Everyone will be making new or different Christmas memories in the year 2020. Maybe all of this is happening because 2020 is easy to say and write and it’s the Covid 19 year. It will be so easy to say “back in 2020” in the future recalls of our years past. We can start with the toilet paper and yeast shortages and move on to the lock downs. Face mask wearing or not wearing will be a prime point of recall along with the question as to how many you made. Each of us will have a unique story to tell. For some of us it will include deep sadness due to a loss of a loved one. Some of us will remember the loss of employment. The school children and their parents will remember how different and hard education was in these times. Hopefully the one thing we learned was caring for one another is still a very strong action.

The calendar date of Christmas has a lengthy evolution process. I have chosen some interesting trivia information from a number of places. Remember they did not have Google and maybe not a lot of paper and pencils to write down facts as they happen. That means everything is open to be rewritten at some point of time.

It is said that the New Testament does not hold any direct information on the birth of Jesus. A person by the name of Sextus Julius Africanus gave December 25 that honor in 221. However the parties and celebrations did not begin to be celebrated much until the 900’s. It would take many centuries to be what it is today.

For many centuries before and after the birth of Jesus, there were lots of celebrations around this time period but probably most were related to the winter solstice which symbolizes the resurgence of the sun and promise of life to come. Some say this time frame formed into celebrating the birth of Jesus but being a pagan idea, the church may not have been real eager to get on that band wagon. However it does sound like a good selling point.

The term “Christmas” is a fairly new term for this holiday season. It is a rough translation of “mass on Christ’s Day” in old English. Other terms include “Yule” from Germanic “jol” or the Anglo-Saxon term “geol” which refers to winter solstice. The Spanish name is “Navidad”. “Natale” is Italian. Of course “Noel” is French and all of these terms refer to the nativity.

On our home turf, Alabama was the first state to declare Christmas a state holiday in 1836. They were followed by Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838. Christmas was made a federal holiday on June 26, 1870. This year, 2020, President Trump declared Christmas Eve Day a federal holiday.

Here are some reported facts that you might be surprised to find out about. It was not until the 1600’s that the use of an evergreen tree with candles came into favor. The first eggnog was downed by Captain John Smith in 1607. Captain Smith was okay with the Christmas celebration idea but the Pilgrims were not. Christmas was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1881. Wishing You A Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year was penned on the first commercial Christmas card by Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843. The first commercial Advent Calendar was created in 1851 in German and it is said that a mother getting tired of the questions of when Christmas was coming had her hand in that. About this time the Advent wreath made of fir branches and 4 candles representing the 4 weeks of the Advent season became popular. (This was a change from using 24 candles which got a bit hard to manage). As you can see Christmas has changed over the centuries. This year is a small drop in it all. Peace to YOU.