The chief mythical constituents of the life of Jesus were known all over the cosmopolitan Græco-Roman world, most particularly in the overlapping fringe of the Græco-Roman and the Persian-Egyptian worlds—the eastern coast of the Mediterranean—where the gospels were certainly composed. Whatever city we may favour as the cradle of the gospels, Alexandria or Antioch, Smyrna or Ephesus, every myth and ritual representation mentioned was familiar there. Mithraism spread from Persia to Britain. Roman soldiers prayed to Mithras in the towers in which they guarded the north of England from the marauding Scots. The religion of Isis and Horus was even more familiar round the Mediterranean. The legend and ritual of Dionysos were hardly less familiar.

Romans had celebrated this festival for centuries as Pagans. Every Roman was familiar from childhood with the great midwinter festival, and in the earliest days of the Christian era the religions of Persia and Egypt, with similar festivals, had spread over the Empire. So, from end to end of the Roman Empire, 25 December was the birthday of the unconquered sun, of the saviour Mithras, and of the divine Horus, and they and the others were represented almost exactly as the birth of Christ was described in the gospels and is depicted in Catholic churches today.

The Roman emperor, Constantine—popularly considered the embodiment or incarnation of the supreme Roman sun god—Sol Invictus—later presided over the council of Nicea (325 AD) which lead to the official Christian recognition of theTrinity as the true nature of God. The importance of 25 December to Pagans made Christian converts think it must also be important to their newly adopted religion. They easily supposed it must have been the birthday of their messiah. Since his birth date had been forgotten, when Constantine made Jesus a god, 25 December was selected as his birthday, because it was the birthday of other gods, and particularly that of the chief rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire, Mithras. The bishops were typically opportunistic. By celebrating at the same time as Pagan religions they hoped to offer the same benefits and pull in some Pagan punters. Christmas remained the start of a new year up to the tenth century.

In 336 or 354 AD, hoping to counteract the Manichaean heresy—that Jesus was never born at all but was a phantasm—the Christians took the date of the solar birth as the birthday of Jesus. The solar celebration was so widespread and popular that the church could neither ban it, nor stop it being identified in the popular mind with Jesus’s birth anyway. Almost all religions have some root in primitive sun worship, and the Christians merely acknowledged a custom which the adherents of most of the contemporary religions had carried on for many centuries before that time. Jesus was identified with the sun by both Cyprian and Ambrose. Jesus and Mithras had become almost identical in the minds of the western populace.

Church leaders moved the date of Jesus’s birth “after the flesh” from 6 January to the birthday of the Unconquerable Sun. No evidence was quoted, nor any tradition appealed to, to show that the 25 December was the actual birthday. The only attempt made to show that Jesus was actually born upon 25 December, and that the origin of Christmas Day was not Pagan, was based on the Annunciation being the 25 March. From that date—itself selected upon doctrinal and not upon historical grounds—nine months leads to the 25 December, which would, if the Annunciation was a physiological process identical in its working with sexual conception, be the correct date for the birth. As the 25 March was itself a date inherited from Paganism, and not a date supported by evidence of any kind whatsoever, the theory has not gained acceptance even among theologians.

There was no universal agreement upon the 25 December as Christmas Day. The churches of the Eastern Empire accused the Western Church of idolatry and sun worship, and for long continued to observe Christmas Day on the 6 January. The Egyptians did the same until the year 431 AD. But even the 6 January was connected with the birthday of God. Epiphanius argued the birthday of Christ must be the 13th day after the 25 December, corresponding to days for the twelve apostles and Jesus himself, and bringing Christmas Day to the Epiphany, a day observed in Egypt as a festival of the Virgin, Kore Kosmou. 25 December was still listed as the “Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun” in the calendar of Philocalus in 336 AD, the year before Constantine died and a quarter of a century after he had supposedly made the empire Christian, and the Emperor Honorius (395 to 423) could still speak of 25 December as being a “new” festival, yet a text of about the same time says it was one of the three great Christian festivals so holy that theatres had to close by law.

Saint Augustine was one who did not approve of this particular concession to Paganism. Christians were never too keen on following the instructions of their holy texts though they usually made a great show of studying them. Had they taken notice they could not have taken these Pagan practices into the divine religion of Essenism. The scriptures warned against it quite explicitly:

Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise.

Deut 12:30

It was hard for the gentile Christian converts though. They had lately been celebrating these festivals and all their friends still were. So they thought—“What does it matter?” New religions inherit or copy the doctrines and festivals of the old. The Moslem month of Haj is celebrated at the time of the year when pre-Moslem Pagan festivals had previously been held, and the ancient Pagan rites are still carried out during the Haj celebrations. The ritual remains, the explanation of it changes. The clergy tell us the explanation is a myth in Paganism, but the revealed truth in their patriarchal religion! Christian ministers have been so flexible in the face of serious rivalry as to be unprincipled. Yet in the face of weak or isolated rivals, it has applied the devil’s own punishments as if they were the guardians of hell not heaven.

For Christians, Christ was the real sun that had risen upon the world. Why not boldly pinch the birthday of the unconquered sun? The masses could then be told they were celebrating Jesus. The ribaldry, license and fooling were contrary to Essenic, now Christian, prudery, but despite attempts to stop it all, it thankfully persists until today.

When we celebrate Christmas we continue the practice of hundreds of generations of our remote ancestors, who held festivals at that season every year for many centuries before Christianity had ever been heard of. The harmless festivities of Christmastide, and the spirit of peace and goodwill with which they are traditionally associated, are customs and feelings which it would be sad to see forgotten or eradicated. Peace and goodwill reign more easily when the followers of all the religions join together and celebrate the return of the sun and the beginning of a new year, than when theologians assemble to decry the idolatry of others and to wrangle about which of the gods were really born on the 25 December.

Christmas is not the only Christian festival which ignored the warning of Deuteronomy, and was stolen from ancient Paganism and adapted to the Essenism of Jesus. There is also Easter. Easter, roughly corresponding with the vernal equinox was also a time of festival for the followers of many ancient religions, but the period of the year in which Easter is celebrated does correspond with the biblioal story, as the crucifixion is said to have taken place at the time of the Passover, the two events being theologically parallel. Yet Christians spilt torrents of each other’s blood in quarrels about the fixing of the date of Easter, and accepted Christmas Day without much demur.

The Feast of S John, the holy communion, the Annunciation of the virgin, the assumption of the virgin, and many others have their roots in ancient Pagan worship. Midsummer Day is the Feast of S John the Baptist and is dedicated also to saints Philip and James. Saints Peter, James, Andrew and Paul were given unimportant days even though we are told they were Christ’s Apostles.