It’s Day 7 of our 10 Days of Christmas Spirit countdown to the big day, and there isn’t long to go. The Christmas season is in full swing.
So far, we’ve been counting down to 25 December, Christmas Day: the date Christendom has long marked as the day to celebrate the birth of Christ, and one that much of the rest of the world celebrates with feasting, family gatherings, and the exchange of gifts.
But if Christmas is on 25 December, why does Good King Wenceslas look out “on the feast of Stephen”? Why do we still use the word Yuletide, often without realising it comes from pre-Christian northern Europe? And why does December feel less like a single holiday, and more like a crowded calendar of saints, feasts, and traditions jostling for space?
The answer lies in calendar traditions, the long history of midwinter celebrations, and the simple fact that Christmas was never meant to be just one day at all.
Midwinter came first
Even before Christianity, midwinter mattered. Humans have always lived according to the turning of the seasons, and the shortening days of winter carried real weight. Midwinter is marked by the winter solstice- the shortest day and longest night of the year- followed by the slow, reassuring return of the light, as days begin to lengthen again. Across cultures, this moment became a natural point for ritual, reflection, and celebration. It was not about theology, but about survival, hope, and the shared understanding that the darkness is temporary.
That instinct did not disappear with the arrival of Christianity, nor was it overwritten. There are few moments more fitting for a story about light entering the world- in this case, in the person of Christ- than the depths of winter itself. Midwinter remained the emotional foundation on which later traditions were built.
Yuletide and the northern winter
It’s common to hear the Christmas season referred to as Yuletide, but Yule predates Christmas as both a word and a season. In Germanic and Norse cultures, Yule was a midwinter celebration tied to feasting, fire, and community, during the harshest part of the year. It wasn’t a single day, but a stretch of time across the winter- something still echoed in the way we use “Yuletide” to mean the whole season.
Evergreens, cosy nights around the fire, and extended periods of feasting weren’t invented by Christmas, but they slotted neatly into the new celebration. Christmas never sought to erase earlier customs; it absorbed them. Traditions like decorating trees survived because they made sense- and because, honestly, not many people are inclined to reject a tree covered in lights, wherever it comes from.
Saturnalia and the Roman world
In the Roman Empire, mid-December was dominated by Saturnalia, a festival held from 17 December onwards in honour of Saturn- the Roman counterpart of the Titan Kronos- who was believed to have taught humanity agriculture. The festival was marked by public feasting, gift-giving, and a temporary loosening of social rules- including role reversals between masters and servants.
Saturnalia did not become Christmas, but it matters because early Christians were not living in isolation. They were part of Roman society, living within the empire, and navigating how to coexist with neighbours who observed different festivals. Debates over how much Christians should participate, even down to whether they could eat meat from pagan sacrifices, were real and pressing issues in the early Church.
Christmas emerged into a world- and a season- already heavy with meaning.
Christmas and the question of dates
When Jesus was born, Israel was a Roman-occupied province. By the time the early Church began to establish itself, it had already learned that faith did not exist outside time, politics, or culture. The precise date of the Nativity was never the central concern. What mattered was the act of commemoration.
That perspective- and the relative unimportance of fixed dates- hasn’t changed. Orthodox Easter and Catholic Easter do not fall on the same day as each other, or the same date every year. Passover and other Jewish festivals shift every year, because the Hebrew calendar is lunar. The argument that Christmas must align with the historically exact date of Jesus’ birth misunderstands not only how religious calendars work, but how often calendars themselves have changed over the centuries, making any attempt at precision largely meaningless.
Then, as now, the point was never accuracy, but meaning. Choosing midwinter to celebrate light arriving in darkness makes intuitive sense.
The Feast of Stephen and what comes next
This layered calendar helps explain why the carol opens with Good King Wenceslas looking out “on the feast of Stephen”. The carol is set on 26 December, the Feast of Saint Stephen, traditionally recognised as Christianity’s first martyr.
Stephen’s story, recorded in the New Testament book of Acts, ends with him seeing Jesus vindicated, even as an angry crowd stones him to death. Placing his feast immediately after Christmas is deliberate. The message is simple: Christ is born- now go and live like it.
The carol’s king, based on the real 10th-century Duke Wenceslas of Bohemia, embodies that ethic through action, rather than sentiment. Charity is not an abstract feeling; it’s something you do, even when it is cold or difficult.
And Christmas doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The Twelve Days of Christmas isn’t just a carol, it’s a reflection of how many days, feasts, and celebrations traditionally made up the Christmas season.
Saints, gifts and different calendars
The same plurality appears in gift-giving traditions. In much of western Europe, Saint Nicholas became the model for Santa Claus. Nicholas was a real person- a Christian bishop in what is now Turkey- remembered for his quiet generosity. In the Greek-speaking world, the gift-giving role belongs to Saint Basil, with presents traditionally exchanged on 1 January rather than on Christmas Day.
Different saints, different dates- the same emphasis on generosity. Christmas traditions did not erase local cultures, or even seek to. They accommodated them.
A season, not a single square on the calendar
Christmas did not arrive to an empty calendar. It entered a midwinter already heavy with meaning, and settled into that landscape without erasing what came before. That is why December still feels layered: solstice and saints, fasting and feasting, theology and folklore, all overlapping.
Seen this way, the question “whose day is it anyway?” has a clear answer: it belongs to all of us. Christmas is not diluted by sharing space with other traditions. It is Christmas because it marks the Mass of Christ- a specific celebration with its own meaning, placed deliberately at the heart of the season.
Also read: Day 6: 10 epic Christmas games for festive fun
For more videos and updates, check out our YouTube channel
