Accommodating a pagan populace
How, we should ask, did these pagan customs become a widely accepted part of Christianity? We should first understand what a strong hold these celebrations and customs had on the people of those early centuries. Tertullian, a Catholic writer of the late second and early third century, lamented the fact that the pagans of his day were far more faithful to their beliefs than were the compromising Christians who were happily joining in the Roman midwinter festival that eventually evolved into what is now Christmas:
"By us [Christians], ...the Saturnalia, the feasts of January, the Brumalia, and Matronalia are now frequented; gifts are carried to and fro, new year's day presents are made with din, and banquets are celebrated with uproar; oh, how much more faithful are the heathen to their religion, who take special care to adopt no solemnity from the Christians" (Tertullian in De Idolatria, quoted by Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, 1959, p. 93).
It wasn't long before such non-Christian rites and practices were assimilated into a new church religious holiday supposedly celebrating Christ's birth. William Walsh describes this process and the rationalization behind it: "This was no mere accident. It was a necessary measure at a time when the new religion [Christianity] was forcing itself upon a deeply superstitious people. In order to reconcile fresh converts to the new faith, and to make the breaking of old ties as painless as possible, these relics of paganism were retained under modified forms ...
"Thus we find that when Pope Gregory [540-604] sent Saint Augustine as a missionary to convert Anglo-Saxon England he directed that so far as possible the saint should accommodate the new and strange Christian rites to the heathen ones with which the natives had been familiar from their birth.
"For example, he advised Saint Augustine to allow his converts on certain festivals to eat and kill a great number of oxen to the glory of God the Father, as formerly they had done this in honor of [their gods] ... On the very Christmas after his arrival in England Saint Augustine baptized many thousands of converts and permitted their usual December celebration under the new name and with the new meaning" (p. 61).
Gregory permitted such importation of pagan religious practices on the grounds that when dealing with "obdurate minds it is impossible to cut off everything at once" (Sansom, p. 30).
Tragically, Christianity never accomplished the task of cutting off everything pagan. According to Owen Chadwick, former professor of history at Cambridge University, the Romans "kept the winter solstice with a feast of drunkenness and riot. The Christians thought that they could bring a better meaning into that feast. They tried to persuade their flocks not to drink or eat too much, and to keep the feast more austerely —but without success " (A History of Christianity, 1995, p. 24).
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