Did Christianity Steal the Date of
Sol Invictus?
The claim is that Sol Invictus
"Invincible Sun" is a more ancient pagan
holiday in Rome celebrated on December 25th. The claim
assumes that this pagan holiday was so popular and dangerous that the
Christian Church sought to suppress it by establishing the
celebration of Christ's Nativity on December 25th. By
doing this, the claim continues, the Christians adopted the pagan day
and some of the practices of that pagan festival to make the
celebration of Christmas more appealing to pagans.
Remember first that the Christian faith
is as old as the curse on Satan in Genesis 3:15. And while pagan
worship of the sun certainly existed in Rome before the spread of the
fulfillment of that promise in Christ came to the city; the
celebration of Sol Invictus as a god in Rome actually came as pagans
attempted to suppress Christianity. This early attempt as suppressing
Christianity by means of the pagan worship of Sol is found in the
Historia Augusta, a pagan history of Rome compiled in the
fourth century AD.
The Historia Augusta in TheLife of Elagabalus (1.3) relates events from the Roman Emperor
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, a particularly twisted man, who
reigned from 218-222 AD. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus came to be
called Elagabalus after the name of the Syrian sun god, and was
himself initiated as a priest of that false god. He viewed himself as
the personal manifestation of the Syrian sun god. After coming to
Rome and being established as emperor at the age of 14, the Historia
states:
4 Elagabalus
[established himself] as a god on the Palatine Hill close to the
imperial palace; and he built him a temple, to which he desired to
transfer the emblem of the Great Mother, the fire of Vesta, the
Palladium, the shields of the Salii, and all that the Romans held
sacred, purposing that no god might be worshipped at Rome save only
Elagabalus. 5 He declared, furthermore, that the religions of the
Jews and the Samaritans and the rites of the Christians must also be
transferred to this place, in order that the priesthood of Elagabalus
might include the mysteries of every form of worship.
[Latin]
And, coincidentally, very shortly after
Elagabalus tried to establish worship of the Syrian sun god, Sol
Invictus, he was thought to be too licentious and was assassinated by
his own people, pagan Romans, at the age of 18 years old.
From that time there is no mention of
the celebration of Sol Invictus in Roman history until the rule of
Aurelian (A.D. 270-275). Aurelian did try to re-introduce
the worship of Sol Invictus by decree in the year 274. But there is
no record of this festival being held on December 25th.
“The traditional feast days of Sol, as recorded in the early
imperial fasti, were August 8th and/or August 9th, possibly August
28th, and December 11th.”(Hijmans, p. 588
)
Aurelian did declare games to Sol every
four years. But there is no record from the period or early
historiographers that these games were associated with December 25th
in any way. The best evidence suggest that the games were held
October 19-22 of their calendar. Anyway, on another coincidence, a
year after Aurelian declared these games in honor of Sol Invictus, he
was assassinated by his own pagan Roman officers out of fear he would
execute them based on false charges.
The earliest calendar to mention that
Invictus as a specified date for Roman religious life comes from a
text of the Philocalian Calendar, VIII Kal recorded in an
illuminated 4th Century manuscript called TheChronography of 354. In this late
manuscript the date is listed in Mensis December (The Month of
December) as N·INVICTI·CM·XXX.
[The calender can be seen at
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chronography_of_354_06_calendar.htm
]
Many scholars through the years have
assumed that INVICTI in this calendar must mean “Sol Invictus.”
This is possible. However, elsewhere the calendar does not hesitate
to make explicit mention of festivals to Sol, for example: on
SOLIS·ET·LVNAE·CM·XXIIII (August 28th) and LVDI·SOLIS
(October 19-22).
Even if INVICTI does refer to Sol
Invictus on December 25th of this calendar, all this shows
is that the celebration of Sol Invictus was placed on December 25th after Christianity had already widely accepted and celebrated
December 25th as the Nativity of Christ.
There are many historians and people
following them who will still assert that December 25th is
Sol Invictus in ancient Rome. Some will even claim that another
religion, Mithraism, has close connection to this December 25th
celebration. In actual fact there is no ancient documentation tying
Mithraism to December 25th or Sol Invictus. The Christian
celebration of the Nativity of Christ as December 25th
predates anything in the earliest actual documentation for Sol
Invictus on December 25th. That documentation is from the much later Philocalian Calendar
Chronography of 354.
[For those interested in a more technical look see T.C. Schmid's article at the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20140721141415/http://chronicon.net/blog/christmas/sol-invictus-evidently-not-a-precursor-to-christmas/ ]
