How Christmas Borrowed Midwinter Customs: From Mesopotamia to Rome

Christmas traditions developed over centuries by adapting earlier midwinter and New Year celebrations. Ancient Mesopotamian and Near Eastern festivals included lengthy renewal ceremonies and occasional "mock king" rituals. Persian/Babylonian accounts describe role-reversal feasts. Northern European Yule observed the returning sun with bonfires. Roman Saturnalia contributed decorations, feasting and gift-giving. By the fourth century, Christians in Rome had adopted December 25 as the date for the Nativity, and many pre-Christian customs were reframed within Christian observance.

A long history before the Christ child

Many customs we associate with Christmas - twelve days of celebration, gift-giving, bonfires, decorated greenery and role-reversal revelry - have roots that predate Christianity by millennia. Early Near Eastern and European communities held rituals to mark the return of light and the turn of the year; Christian observance later absorbed and reframed some of these practices.

Mesopotamian New Year and the idea of a "mock king"

Ancient Mesopotamian New Year festivals celebrated the renewal of order after chaos. These multi-day ceremonies honored chief deities such as Marduk and included dramatic rituals that symbolized the god's triumph over disorder. Some sources describe a temporary "substitute" or mock-king used in New Year rites, a practice scholars link to ideas of ritual renewal and kingly vulnerability.

Role reversal and Persian-Babylonian celebrations

Herodotus and other classical writers record winter and New Year customs in the Near East that featured role reversals and public inversion of social roles. A festival sometimes called the Sacaea is described in ancient accounts as involving masters and slaves exchanging places during celebration. These themes - feasting, disguise, and reversed social order - resonate with later European midwinter customs. ¹

Yule, bonfires and the returning sun

In northern Europe, winter solstice observances celebrated the sun's return. In Scandinavia and elsewhere, people held feasts (Yule or "Jul"), lit bonfires, and kept hearth-centered rituals to mark the season and ward off fears that the light would not come back.

Saturnalia, decorations and gift-giving in Rome

Late Republican and Imperial Rome celebrated Saturnalia (traditionally December 17-23). The festival featured public feasting, role reversals, decorating homes with greenery, candles, and exchanging small gifts called strenae. These customs provided a ready cultural vocabulary for later Christians to adopt and adapt.

Christian adoption of midwinter customs

As Christianity spread through the Roman world, church leaders faced popular pagan festivals. Rather than suppress every custom, Christian communities often reframed lights, feasts, and gift-giving around the Nativity. By the fourth century, December 25 was widely observed in Rome as the date for celebrating Christ's birth; later traditions and explanations for that date vary (including linking it to Roman solar festivals or theological calculations). ²

Continuity and change

Today's Christmas blends liturgical observance with many folk practices that trace back to a variety of pre-Christian midwinter rites. Understanding those roots clarifies why light, feasting, gifts and a twelve-day season remain central to the holiday in many cultures.

1. Confirm names, dates and characteristics of Mesopotamian New Year festivals (Akitu, Zagmuk) and whether a 12-day structure and a "substitute/mock king" ritual are documented.
2. Verify classical sources and modern scholarship about the Sacaea festival and reported role-reversal practices in Persian/Babylonian winter celebrations.
3. Confirm the historical record for early Christian celebrations of Jesus' birth (claims about observance since 98 AD and specific 2nd-century bishops) and the first recorded December 25 observance in Rome.
4. Check the attribution of December 25 to Julius I or other fourth-century church figures and the connection to the Roman festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Aurelian, 274 AD).