Is Christmas really a pagan festival?

It’s as much a part of the season now as baubles, tinsel and the Christmas Number One: those articles, blogs and memes that pop up during the festive season claiming that Christmas, in spite of the name, is actually a pagan festival. Certainly, the visitor to contemporary Britain would be forgiven for thinking that Christmas has little or nothing to do with the birth of Jesus Christ; and indeed there are many things we do at Christmas, and have done for centuries, that seem to have scant connection to any sort of religious celebration. What does decking the halls with boughs of holly have to do with Jesus? Or Christmas pudding? Or Christmas ghost stories? Or the older traditions of misrule, riotous mumming and reversing positions of authority? Clearly the festive season’s sometimes tenuous relationship to the Christian faith is not just a recent outcome of secularisation. There simply never was a time when Christmas was a purely religious festival, blissfully uncommercialised and holy, as some earnest clergy might like us to believe.