Celebration of Christmas

Originally, Christmas was strictly a day for religious observation, and it has been observed that:

the world 'Christmas' means the mass of Christ from the Old England Christes Maesse, which is celebrated by the Western church on December 25 . . . and that the day of nativity was not generally observed until the fifth century A.D. (Durant 63).

In its original form, Christmas was a day of holy observation, not a day of celebration.

So we see that the first major change of Christmas has been that of gradually changing it from a religious holiday to a secular holiday. This is a process that has been going on in many other nations, particularly those of Western Europe, and yet there's no denying that Americans have accelerated the secularization of Christmas more than any other nation.

Part of this is due to a decline in religious observance in the twentieth century in America, and as etiquette expert Miss Manners observed, people's attitudes are changing about Christmas in America, so that they see Christmas changing "from a religious holiday that they do not celebrate to a winter festival

. . .
as tree should notice that all the ornaments which Americans choose to hang on the tree are secularly themed, and that it is rare to see ornaments hanging on a tree whose purpose is to remind people that Christmas was originally a religious holiday. But perhaps the greatest influence and change Americans have wrought on Christmas celebrations is the shifting of emphasis from the figure of Jesus Christ to that of Santa Claus. Yet even Santa Claus is based on a long prior history. Will Durant observes: St. Nicholas, in the 4th century, modestly filled the Episcopal See of Myra in Lycia, never dreaming that he was to be the patron saint of Russia, of thieves and boys and girls, and at last, in his Dutch name as Santa Claus, to enter into the Christmas mythology of half the Christian world (62). Many cultures have some sort of figure similar to Santa Claus, on whom the figure is partially based, but Santa Claus and the contemporary image of him as a jolly man who flies about the world giving gifts has been shaped by the American celebration of the holiday. Certainly the extent with which Americans have recreated Santa Claus as a figure whose major purpose is to give gifts to deserving individuals is associated in many people
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1696
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)