How pagan is Christmas?

Many people today feel an ambivalence towards the history of the Christmas festival. They sense that it has deep pre-Christian roots and yet are also aware that most of the actual customs associated with it are relatively modern. The problem is that both views are correct. Most of the current trappings of the season are Victorian inventions or importations: the cards, the tree, the stocking, the turkey and Father Christmas with his reindeer and his sack of presents. Even local seasonal activities which look genuinely primeval have turned out not to be.

Most of the season’s trappings are Victorian inventions or importations: the cards, the tree, the stockings

The southern English mummers’ play and the northern sword dance, pieces of folk drama performed in more than 2,000 communities in the early Victorian period, were once thought by folklorists to descend from the Neolithic and represent the rebirth of life after the winter solstice. We now know that they started in the 18th century. Animal disguises carried round streets and pubs such as the Hooden Horse of Kent, the Old Horse of Cheshire and the Mari Lwyd (a horse’s skull) were thought by the same folklorists to have been prehistoric tribal totems.

Almost none, however, can be dated before 1800 and none at all before 1600. They all seem spin-offs from the early modern hobby horse. To those yearning for a sense of real connection to the ancient, all this can look like a wipeout, with the Christian observation the most authentic link to the remote past.

Such a conclusion would however be erroneous. It is clear that the winter solstice was of huge ritual importance in pre-Christian times. The greatest prehistoric monuments of the three main nations of these islands – Newgrange in Ireland, Maeshowe in Scotland and Stonehenge in England – were all aligned on the sunrise or sunset at that time.