Who's the party for?

It was our first foray into Christmas shopping, 2014, the day after Black Friday.

I meandered aimlessly through the department store, my wife’s words echoing in my ears: “We’ll just stop for a few things after we take Mary to the airport. At least we’ll get some Christmas shopping started. Don’t worry. I want to get back early too.”

That was an hour a half ago, a passing moment for a shopper; an eternity for me.

The truth is, she is a conflicted shopper: She loves to shop but doesn't like to have to shop.

So much of Christmas is “have to” shopping.

The right gifts have to go to the right person at the right time at the right party.

As we placed the packages in the car and started the trek home, she posed the question: “Isn't it crazy that we celebrate Jesus’ birth by spending money on gifts that have nothing to do with him?”

It was a fair enough question for me, her preacher husband.

“I guess I’m supposed to have the answer,” I thought to myself, picturing frenzied shoppers fighting over the best buys in contrast to the itinerant ministry of Jesus of Nazareth who said of himself, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but he Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

By “we,” my wife didn't exactly mean just her and me. The average American will spend over $700 on Christmas gifts this year. It’s easily the biggest shopping holiday in the United States.

Although shopping on Black Friday was down from last year, that doesn't mean consumers are spending less. They have more of a choice of when and where to make purchases. That’s partially because more and more shopping is done online.  And the buyer doesn't necessarily have to purchase on Black Friday or Cyber Monday to find a deal. Thus, according to The Economist, the U.S. is expected to spend the second most in the world on Christmas gifts this year, behind only Luxembourg.

Does that mean all that spending is done in honor of the one for whom the holiday is named?

I can hear you chuckling.

The fact is, we don’t know the date on which Jesus of Nazareth was born. If he mentioned his birth date to his disciples, it apparently wasn't important enough for any of them to record it in their accounts of his life and ministry. Maybe that’s because they knew what would happen: Eventually we would establish a festival in his honor, exchange gifts to commemorate it, overspend on ourselves and others, and soon forget what the party was for, all the while engaging in activities counter to his lifestyle and teachings.  

“We should blame it on Mithra,” I said in answer to my wife’s question.

“Who?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Mithra, a god that can be traced back to ancient Persia.  Worshiping him became popular in the Roman Empire a couple of centuries after Christ.”

I tried to remember the details.

The god Mithra was supposedly born on December 25, and the Romans more or less absorbed Mithra into their celebration of Saturn, called the Saturnalia festival, which culminated on Mithra’s birthday on December 25^th. Part of the Saturnalia festival involved the exchanging of gifts, singing, evergreen (the priests of Saturn carried evergreen boughs) and partying (often excessive partying). Unable to stamp out the pagan features of this festival, the Roman Church decided to try and spiritualize it with the Feast of the Nativity of the Sun of Righteousness. It probably wasn't until the Emperor Constantine in 336 A.D. that this pagan festival was converted into a Christian holiday with the December 25th birth date for Jesus eventually replacing Mithra’s.

“So Constantine was really the culprit.” I concluded. “He switched the birth date tags from Mithra to Jesus, and here we are.”

“Sure, Constantine is to blame,” I mumbled to myself as I unloaded the extra evergreen from the car and peeked to see which packages might have been purchased for me.