17 surprising Christmas facts, checked against history

In 354 the calligrapher Furius Dionysius Filocalus made an illustrated almanac for a wealthy Roman Christian. One of its lists, a calendar of feasts that historians date to 336, opens with a single Latin line: “VIII kal. Ian. natus Christus in Betleem Iudeae.” Eight days before the kalends of January, Christ born in Bethlehem of Judea. That is December 25, and it is the oldest record of the birth kept as a yearly feast.

The Gospels give no date. One explanation, set out by the French historian Louis Duchesne in 1889, is a calculation: early Christians dated the conception of Jesus to March 25, and nine months later is December 25. The other points to Rome’s festival of the Invincible Sun on the same day. Scholars still argue over both. Even the year is uncertain: most place the birth around 6 to 4 BC.

The English name was first written down in 1038, as Crīstesmæsse: Christ’s Mass. Before it meant a season of shopping, the word was an invitation to church. Other languages name the day for the birth itself. Navidad, Natale and Noël all come from Latin words for birth.

A manger is the trough animals eat from. That is the one detail Luke gives about the room: he names no stable, and no animals stand beside the manger in his account. The ox and the donkey of our nativity sets arrived later, through tradition. The poverty of the scene is plain enough without them.

In 567 the Council of Tours declared the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany a sacred and festive season, which is why Christmas does not end on December 26. The song is far younger: it was printed in a London children’s book around 1780. The idea that it hides a secret Catholic catechism was first put forward in 1979, with no evidence behind it.

Charles Wesley wrote it in 1739 as a “Hymn for Christmas-Day,” and his first line spoke of the welkin, an old word for the sky. George Whitefield rewrote the opening in 1753. The tune came last: in 1855 William Cummings set the words to music Felix Mendelssohn had written in 1840 for a festival honoring Gutenberg and the printing press.

John Mason Neale wrote the words in 1853 and set the story on the Feast of Stephen, December 26. Wenceslas was a tenth-century Duke of Bohemia, given the title of king only after his death. The tune is older still: a thirteenth-century spring carol, “Tempus adest floridum,” first printed in 1582.

England’s Puritan rulers banned Christmas in 1647, though carols went on being sung in private. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay Colony set a fine of five shillings for anyone caught keeping the day, and the law stood until 1681. On June 28, 1870, Christmas became a federal holiday in the United States.

The earliest firmly dated picture of a Christmas tree is a keystone carved in 1576 on a house in Turckheim, in Alsace. Records place a tree in Strasbourg Cathedral in 1539, and merchant guilds in Tallinn and Riga set up trees even earlier. Martin Luther is only said to have been the first to put candles on one. In 1848 the Illustrated London News printed Queen Victoria’s family gathered around their tree at Windsor Castle, and the custom took off across Britain.