After the Romans had conquered the Greeks and adopted their culture,Greek gods were also assimilated into the Roman cult of worship with their names changed to Latin and some of the practices and customs slightly uttered.
Before the birth of Jesus,two roman writers,Vigil and Ovid, incorporated the names and functions of the Greek gods into the Roman literary and artistic tradition.The festivals were performed to honor the assimilated gods.It is known in Rome that a day was chosen to correspond to pagan festivals that took place around the time of winter solstice. One of such festivals was saturnalia, which was dedicated to the god known as Saturn and this was celebrated to re-enact the rebirth of the sun God. This festival was celebrated on the 25th of December each year.
With the ascension of Emperor Constantine on the roman throne, he decided to Unify his people under one religion.As part of that plan, when the Roman populace were celebrating this festival,the church would hold a mass in honor of Christ and this was later shorten and referred to as ‘Christ’s Mass’.With time the festival was rededicated or came to be associated with the birthday of Jesus Christ.The day for the celebration of the festival was however not hanged.The festival thus took a christian flavor during this period.
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