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It is December and Christmas is almost here. Already decorations can be seen in homes and businesses. If you turn on the radio you can hear a variety of Christmas songs. And people are rushing to get their Christmas shopping done.

Children are looking forward to that one morning when they wake up to find presents left for them by Santa Claus and families are looking forward to getting together for the holidays. But how did the Christmas holidays come about?

According to the website, www.mrrena.com, Christmas is a Christian holiday, intended to celebrate the birth of Christ. But many parts of the current holiday originated from many non-Christian traditions.

The origins of Christmas can be traced back to the festival of Saturnalia, a Roman celebration honoring Saturn, god of agriculture. This was a seven day celebration that began on Dec. 15 and ended on Dec. 21. On the Julian calendar, the winter solstice often fell on Dec. 25, at which time many Romans enacted rituals in honor of Mithra, the Persian god of light.

Eventually, the Roman Catholic Church absorbed the traditions into the church and converted the holiday into Christ Mass, honoring the birth of the Son of God. But the holiday still contained much paganism. According to the website, English commoners would go around as a miniature mob to the lords of the manors and demand to be let in and provided with treats. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell, a devout puritan and Lord Protector of England outlawed the Christmas holiday, which was forced underground until around 1656 in Canterbury.

By 1659, Christmas was outlawed in many of the early North American colonies. Violators were fined five shillings, which made Christmas virtually obsolete in the New World. After the American Revolution, Christmas was reinstated in America, but still contained much of its pagan revelries. Once again, people would go from door to door asking for food and drink. Eventually this tradition would come to be known as Christmas caroling, where groups of individuals would go around to houses singing songs in exchange for eggnog and drinks of wassail (a mixture of ale, roasted apples, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger and served hot).

There were very few holidays on the New World Calendar at this time. Christmas was just another workday. Celebrations were not a family affair and most gift-giving involved the rich giving money or small gifts to the poor, but families rarely participated in the exchanging gifts.

In 1843, Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” made a tremendous impact on Christmas. It showed Christmas as a holiday of giving and spending time with family and friends. Families began to see Christmas as a good time to devote attention to their children and give them gifts.

This change marked the end of the former out of control traditions and turned Christmas into a domestic holiday.

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