Next Monday is Christmas, the celebration of the birth of a poor Jewish carpenter’s son in the backwater Hebrew town of Bēt Lehem just over 2,000 years ago.

The early church placed the date of the nativity on the 14th of the month Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, which falls in March or April of the modern Gregorian calendar, depending on the year. Various churches throughout the empire used different dates coordinating with local festivals.

As the early church gained followers, power and political clout in the Roman Empire, it became Christianity’s second holiest day after Easter.

Around AD 200, most churches had moved the date to Dec. 25, conveniently coinciding with Roman winter solstice festivals of Saturnalia, Sigillaria and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or “Birthday of the Unconquered Sun,” commonly observed by Roman citizens. It fell on the shortest day the year, symbolically making the Christ the bringer of light, and falling about nine months after Nisan.

As more and more Gentiles joined the small Jewish sect and transformed it into Christianity, the Rome-based church expanded to pagan regions of Europe and beyond, local converts incorporated their traditions into the holiday. After the fall of the empire, the church was the one cultural remnant holding Europe together, making religious festivals ever more important.

During the Reformation, pastors of Protestant churches on the continent and “low” Church of England congregations resisted excessive celebrations, seeing the events as “too papist” as they emphasized pomp and circumstance. Meanwhile those in “high” Anglican churches still ecclesiastically near the Roman Catholic Church from which they had broken in the 16th century encouraged grander celebrations of their savior’s birth.

Early Puritans, first in England and later in the American Colonies, often imposed bans on Christmas celebrations, which eventually relaxed as religious divisions became less intensely scrutinized.

Many people for whom Christianity is a framework but not a lifestyle choice no longer attend services regularly. For many, Christmas is the once-a-year visit to the local church for a nativity scene, a sermon and a candlelit farewell while singing Christmas hymns.

Santa Claus has a much longer tradition around Christmastime — despite false claims, he wasn’t a Victorian creation nor fabricated by the Coca-Cola company — rather, he has his roots in Germanic and Norse folklore. The Norse God-king Odin, in the guise of a blue-cloaked and bearded old man, would ride through the sky on his eight-legged warhorse Sleipnir and deliver gifts during the darkest nights of winter.

In our secular culture where religious affiliation has grown less important, the holiday is merely a reason to gather with family and celebrate our relationships to each other with gift-giving.

Common religious holidays unite devotees and secularists for a much simpler psychological reason — we know we need to be more generous to each other. Deep down, we all love friends and family, but having a holiday to wrap it around makes it easier to show our true colors, our deeply held love of those nearest to us without suspicion of ulterior motives.

We all have big hearts and a selfless love for our fellow man, but wrapping it up in shiny red bow lets the rest of the world accept that fact with the same joy with which we give it.