How to Hijack a Movement: The (Probably) Real Story of Christmas
Building something that lasts is hard. Building anything, really, is work. There’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, and even if you do, it could take far longer than you expected.
And if you’re starting from scratch? Then the effort required becomes even more heroic.
So why start from scratch? Why risk almost certain failure if there’s another way? The (probably) real story of Christmas is a good example of how a small and unlikely candidate for a worldwide holiday came to be by riding on the coattails of a much more popular one.
Today, people across the world think of Christmas as one of our oldest and most sacred holidays, but the truth is that it wasn’t even a celebrated day until Pope Julius I declared it so. Even after that it loomed in relative obscurity for centuries before being adopted as a national holiday by most Western governments.
There are a few lessons we can learn about building a following from the history of Christmas and even others that have used Christmas for their own advantage over the years. Particularly:
- If you want to build something fast, don’t start from scratch.
- Injecting new meaning into something established isn’t that difficult.
- Don’t mess with traditions.
Let’s take a quick trip through the history of Christmas to see just how it became such a popular holiday and how you can use these rules to build your own following around something important to you.
To build something fast, don’t start from scratch.
Science and religion are often at odds with each other, so there’s probably little I can say to make someone who believes otherwise listen, but most evidence suggests that Jesus was not born in December. Given that the shepherds were still in the fields and there was no room at the inns would suggest he was actually born in the autumn while the weather was still nice and during the “Feast of Tabernacles” when many people from around the region would have traveled to Bethlehem.
But the actual day of birth is hardly that important in the grand scheme, and Pope Julius I knew it when he declared the 25th of December the official Christmas. There were other motives more important than accuracy:
- Everyone around the world was already celebrating the solstice at this time of year.
- December 25 hosted the birthday of Mithras, the god of a competing pagan religion.
To build something quickly, you have to hitch it to something that already carries some authority. Borrowing that (or commandeering it depending on how you see it) from somewhere else is the easiest way to do it.
Right here in Portland, a similar thing occurred this year when a small group of people decided to start a new Christmas bazaar. It was a huge success. And how did they do it? They put it on the same weekend as the other established bazaar.
Injecting new meaning into something established isn’t that difficult.
There’s another reason December made such a great fit for Christmas, and it has to do with the worldwide celebration of the winter solstice happening at the same time.
While the whole world was celebrating, not everyone knew why everyone else was doing it. Each culture had their own special set of beliefs and rituals, but none had really traveled beyond their homeland. December was a mass celebration that was fractured into many small, unconnected parties.
With Christianity growing around the world, the goal of a December Christmas was probably to unify the celebration. And they came up with a convincing argument:
Rather than celebrate the sun, why not celebrate the reason it exists at all?
In general, people like unity. If you can offer them a way to take something they already have and connect it with others, you’ve probably got a winner.
Don’t mess with traditions.
They say it’s hard to change a mind, but the truth is, it’s much harder to change a habit.
When you look at the traditions that surround Christmas: gift giving, Christmas trees, Yule logs, it’s tempting to think the two are connected and always have been.
The reality is that they aren’t. Gift giving is left over from the Roman festival, Saturnalia. The Christmas tree comes from a number of old traditions including one used by the ancient druids in England. And the Yule log is an old pagan solstice ritual; they burned a tree to keep everyone warm while celebrating for days on end.
One reason Christmas became the worldwide holiday it is today is probably because the church didn’t insist that everyone change the traditions they were already used to. Instead, they just changed the reason for doing it. The “spirit of Christmas” as the Christians would define it was probably ignored for a long time. But, little by little, the idea gained momentum because no one had to change any habits to embrace it.
Want your idea to gain momentum. Make it easy for people to take part.
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Big changes can happen without a leader, but not very often. Behind every movement is series of actions and decisions that allowed it to happen. You can leave yours to chance and start from scratch, or you can build it on a platform that’s already there for you.
There’s no more nobility in one than in the other. In the end, what matters is that what’s important sees the light of day. So, when you sit down to your Christmas dinner this year, take a minute to think about exactly what it took for there to be a Christmas at all for you to celebrate. Then ask yourself, “How can I do that?”
And if you’re of another faith or don’t celebrate, you can skip the Christmas dinner and just get right down to business.
What do you think? Any other advice for accelerating a movement?
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P.S. The Santa Claus we know today came from a series of drawings by Thomas Nast published in Harper’s Weekly in the late 1800s. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was created for an ad campaign for Montgomery Ward in 1939. And Christmas caroling is left over from the ancient Romans who would sing and dance naked in the streets during their holiday celebration, Saturnalia.
An imagination really can change the world…
Image by: kevin dooly