« The first extant documentary mention of a celebration of Jesus’ birth […] appears in the Chronograph of 354. Thus, by 354, […] Christians in Rome were celebrating Jesus’ Nativity on December 25. In choosing the date of December 25 to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Christians placed this annual observance right in the middle of three wildly popular preexisting Roman winter festivals.
Perhaps they wanted to co-opt the popularity of the existing winter parties in order to promote the acceptance of Christianity among more people. Perhaps they disapproved of how wild the parties were and hoped that adding a Christian celebration would tame them. […] Whatever the motivations, Christians gave an overlay of Christian meaning to some preexisting winter festivities. An important implication of this narrative is that when Christians finally initiated an annual celebration of the birth of Jesus, it was from the very beginning a combination of a winter cultural party and a Christian observance. The historian Stephen Nissenbaum offers a very articulate summary of the complicated repercussions:
“The decision was part of what amounted to a compromise, and a compromise for which the Church paid a high price… . In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been. From the beginning, the Church’s hold over Christmas was (and remains still) rather tenuous. There were always people for whom Christmas was a time of pious devotion rather than carnival, but such people were always in the minority. It may not be going too far to say that Christmas has always been an extremely difficult holiday to Christianize.” »
— Religion and Popular Culture in America, ed. Bruce David Forbes & Jeffrey Mahan
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