look in the Bible. And they're like this Christmas stuff is not in here.

Simone Collins: The tree's

Malcolm Collins: not here. The Santa Claus guy is not here. And so they're then like, okay, where did it all come from?

It must be pagan. And I'd also put this in the context of some lines in the Bible that would make them especially suspicious. So if you look at something like Jeremiah 10, 1 through 5, it says, Hear what the Lord says to you, [00:05:00] people of Israel. This is what the Lord says. Do not learn the ways of the nations, or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them, for the practices of the people are worthless.

They cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails, so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field.

Simone Collins: Sorry. That's so niche. They

Malcolm Collins: must be carried because they cannot walk. They do not fear them. They do not harm them, nor can they do any good. Now note here, people often shorten this. So if you just hear it like that, you're like, that doesn't sound too much like a Christmas tree, but let's take out about half the words.

Okay. Do not learn the ways of the nations.

Simone Collins: All right. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: For the practices of the people are worthless. They cut a tree out of the forest. They adorn it with silver and gold. [00:06:00] And then people are like that sounds like a Christmas tree.

Okay. But if you hear the

whole context, you're like, okay, clearly this isn't a Christmas tree.

They're talking about the creation of idols that people used to assign special powers to. Nobody really assigns powers to a Christmas tree. Like nobody thinks like the Christmas tree is generating the present. So largely what we're going to find in this explanation as I go through things is that every one of these practices around Christmas is something that likely developed after the time of Christ, but within Christian communities without much external pagan influence and where it does look like there's pagan influence, that's just not the case.

A convergent adoption of an important time, i. e. the winter solstice. There would be a reason for pagans to have celebrations around the winter solstice, and there would be a separate reason for Christians to have celebrations around the winter solstice. But let's go into [00:07:00] this, alright? Anything you want to get into before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, I'm intrigued

Malcolm Collins: because you'd always heard and you believe that this is pagan stuff because it makes sense. It like looks pagan, right? Like, yep.

Simone Collins: All right. It's all sort of, you know, nature and darkness and bringing light and there's nothing inherently. about Jesus being born in there. So seems intuitive.

Malcolm Collins: The argument that Christians chose to celebrate Christmas on December 25th to compete with or co opt the popular pagan festival of Sol Invictus is not supported by strong evidence. Sol Invictus was a relatively minor deity until the third century CE. Unlike major Roman deities like Jupiter or Apollo, Sol Invictus lacked the widespread recognition and dedicated cultic practices that would usually accompany a popular deity.

This lack of widespread importance calls into question the theory that Christians felt particularly threatened by Sol Invictus. December 25th was [00:08:00] not a long standing or particularly important festival day for Sol Invictus. The earliest evidence of a December 25th festival dedicated to Sol Invictus is found in the calendar of three five.

for a Christian document composed 80 years after Emperor Aurelian, who is often credited with popularizing the sun god, instituted a festival in honor of Sol Invictus. The calendar of 354 is also our only source mentioning December 25th as the birthday of Sol Invictus. The problem here being is that the calendar of 354 Also mentions two other Sol Invictus festivals that were likely, given the evidence we have, more important than the December 25th festival.

Specifically, a multi day festival celebrated from October 19th to 22nd, and a festival for the sun and moon on August 28th. The Luddite Solus festival even involved a greater number of chariot races than the December 25th festival, 36 compared to 30. This [00:09:00] Makes it look very unlikely that the so just a little bit of background for people who don't know there was this Roman emperor who really liked to cross dress.

And he came up with the idea of combining all of the gods into 1 God. And he called this God's soul. Invictus. This happened after Christ, but still pretty early in the Christian tradition in a way that it. really paved the way for the Roman Empire to accept Christianity and a singular God. But it was still very Romany in, in nature.

And this is the sole Invictus and our, One of our daughters actually has a name that was partially inspired by this , uh, third child uh, Collins, but to go further here and to some people like, oh, well, Rome had this God that was a one God that was a sun God.

And so we'll say that that Christians just borrowed that date. But in a second, we'll get to some really major problems for this.

Simone Collins: All right.

Malcolm Collins: So now you [00:10:00] might be asking, okay, well, if they weren't choosing the date because of you know, the Sol Invictus celebration, why might they have been choosing the date?

Simone Collins: Right?

Malcolm Collins: It's more likely that Christians selected December 25th as a date for Christmas because early Christian Chronographers were attempting to calculate the key moments of Jesus's life.

This is known as calculation theory. These chronographers were likely motivated by a desire to align dates of important events in Jesus's life with dates of the winter solstice, December 25th, and the vernal equinox, March 25th, because of their poetic and cosmic symbolism. However uh, now you could say, am I saying that they just completely got these dates wrong?

Probably not, because December 25th was not the only widely accepted date for Jesus birth. Christians of the Eastern Roman Empire celebrated Christmas on January 6th, a date that did not correspond with either the winter solstice or a pagan holiday. So what is my [00:11:00] guess? My guess is that the correct date for Jesus's birth is likely January six, because there is no other reason to have chosen that date.

And it is very close to the December 25th date. So what likely happened is when they were trying to calculate things because they knew it happened around this time and the winter solstice was also around this time. It was just easier to synchronize them.

Simone Collins: Right, because everyone was running on slightly different calendars, and the calendars kept changing, so it's easier to go by either lunar cycles, which more Jewish tradition seems to be based around, or around just how long are the days?

And then that seems a lot easier. Yeah, so it's, it's What about all this conjecture that Jesus was probably born around the spring, because there were shepherds out, and all these other things?

Malcolm Collins: The problem here being. That sheep are in fact grazed in the winter, especially in temperate climates, like Bethlehem would have been at that time. [00:12:00] As you can see on middy modern shepherding websites, like the ones I have in the background here this is an argument. Made up by people who simply do not have experienced shepherding.

And so they, you know, create conjecture. When do I think sheep would most likely be grazing?

But it gets worse from there. Remember how she said, oh, and the other evidence will, if you look at the other evidence for spring birth, it is really, really bad. Specifically it is John, the Baptist birth, the gospel of Luke provides information about the conception of John the Baptist. Which can be used to estimate Jesus's bursts by calculating from the time of Zachariah's simple service around June and adding nine months for a little bit.

This is pregnancy. John's birth would be around March since Jesus was conceived. When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, this would police Jesus's birth in the fall or possibly early spring. Oh, but also possibly in December. So what, no, that's terrible evidence. Passover symbolism. I do not think that that's good evidence.

That's just symbolic evidence.

[00:13:00] Astronomical evidence. Some researchers have suggested that the star that guided the match, I might have been a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Which occurred in seven BC, which could be used to argue for a spring birth. Again, very bad evidence. So there just is really no strong evidence here. And this is something that's pretty much made up whole cloth. By individuals who want to.

Find ways . To smear traditional Christian beliefs.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But I can say to me, it's suspicious that the date that had no backing and no reason to choose it was so close to the 25th date that that just seems really weird to me.

It's only like a couple of weeks apart.

Now I'd also note spring doesn't seem likely to me for another reason.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They were desperately looking for shelter. Why would they be desperately looking for shelter in spring when you could just camp outside?

Simone Collins: That's fair. Yeah. Especially if shelter meant [00:14:00] slumming it with the, with a very crowded family or with animals. Yeah. That leads to disease risk. It probably means that you're cold. And also, it would, it would make more sense if there was a census taking place that, especially if it was over a shorter term period of time, you'd probably do it around the winter when people are less mobile.

Malcolm Collins: Although all right, so so to continue here. Although the census is denied by historic Christian scholars. Oh, really? I don't know what to believe on this. I'll go deeper into it when we go into that in one of our tracks. I would need to see what the Bible actually says. I need to see the different ways it can be interpreted.

I need to see where they're getting things wrong. But generally, I find. That the Bible seems to be more logical than I thought it was every time I go back and read it, which is like the core thing of our reading of the Bible stuff.

this is another one of those times where I decided to check the Bible to see if the Bible said the crazy thing that everyone believes that the [00:15:00] Bible says, or it says something else. And.

Surprise surprise. The Bible says something else. , The only book in the entire Bible that.

Is even purported to argue that there was a census that required people to return to their ancestral homes. Is Luke the problem is, is Luke. Doesn't actually say that what Luke does say is, and everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, to the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.

It doesn't state that they had to go to their ancestral homes. It states that they had to go to their own town. , this could be thought of more like.

You have to go to the tone where you have your state ID. Like he hadn't gotten a new ID for his new town. I don't think he's exactly like that. But, but what I mean is it's more implied that you had to go to the town where you were personally registered, [00:16:00] not the town of your ancestors. , which makes so much more sense.

And it makes a case for a Christmas birth way more likely.

A census that required everyone in the Roman kingdom to go back to their ancestral homes would be incredibly disruptive to have implemented.

And it's something we should see mentioned in other sources because it's an absolutely veiny thing to do. To say everyone who has ever moved in their life has to go back to wherever their ancestors they're from. Like, why would you even do that? Right. , now that this zany idea for how the census was carried out is the way the census was actually carried out. Is a core part of the argument that Jesus wasn't born in December, because if everyone was required to return to their ancestral homes, well then. , you wouldn't want to do that during the cold months, that would be even crazier to do. , so they say, oh, this was done during a warm, easy to travel months.

However, if the [00:17:00] census was not issued in this way, and if the census was issued in a way where, , it was just a normal census, you would absolutely want to do it in December because that's when people would be in their homes and less likely to be traveling, which would make it much more easy to get accurate statistics. , .

So, just to give a bit more on how they likely got to this date. Some early Christians believe that Jesus was conceived and died on the same day. March 25th evidence for this can be found in the statue base of the Christian priest, but lots of yes, dating from. 222 and 235 CE. Hippolytus's quote unquote spreadsheet shows his calculations for the date of Jesus's crucifixion, which he believed occurred on March 25th.

This belief in a combination with a traditional nine months gestation period led them to calculate December 25th as Jesus's birthday. Now, here you may note something like, none of this is anti biblical. The Bible doesn't say explicitly the day that Jesus was born.

Simone Collins: No, the Bible's surprisingly vague on so many [00:18:00] things that culturally are implied to be so explicit, which really annoys me.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And we have early Christians, like right here in this document, attempting to calculate it. They're giving us, in something, you know, 200 years after Jesus died, so fairly early in Christian tradition, we can see Christian scholars going down and trying to do the math. To determine when Christ was born and when he died so, they're not like even lying to us.

They're not even saying like, oh, this was passed down in oral tradition or something like that. They're like, okay, here we are trying to run the math and we're giving that math to you. So, you know, how we got these dates. These are not sacred dates. Now, here is where it gets really, really bad for the pagan argument, and it basically, to me, completely blows it out of the water. The earliest evidence for Christians marking December 25th as Jesus's birthday actually predates the earliest evidence of a Sol Invictus festival on that date.

Again, and keep in mind, [00:19:00] the earliest evidence and the only evidence of a Sol Invictus holiday on that date was written by Christians. So it would have been practiced around Christian communities that were already practicing a celebration tied to Jesus's birth on that day.

Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah, who's to say that, yeah, it wasn't because of Christmas, not

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the evidence can be found at the statue base of Hippolytus, which dates back to the early third century, decades before Emperor Aurelian inaugurated a Sol Invictus festival on December 25th, December 25th.

was Jesus's birthday before Sol Invictus existed as an important deity. They might have existed as like a weird cult deity, but he was not really important until

Emperor a gobbler and then later,

Emperor Aurelian brought him into the spotlight and like adopted him as like his personal cult. So that completely blows like any possibility of that out of the [00:20:00] water for me.

Simone Collins: Wow. Interesting. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: Just to lay this all out. So there's no doubt. Sol Invictus was not really in shrined as a Roman deity. Until Ella gobble is in shined him at the. Robin DIA deep in 219 theey. So 200 years after Jesus and the Christian community had started to be established. Solar Invictus is a much younger deity then Christ and, and much younger religion than Christianity.

But it gets worse because you could be like, yes. But when Ella goblets was creating the Sol Invictus deity, didn't he combine a Syrian deity named Ella gabala with the Roman deities.

Jupiter and soul and I would say yes, and then they'd be like, okay, but did this Syrian D and D have any celebrations surrounding it in [00:21:00] winter?

No, it didn't. In fact, the primary celebration of elec Abla. Abola the predecessor to sell Invictus was a.

Summer festival. Not a winter festival, a summer festival.

But now here people will be like, Oh, but what about the solar imagery around solely victors?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Really bad argument again. If you look at convergent evolution, because nobody says the solar energy around Christian gods and Jesus and stuff like that came from

Simone Collins: oh, Akhnaten.

Malcolm Collins: Akhnaten, yeah. No, sorry,

Simone Collins: wasn't that, the pharaoh was Akhnaten? I can't remember the name of the god. Oh, I didn't

Malcolm Collins: post, but yeah the, the solo god in Egypt when that one pharaoh was like, very similar to the Sol Invictus thing when he's like, hey! New God, everyone. We're going for monotheism.

Yeah. And we're going to change

Simone Collins: the style of all the statues, which I don't imagine Egyptians are cool with because they're like, no, no, no. Everything's going to be the same forever in design.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:22:00] So interestingly it seems that most monotheistic traditions, even Zoroastrians, for example associated with fire associate God with fire.

Heat warps in the sun as to why this would happen, well, the sun's sort of the biggest thing in the sky it's a source of life for all humans and all things on earth, everything dies without it, it's not a bad metaphor and also here you have a problem, which is that Christians were using the sun as a metaphor for Jesus before So Invictus existed. Or was made popular by this emperor.

So again, very difficult argument to make.

I, I think here before we go further, a lot of the confusion around this stuff that people get to is they hear Christianity came after paganism. What they don't keep in mind is that paganism was ever evolving. So whenever they see a correlation in pagan traditions and Christian traditions, they assume it [00:23:00] went from pagan to Christian instead of from Christian to pagan because they forget how old Christianity was and how much the pagan traditions evolved.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And your point that all these, for example, Druidic traditions that people like to practice now are

Malcolm Collins: really, really, they're mostly made up. Yeah. We got to do a whole episode on just how fictional Wiccanism is. It is a completely fictional made up religion. It was made up by a few crazy people in like the what was it like 1910s 1920s.

And all the receipts are there. It is, it is entirely fictional and what they're actually worshiping is a bunch of people who practice the child sacrifice. And we can also get into that because the, the pagans, like the Druids and stuff like that, they sacrificed, human sacrifice was common in these.

Well, then

Simone Collins: isn't it kind of nice that they're remaking it?

Malcolm Collins: I'm glad. Well, we don't know. I mean, look at the uh, look, look at the

Simone Collins: but yes, there have been

[00:24:00]

Simone Collins: taking place among modern ,

anyway,

Malcolm Collins: Saturnalia.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Saturnalia!

Malcolm Collins: Saturnalia, the Roman festival of the god Saturn, took place between December 17th and 23rd. The exact links of the festival vary throughout its history. So, first of all, it was not on December 25th. So Okay? Saturnalia was known for its characteristic feasting, gambling, drinking, and perhaps most notably the role reversal between slaves and their owners.

This role reversal involved enslaved people dining with their owners, being waited on by them, and even being allowed to speak freely to them without fear of punishment. The origins of Saturnalia are unknown, but But some Romans believed it harkened back to a mythological golden age when Saturn ruled Italy and slavery was non existent.

Roman authors such as Justin and Markovits described this period as a time of great equality, where social hierarchies did not exist. Historians have proposed that Saturnalia may have, ironically, serve to [00:25:00] reinforce the institution of slavery rather than challenge it by offering a temporary and controlled outlet for social tensions.

Saturnalia may have helped to maintain the existing power structures of Roman society. There is no evidence that the Romans decorated evergreen branches or trees as part of their Saturnalia celebrations. This argument is based on a lack of evidence. No Roman sources make any mention of such decorations in the context of Saturnalia.

This counts date on the popular claim. Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now. Basically, there is literally no evidence, no suggestion of evidence that Saturnalia in any way was, Influential in why Christians chose this date for the Christmas celebrations and the celebrations themselves are almost completely unrelated to each other in form, in structure, in practice and they're not even on the same dates.

It's. Reaching in the extreme. Wow.[00:26:00]

They make it seem so

Simone Collins: close. But yeah, okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Like maybe there was like a gift exchange celebration or maybe there was a No, none of that stuff.

And not the same dates. So yeah, it's just an incredibly weak, weak, weak, weak, weak. And I also note here that these a lot of the research I've done for this. Why have added to it came from a series of videos by religion for breakfast. I think one of the best. YouTubers, religious YouTubers out there. If you are interested in watching more of his videos, I would strongly recommend it.

He's a great guy. I think we actually had planned on doing like a collab project with him at one point until he maybe looked us up and found out how controversial we are. Because he's very non controversial, very townsy. But he's also very not pro traditional Christian. So if you watch his videos, he is a historical Jesus type guy in terms of like scholarship, which means that if he is arguing for these things, he's not [00:27:00] arguing for them to make Christianity look better. He's arguing for them because he believes them. He doesn't like I just think that that's important to note. Like this is coming from a source that would have every reason if there was any lacking evidence pagans did it first and he doesn't.

Simone Collins: I love that.

Malcolm Collins: No any, any thoughts before I go further.

Simone Collins: No, keep going. This is so interesting.

Malcolm Collins: The very recent origins of the Christmas tree. The earliest evidence for decorating an evergreen tree for Christmas is found in the upper Rhine regions of Ascalance and Baldin during the 14th century. Forestry regulations You mean

Simone Collins: Alsace?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'll sauce.

Simone Collins: Sorry. That was amazing. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: carry on regulations from this period and region specifically from cities like Sunfin and Behem indicate that peasants were collecting wood from evergreen forest around Christmas time.

Simone Collins: Now,

Malcolm Collins: He actually goes into this a lot more [00:28:00] in his video where he's going over this.

Basically, you get these regulations where they're like complaining that peasants are going out and collecting trees around this time.

Simone Collins: The peasant menace is at it again!

Malcolm Collins: Why are they collecting trees around Christmas? Stop it! Stop it! We need regulations! You're going to get fined if you go ding trees!

Speaker 3: What the hell's that? A

Speaker 4: Christmas tree!

Speaker 3: A Christmas

Speaker 4: tree? Buddy dropped it down in the

Speaker 3: park!

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's great. So, so I also note here that this is in the 14th century.

So that means

Simone Collins: 1300. Wow. That is

Malcolm Collins: early 300 years. After Christ, first of all, right? So, clearly this is not tied to like the writing of the Bible or the time of Christ or anything like that. But this is also a solidly Christian region at that time.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There was not like a big lingering pagan population in these parts of the Rhine [00:29:00] in the 14th century.

This was a 100 percent Christian population. There was no Pagan oral tradition in the background for them to be getting these ideas from.

Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. Their prior was just Christianity.

Malcolm Collins: For more color here, the Phrygian, which were the last pagan tribe in the Rhine Delta were converted to Christianity around 800 CE. So that means that this area had been 100% Christian.

For.

Around 500 years when the Christmas tree entered the population, there was not a lingering pagan sentiment in this region. And there hadn't been for hundreds of years.

And if this was a pagan tradition in the region, then why don't we see it practiced in any pagan writings or any mention of it?

And why did they only start complaining about this in terms of the laws in the 14th century? That doesn't make sense. Well, yeah. And since [00:30:00] when

Simone Collins: did like pagan traditions own. All floral arrangements and tree arrangements. Like, these are the decoration materials we have at hand. You know, why, why do pagans get to like, own anything that is organic in nature from a decorative standpoint?

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and keep in mind, they cut the trees down like they were not like, yeah, the

Simone Collins: trees died in the

Malcolm Collins: Christmas. If you put a tree corpse in your house This is not a pagan celebration, okay? It doesn't, it doesn't there's just no, like, like, this is just like insane to me, like, that anyone could argue this with this evidence on hand, but we'll get into the development of it really quickly here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Direct evidence for a decorated Christmas tree appears in the 15th century, with the earliest reference dating back to 1419 in the city of Freiburg. Oh, that's further back than I thought!

Simone Collins: That's further back than I thought.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah they reported a tree decorated with apples, wafers, [00:31:00] gingerbread, and tinsel in a local hospital.

This is the earliest documented instance of a decorated tree. Though the German word used to describe it could also be used to describe a decorated pole.

Simone Collins: Oh I mean, here I guess you could argue

Malcolm Collins: some sort of maypole continuity, but that doesn't really check for me because there wasn't a contiguous this is just very different from Maypolling.

And I'd also note here that tinsel, interestingly Wikipedia says it wasn't documented to be invented until 1610, when it was originally made of shredded silver to look like icicles. Well, that's

Simone Collins: expensive! What on

Malcolm Collins: earth? 200 years before that. Well, everything about this is expensive. You as a modern person, you know, you here in the 1419s, eh.

Tree at a local hospital decorated with apples, wafers, gingerbread, and tinsel. The tinsel might not have been that much more expensive than, like, the apples, for example. Keep in mind this is the middle of winter. Like, [00:32:00] fruit, and especially leaving it in a place where it could potentially decompose. Yeah,

Simone Collins: not, yeah, not hidden under a frozen lake or something.

That's wild. Yeah, actually. Ooh, who's that for money? Also, that's kind of mean. Everyone's sick in this hospital, and they're like, look at this food. Don't eat. Don't eat it, by the way. This is

Malcolm Collins: decoration only. Well, I mean, I think it's a sign of abundance, is, is, is what it was meant to. Well, I hope

Simone Collins: they were eating it too.

It's just, I don't know, it seems a little mean,

Malcolm Collins: but

Simone Collins: whatever. Go ahead. Maybe they felt too sick,

Malcolm Collins: too. Nauseated Decorations for Public Spaces. Office sponsored by guilds before becoming a tradition in private homes. Evidence for this can be found in the records from Talon, Estonia and Latvia, where Christmas trees were set up in public spaces and sponsored by Merchant Guilds.

Private Christmas trees don't appear in the historical record until the 16th century again, wait, hold on, hold

Simone Collins: on then. So like this whole issue of. For example, gay pride parades going to corporate, you know, the gay pride parade brought to you by bank of America. I mean, that is traditional. [00:33:00] If the guilds were sponsoring Christmas tree,

Malcolm Collins: I don't know, because keep in mind, the very first thing was about peasants taking these and putting them in their houses, we don't have any records.

We just know that they needed laws to stop peasants from cutting down trees.

Simone Collins: But at least. The tradition of things going corporate eventually

Malcolm Collins: is well, when they went corporate, they immediately started decorating them and keep in mind that it was in the same region. And this is really important to know if people are like, oh, this regulation around cutting down trees and putting it in your house, like, what evidence do you have that that's in any way tied to Christmas, right?

Here's the problem. The 1st evidence we have a public Christmas trees happens in the exact same region. 200 years later. So very likely that it was a related ceremony.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: the Christmas tree spread in popularity from the upper Rhine region to other parts of Europe and eventually made its way to the United States.

This spread can be partially [00:34:00] attributed to royal patronage, such as queen Charlotte's decoration of Windsor Castle with a Christmas tree in 1800 and the publication of an image of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a Christmas tree in 1848.

And as you pointed out, Prince Albert would have, he was from Germany, right? And so he brought this from his region to England. And then it spread from there because of the Queen, you know, big trend sweater. That's

Simone Collins: sort of the big, That's what most people talk about when they talk about Christmas trees going mainstream is when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were the ultimate family influencers of the time, did it.

They made it cool.

Malcolm Collins: Now, where did the idea that Christmas trees had a pagan influence come from?

Again here you're going to be like now obviously you can see where the Puritans got this from, but there's actually another source that came from and it wasn't

Simone Collins: Okay um, another influence. Trees.

Malcolm Collins: German nationalism, think. Making up German traditions. Nonsense. Oh.

[00:35:00] No.

Yes. Okay. Christmas trees are in What? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I'll get to this. Claims that the Christmas tree originated from pre Christian Germanic paganism were rooted in 19th century German nationalist ideology. Writers such as Okay, so claiming

Simone Collins: that Christmas trees are pagan Is a Nazi thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. Okay. The claim that it's pagan is Nazi. So the next time somebody goes, Christmas trees are pagan. You can go shut up Nazi and punch him. They're like, they're okay with punching Nazis. Yeah, there you go. You should be able to punch them for claiming that Christmas trees are pagan. That's a Nazi position.

So writers such as Johannes Marbach and Alexander Tilley promoted the idea of the Christmas tree as an ancient symbol of German identity. The nationalistic agenda promoted the idea of the Christmas tree as uniquely German tradition, despite the lack of evidence supporting a connection to pre Christian practices.

Okay so not a lot of evidence there. Um But uh, yeah, that also makes sense. And this [00:36:00] is something that we've talked about in other videos, right? Nazis were like, the, we was kings of white people. A bunch of old traditions and they make up a bunch of like, Oh, Buddha was a white guy. Like Socrates was like a Northern European guy.

And it's like, this is ridiculous.

Simone Collins: No, I, what I am getting from this is that, especially when it comes to Christmas trees, there were, we have a category of traditions. That eventually works their way into Christmas that started out as just random stuff people like to do in the winter which, you know, it's not pagan per se.

It's just stuff people like to do when it was dark and cold out. No, it

Malcolm Collins: was stuff Christians like to do in winter.

Simone Collins: Okay, but it wasn't about Jesus. That wasn't about

Malcolm Collins: Jesus.

Simone Collins: It wasn't about Jesus specifically.

Malcolm Collins: No, we there is reason to believe it is about Jesus specifically.

Simone Collins: So, hold on. Come on, this was before the Reformation.

So, the only ones who got to say what was and was not about Jesus was the church.

Malcolm Collins: [00:37:00] But what you are forgetting, Simone, huh. is that The date of Jesus's birth was established within Christian communities by 300 C or sure.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, that being the case, that meant that there had likely been celebrations around Jesus's birthday for a very long time before this.

This is just. How do you celebrate Jesus's birth? We're not told in the Bible how we're supposed to celebrate Jesus's birth, right? Yeah,

Simone Collins: but during the time, the heyday of the Catholic church, they told you how to do everything that was related to religion.

Malcolm Collins: The point being is that you could argue that this is like a non Catholic emergent phenomenon of celebrating Jesus's birth.

And a lot of Christian traditions that we see, like, okay, for example, take the cross as like a symbol, right? Like That's not a biblical symbol. That is something that developed after After the Bible, okay? After Jesus's lifetime. That [00:38:00] doesn't mean it's not like a good symbol for Christians. I don't think it is.

No, it's idolatry. But that doesn't mean that it's not, you know, that's not a good argument as to why it's not.

Simone Collins: Okay, that's a fair point. Yeah, so yeah, Christmas trees are arguably as Christian as the cross. Except the cross was taken on a little bit more, like informally endorsed, because you see it in churches everywhere.

Malcolm Collins: Well, you see Christmas trees in churches. Never mind. What am I saying? They put Christmas

Simone Collins: trees up? Okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: It's a good, it's a good thing. I like it. It's good. Christmas trees

Simone Collins: are way more positive than Christmas.

Malcolm Collins: Christmas is a great season, and it imbues people with a good feeling, and Christmas trees are part of that.

They're a very good decoration and tradition in terms of, Sending this, this sort of feeling that we get as a family every year, and that gets you so excited

Simone Collins: and Christmas is so good of a holiday to focus on, like, focusing on the on Christmas over, for example, Easter. It's [00:39:00] pronatalist. It gets people excited about babies.

You know, there's all these songs about a child is born and oh my gosh, this is so great. And babies are amazing and like makes mothers want to have babies and you know, things like that. You know, it's a, it's a very family friendly holiday. And then of course, you know, all the other ancillary traditions make it extra fun for kids.

So yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you're right. Let's get to Santa Claus.

Simone Collins: Let's.

Malcolm Collins: So this actually isn't coming from Religion for Breakfast. This is coming from another YouTuber's infographic. So Father Christmas. Father Christmas surprisingly predates Santa Claus, but he is not a pagan deity. Instead, he was a medieval personification of Christmas. Richard Smart of Plymtree is the first to write about him, referring to him as Sir Christmas, and his task is to announce the birth of Christ. So the earliest writings we have about Father Christmas is the guy who was tasked with announcing the birth of Christ. Now this is not in the Bible, not biblical, but also not pagan.

Like this is a purely Christian idea that you would have a guy [00:40:00] tasked with announcing the birth of Christ. Now, Santa Claus can only be traced back to Dutch immigrants in New York City in the early 1800s. He came from the Dutch also known as Sir Nicholas. His feast day was on 12 6 and was moved to 12 25, around this time, to help make

christmas, a family holiday, newspapers promoted it and encouraged to give gifts on Christmas instead of New Year's like it traditionally was before this. So a few things to note here Santa Claus was a saint festival that was moved to correspond with. Jesus's birthday. It was not that some, it's not that Jesus's birthday was moved to correspond with a pagan celebration.

It was an already totally Christian saints festival was moved to correspond with a totally Christian Jesus's birthday as calculated by early church leaders. Right. So it's just some

Simone Collins: religious musical chairs, but [00:41:00] all within the faith. That's okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's

Simone Collins: a very fair point.

Malcolm Collins: And then the gift giving, which was apparently traditionally done on New Year's, was then moved to this time.

This does not appear to be a pagan gift giving celebration, it was just a New Year's gift giving celebration. Sinterklaas was rebranded from a Catholic priest to look like a traditional Dutchman from this time period, which included a big red suit. Oh, so he's just like a stereotyped looking Dutchman from this time period, like if like if he was like a Chinese immigrant from this time period, they would have given him like a really racist looking outfit, like big eyes or something.

Speaker 7: A so called offensive mascot, my beloved character, Ching Chong Ding Dong. Hoo hoo, I love tea! It's so good for you! Mmm, you're so pretty, American girl. You come here, you kiss my tea, make all sweet. I don't need no sugar when you around. Come on my rickshaw, I give you a ride to [00:42:00] Bangkok!

Malcolm Collins: They're like, Oh, that's some interesting. After the Sinterklaas was exported around the world in different countries, added new spins. Stockings were also promoted around this time period, and trace back to Clement C. Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas. In 1927, in Finland, a radio broadcaster, Markus Ratio, morphed the old pagan deity Jalapukki into a Santa figure.

Santa changed the Jaloopy figure, not the other way around. So, essentially the Jaloopy figure that they're saying Santa came from, no, what actually happened is in 1927, somebody was aware of this old figure and then wanted to make him more Santa like, not Santa more Jaloopy like.

And that's where this confusion comes from.

And so then I was like, okay, well I should at least ask Perplexity, like, what's the strongest, like, Counter arguments to this. Right?

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They're like, well, you could argue [00:43:00] that he was Odin, right? Like an Odin depiction. Well, I've never heard that. That seems tenuous, and they're like, well, Odin was depicted as an old man with a long white beard, similar to the modern representation of Santa Claus. Parablem! Modern representation of Santa Claus was not the original representation of Sinterklaas or Sir Nicholas, which he is derived from.

They came from stereotypes of what Dutchmen look like, with the long white beard.

Speaker 30: You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.

Malcolm Collins: That is a modern interpretation of Santa Claus, not the original interpretation. Bigger problem here, they go, okay, well, during Yule, a pagan midwinter festival, Odin was said to lead the wild hunt, a ghostly progression through the sky, which bears some resemblance to Santa's Christmas Eve journey.

And I'm like, Oh, that would be a compelling argument. If you had never heard of the Wild Hunt before, which was a [00:44:00] massacre What? The Wild Hunt was, he went on a sky massacre. A sky massacre?

Simone Collins: