By Michael F. Duggan
I came across an interesting nugget of Holiday history in Michael Grant’s collection of biographical sketches, The Roman Emperors.
After the protracted period of crises in the middle decades of the 3rd century, Rome rebounded through a series of military victories. The most notable of the emperor-generals of this period was Aurelian (not to be confused with Marcus Aurelius), who governed during A.D. 270-275. Although he only ruled for five years, he was one of the outstanding military men in of Roman history, and one of the notable emperors of the later Roman Empire (unless you mark the later Empire as beginning with Diocletian in 284).
In domestic affairs, Aurelian favored the monotheistic Sun cult, Sol Invicus, that was rising (no pun intended) at the time along with Christianity and was its great benefactor. As Grant puts it: “His birthday was to be celebrated on 25 December (which was eventually a bequest of the solar cult to Christianity, converted into Christmas day);”1 his actual birthday was September 9. Given that recent scholarship places Christ’s birthday as possibly being in the spring, it is curious that the 25th of December would be celebrated for both the Prince of Peace and one of the most warlike Romans, whose nickname was “Sword-in-hand.”2 Oh, bitter, irony.
Of course the proximity of the day to the winter solstice also made it easier to convert traditional pagans to the faith that became Rome’s official religion under Constantine a number of decades later. It all makes me wonder about fertility symbols like eggs and rabbits and their connection to Easter.
Note
1. Michael Grant, The Roman Emperors (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 187.
2. Grant, 188.