Is Christmas a Pagan or Christian Holiday?

There are two versions of this story that are told to support the “Christmas is pagan” idea.

The Pagan Holiday Saturnalia?

The first version is that Christmas shares a date with and/or owes its heritage to Saturnalia. Saturnalia was a Roman pagan holiday dedicated to the god Saturn. It was an evil festival that ran for roughly seven days, ending on December 23.1

Some elements overlap between modern Christmas celebrations and Saturnalia, such as large meals and the giving of gifts.2 However, other things do not overlap, like gambling, overturning social customs, and extensive public drunkenness. Further, the dates do not overlap. Saturnalia ended by the 23rd. We celebrate Christmas on the 25th.

Also, the custom of giving gifts in Christmas celebrations does not necessarily derive from Saturnalia. It is far more likely to come from the gifts of the wise men in Matthew 2. These men (likely more than three) brought gifts to the child Jesus. In celebrating Christ’s birth, early Christians had the perfect model to follow. Christ was God’s gift to fallen man, the wise men brought gifts to Christ, and the early Christians commemorated the events by giving gifts.

Large family meals are also not inherently derived from Saturnalia. The Passover, something from the Old Testament, involved a large family meal as well. Several other Jewish festivals also involve meals. The early Christians had many Jewish believers among them. It is not surprising that they incorporated some Jewish customs into the celebration of Christmas.

Saturnalia cannot be proven as the source of Christmas festivities. There is some overlap between the traditions, but the overlap is much more easily explained in other ways, particularly given the very strong conservatism found among many of the early church fathers. Many of these men were strongly opposed to things like music and the theater, neither of which most Christians oppose today. They would not have been comfortable drawing from a pagan holiday to build their own religious tradition.

The Pagan Holiday Sol Invictus?

The second argument that goes around is that the date for Christmas was placed on December 25 to counter the Roman holiday celebrating Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun god.

Supposedly, the 25th was the birthday of this sun god, and was thus celebrated as his chief festival.3 Sol Invictus was made an official god of Rome in 274 AD by Emperor Aurelian.4 Sol Invictus was a revision of previous Roman gods, combined with some gods of the Near East, and he was brought to Rome under Emperor Elagabalus.5 The claim is that, when Constantine legalized Christianity, he encouraged (or perhaps forced) the church to combine the festival of Sol Invictus with the celebration of the birth of Christ.6

The immediate problem with the above view is that Christians had been celebrating the birth of Christ on December 25 before Aurelian instituted the festival of Sol Invictus on that date. Hippolytus of Rome, a fiercely independent conservative of his time, wrote this before Aurelian’s reign:

For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years.7

In other words, within 200 years of Christ’s death, the early Christians were claiming he had been born on December 25. Again, this is before the establishment of the festival celebrating Sol Invictus. It is thus far more likely that Aurelian stole the date for the birth of his sun god from Christians, rather than Christians borrowing from pagan custom.

Conclusion

Christmas is not a pagan holiday. Its origins are entirely in Christianity. There may be some customs associated with it today that are not Christian (rampant materialism, for example), but the holiday itself is explicitly Christian. That does not mean you must celebrate it. In fact, there is no scriptural command for you to celebrate any holidays at all. But it does mean that it is not an issue worth dividing over.

Footnotes

1. Mark Cartwright, “Saturnalia: The Jolliest of Roman Festivals,” World History Encyclopedia, December 16, 2016, https://www.worldhistory.org/Saturnalia/.
2. Ben Reichert, “What Is Saturnalia and Is It Related to Christmas?,” Christianity.com, updated December 7, 2025, https://www.christianity.com/wiki/holidays/christmas/what-is-saturnalia-and-is-it-related-to-christmas.html.
3. Kurt Readman, “Sol Invictus: The Roman Cult That Gave Us Christmas,” Historic Mysteries, December 27, 2023, https://www.historicmysteries.com/myths-legends/sol-invictus/38446/.
4. Franco Cavazzi, “Sol Invictus: Unraveling the Sun-Kissed Enigma of Rome,” accessed December 11, 2025, https://roman-empire.net/religion/sol.
5. Tim Brinkhof, “Sol Invictus: The Pagan Sun God That Helped Christianity Conquer the Roman Empire,” May 29, 2023, https://bigthink.com/the-past/sol-invictus/.
6. Professor Geller, “Sol Invictus,” Mythology.net, October 21, 2016, https://mythology.net/roman/roman-gods/sol-invictus/.
7. T. C. Schmidt, Hippolytus of Rome: Commentary of Daniel (T. C. Schmidt, 2010), https://www.pergrazia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/0205_hippolytus_commentary-on-daniel_2010.pdf.