IT IS EASY to get caught up in the hype and hullabaloo and lose sight of the real significance of this time of year. It is in fact hard to lose sight of the real significance if you’ve never seen it in the first place. In order to not lose sight of the reason for the season, or catch a glimpse of it for the first time, it helps to clear away some of the fog. This time of year is full of marketing fog.
It is probably safe to say that Christmas is the most popular ritual on the Christian schedule of events. Even people who don’t celebrate Christ celebrate Christ’s mas. However, Christian theologians argue that the Easter festival is the most important on the Christian calendar. They argue that it is more important that Jesus died and rose again than whether or not He was born because it is the resurrection that proves His divinity. Of course it might seem like a silly debate because in order to die and rise from the dead you would have had to have been born in the first place. But we know how scholars like to quibble about details. In any case, whichever is more important theologically-speaking, if there is one day a year that people go to church it’s at Christmas when they celebrate His birth.
Christmas may not be more important than Easter but it may be more marketable. Good marketing makes you buy into all kinds of things. Babies easily steal the show. Put the picture of a baby on your product and “it sell off”. The image of Baby Jesus might naturally bring more smiles than a big hard-back Jesus, with bloody hands, even after the miracle. It also helps to attach a product to something already popular and “it sell off” again. The celebration of the birth of Christ was attached to very popular Roman culture. Easter has more of its roots in ancient German tradition.
Standardisation is also an important principle in marketing a franchise. Both Easter and Christmas have their roots in festivals that followed the movement of the stars, therefore, the actual date of the celebrations used to change each year. This is still the case for Easter, while the date of Christmas has been fixed and standardised. You don’t have to guess when to go Christmas shopping every year. And the link between gift-giving and the season provides an economic incentive to consumers, advertisers and marketers that Easter eggs and chocolate can’t compete with, creating an amazing array of songs, movies and merchandising.
In a capitalist economy the three wise men are not kings but heads of business: possibly an agent, an accountant and a marketer. The mass distribution of Jesus Christ as a superstar was set in motion when Roman Emperor Constantine converted from the worship of Roman gods and proclaimed that under the sign of the cross he would conquer. He became the chief distributing agent of a religious product imported from the East. From that day, peaceful distribution of the gospel was supplemented by war, conquest, colonisation and coercion.
Before Constantine and the Roman Church, Christians would share the gospel with whomever they met. If that person did not buy it, the evangelist would simply shake the dust off his feet and move along as Jesus suggested. Many converts to Christianity were said to have been won this way, like the famous Ethiopian official. Once Christianity became a state religion the business of winning souls became more sophisticated.
To convince the pagans of Europe to bow to the cross required some compromise and clever marketing decisions on the part of the early church. Very early on, the original Hebrew name, Yehoshuah, which Mary would have called her son, was changed to the more Roman sounding Jesus. Many aspects of pagan religion were adopted into Christianity to make it more marketable to the followers of indigenous European religions. The Easter bunny and Christmas trees are two other innovations and additions of the early church. By incorporating familiar elements the early agents of Constantine’s cross eased their way into the hearts and heads of the non-believers after forcing their way onto the land.
No one knows exactly when Yehoshuah the Christ was born, but historians seem certain that it was not on December 25. However, this date happens to coincide with the once popular celebration of the winter solstice and the Saturnalia festival dedicated to the Roman God Saturn. Marketing December 25 as the birth of Christ may have been a convenient way to get pagans involved. Similarly, the word Easter is said to come from the name of the old German goddess Eostre who was celebrated with bunnies, egg-hunting and parades around the time of the spring equinox which is in March.
The centralised religious leaders of Rome conspired with the political and military leadership to conquer. This project was continued when the Italian Columbus set sail flying the flag of Spain, with the blessings of the Pope, to plunder any people who were not of the faith, and even some who were. He was followed by agents of the Church and State of England. They created a world-dominating enterprise. They had a literally captive market and a global distribution network. Despite these advantages, their spread could not be accomplished without a religious marketing machine.
Today in order to get to the true message of Christ one has to rip through thick layers of historical packaging.
Adrian Green is a creative communications specialist. Email: Adriangreen14@gmail.com