Dwain Northey (Gen X)

🎄 A Very Pagan Christmas: A Satirical Historical Essay on Gift-Giving 🎁

Now that we’ve compared Jesus Christ to every mythological demigod who ever bench-pressed a hydra or resurrected on a weekend itinerary, it’s time to turn our gaze toward the holiday traditions that orbit his birthday celebration — or what would have been his birthday celebration if he hadn’t been historically scheduled somewhere around late spring. But December 25th had better real estate and a prime slot right next to the solstice, so here we are.

Let’s begin with gift-giving, that heartwarming ritual in which we express love, gratitude, and the quiet, seething stress of maxed-out credit cards.

Because as it turns out, the whole practice didn’t exactly descend from angelic hosts humming “O Holy Night.” No, it came from the much rowdier — and significantly more intoxicated — Roman holiday known as Saturnalia, a cheerful week-long festival honoring Saturn, god of agriculture, time, and apparently, unrestrained partying. Saturnalia was basically the ancient world’s Black Friday, Mardi Gras, and bring-your-own-wine office party all rolled into one.

During this festival, Romans exchanged gifts — wax candles, little figurines, fruit, pottery, and whatever else you could hand someone without Amazon Prime. The entire social order flipped upside down: slaves got the day off, bosses served their workers, gambling was legal, and everyone got absolutely hammered under the sacred protection of “it’s tradition.”

So when Christianity eventually rose to power and needed to absorb the wildly popular solstice festivities, the early Church had two choices:

Ban Saturnalia and enrage every Roman within a thousand miles, or Slap a halo on it, add a nativity set, and call it holy.

Guess which one they picked.

Thus, the tradition of giving gifts — once a salute to Saturn, master of sowing and seasonal chaos — slipped quietly into the Christmas canon. Over time, the wax candles became luxury scarves, the little figurines became PS5s, and the Saturnalian spirit of rowdy revelry transformed into that timeless Christian value known as “compulsory holiday spending.”

And of course, our modern Christmas mascot, Santa Claus, is basically a cross-cultural mashup: part St. Nicholas, part Norse Odin, part Coca-Cola marketing fever dream. The man rides through the sky like Odin, brings gifts like St. Nick, and has the rosy cheeks of someone who’s been enjoying Saturnalia’s beverage traditions all night long.

So the next time someone insists Christmas was built solely on biblical foundations, feel free to gently remind them — with the warm glow of satire — that the holiday’s most cherished ritual once belonged to a pagan festival celebrating a god who’d be more at home at a toga party than a midnight mass.

After all, nothing says “Merry Christmas” like honoring ancient Roman bacchanalia with a $700 tablet wrapped in glitter paper.