Dr Paul Allen

Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–211/216). (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) It’s not uncommon to hear that the celebration of Christmas is rooted in ancient Roman paganism . That claim generally goes something like this: the ancient Romans celebrated a pagan festival on December 25th, but when the Roman Empire was Christianized in the 300s, the church simply turned the pagan festival into a Christian holiday . It is true that there was a pagan Roman holiday named Saturnalia that marked the winter solstice. And in the old Julian calendar , the winter solstice occurred on December 25. Saturnalia became an official Roman holiday in 274 under the reign of Emperor Aurelian . And the Roman empire was Christianized about fifty years later under Constantine. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how some could assume that the post-Constantine Romans simply adopted the pagan holiday and Christianized it. But there’s actually good evidence to suggest that the date of December 25 does not ha