When did Christmas first begin to be celebrated?
Before the time of Jesus, there were popular winter festivals around Christmas in many cultures. It was the dead of winter, so farming wasn’t as important, and there was more time to kill. Also, solstices and equinoxes were important to several cultures, and winter solstice would have just ended. Days would be getting longer and longer after that time, so a holiday was quite common. According to Wikipedia, most of the most important gods in the religions of Ishtar and Mithra had their birthdays on December 25, and so there was a major holiday celebrating gods’ birthdays on that day. In Rome specifically, Saturnalia occured on the Ides of December, and could take up to an entire week (i.e. go until December 23rd). Saturnalia featured gift-giving, a big Saturnalian dinner, and all sorts of bonus freedoms for slaves (they couldn’t be punished, they were free to gamble, etc). The 25th of December, immediately after Saturnalia ended, was a holiday called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or “the
