This is a brief 2,500-year history of how Jews, pagans and atheists made Christmas the definitive celebration of Western Civilisation.
It is rather a strange time for me because, although I am an atheist, and don’t eat meat (including turkeys), and no longer eat sweet things (even though my mother made by far the best Christmas cake, Christmas pudding and mince pies I have ever tasted), and hate parties, I am all in favour of other people celebrating Christmas in the traditional way.
Western Civilisation began in the Middle East about ten thousand years ago for reasons of geography. The two founding cities of modern European Civilisation were Jerusalem and Athens. Their influence began in the 6th Century BC. Their ideas and methods were entirely different but eventually they combined to take over our world. Jewish scholars and holy men returning to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon (which was real, while the bondage in Egypt seems to be fictional) founded the first successful monotheistic religion and wrote the most important book in history, the Bible, much of which is obscure, much of it which is violent and bigoted, but which is a work of literary and artistic genius, resonant with mysterious meaning, with great stories that once heard can never be forgotten. While Jerusalem produced this, the pagan world of Athens produced democracy, science, mathematics and scepticism.
Then a new, vulgar and efficient empire sprung up from Rome to engulf both Greece and Israel. The Romans had nothing like the religious flair of Jerusalem or the scientific genius and inventive powers of Athens, but they had better soldiers, a unified leadership, superb lawyers, administrators and road builders, and they easily conquered both. The Roman conquerors accepted the intellectual superiority of their conquered Greeks. The Roman Republic, struggling with decay and corruption, fell into civil war and was eventually taken over in 27 BC and made an Empire by the most successful leader in history, Augustus Caesar (Octavian). Sometime in his rule, somewhere in Israel or Judah, a strange Jewish rabbi became known. His name was Jesus Christ. (The best confirmation of his historical reality comes from the atheist Christopher Hitchens.) The Roman Empire flourished for about two centuries and then fell unsteadily into decline. The Christian religion, an offshoot of Judaism, began to grow throughout it. At the end of the 4th Century AD, it became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The Greek influence on the writings and thoughts of Christianity became dominant.
Christianity has been blamed for accelerating the decline of Rome and for ending scientific enquiry in Greece. Both charges are probably justified. The Roman Empire in the West fell at the end of the 5th Century AD, and the barbarians took over. But they never subdued, or wanted to subdue, the ideas that Rome had learnt from Athens and Jerusalem. Western Europe seemed to enter a long Dark Age. By about 1,500 AD, Europe lagged behind China and the Moslem countries. Then, with explosive suddenness, Europe surged ahead and took over the world.
An explanation sometimes given is geography. Europe, with its convoluted coastlines and mountain ranges, protected its people from the stultifying central 6rule that China, with her vast central plains, could offer a single, sterile dictator. A better explanation is Christianity. The Christian (Catholic) Church took over the vast legal and administrative network of the Roman Empire. Roman magistrates were replaced with Catholic bishops. The Catholic Church, the most efficient organisation that has ever existed, adopted all of the legal procedures of Rome. Legal procedures and scientific procedures are similar, both testing evidence, both adversarial. In the Dark Ages, almost the only writing and learning in Europe came from the Church, from its monasteries and abbeys. They began teaching religion, but a lot of their religious influence came from Ancient Greece, especially from Aristotle. Religious and philosophical enquiry changed almost unnoticed into scientific enquiry, and a slow growing scientific and technical revolution was begun by the Church and coordinated by her Roman networks throughout Europe. It is sometimes said that the single most important person of ideas in European history was Robert Grosseteste, born 1168, Bishop of Lincoln, “the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in mediaeval Oxford”. In about 1,500 AD, European science and technology finally gelled together and began producing the ships, weapons, machines and systems that conquered the world.
Meanwhile, the Jews took over European finances. The reasons were racist. Christian rulers in Europe did what all bigoted rulers, black and white, always do when they run into problems: they looked for a scapegoat from a minority group. The Jews, successful and identifiable, were perfect victims. They banned Jews from government, the military and almost everything else except for a few commercial professions, especially banking, which was shunned by all “people of the Book”, because of bogus religious rules against usury. The Jews were forced into banking and to the horror and relief of the Christian rulers, they did very well at it. Only the cleverest of the Jewish bankers could survive, probably because of high levels of literacy. It might go some way to explain Jewish intellwhich probably explains why their IQs are higher than Christians’ today. The Jews became great capitalists and, since capitalism is the most benign economic system ever devised, the Jews played another enormous part in bringing about the prosperous world of today.
The pagans never went away. The Mediterranean Ocean, the centre of European Civilisation, is often called “a pagan lake”. The little gods of the Greeks were partly taken over by Christian saints and angels but never completely. The “old religion” still haunts Europe. Many Christians still believe in the Signs of the Zodiac. The date of Christmas, 25 December, is pagan, the first day the ancient scientists of the north were sure the days were lengthening again. Father Christmas and Christmas trees are pagan – and were much resented by my teetotaler Scottish Calvinist grandfather, who was dead against anybody enjoying themselves on Sundays or Christmas. (Catholics never had any problems with enjoyment, booze and pagan fun.)
This Christmas, Jewish owners of big shops made lots of money selling pagan artifacts to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Good for them! I am an atheist, who thinks that there is no meaning in the universe. But I think that most people need a meaning, and that Judeo-Christianity provides a pretty good meaning, and has led to the most benevolent civilisation in history. Jesus the Jew seems a good moral leader to me.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
[Photo: Cimabue’s Madonna Enthroned, 13th-Century Tuscan Art, Uffizi Gallery, Florence]
The views of the writer are not necessarily those of the Daily Friend or the IRR.