The Origin of Christmas
Sharing a story about Christmas that a Silicon Valley entrepreneur friend shared with me:
After sprint review today, my co-founder suddenly asked: "Why is Christmas on December 25th? Was Jesus actually born on that day?"
I said: "This question is like asking 'Why does GPT have emergent capabilities?'—the answer lies in the historical training data."
I believe the establishment of Christmas is fundamentally one of history's most successful "product strategy pivots."
▍Christmas and PMF (Product Market Fit)
The early church faced a highly fragmented market—different regions had different festivals and different faith traditions. The Roman Empire's "mainstream festivals" at the time were the winter solstice, sun god celebrations, and Saturnalia. User minds were already occupied.
So the church made an extremely clever pivot: instead of forcing a brand new festival, they "reassigned meaning" to existing festivals' underlying logic.
- Preserve user habits: December 25th was originally a day celebrating the sun's return, light conquering darkness.
- Redefine core value: Transform "invincible sun" into the birth of "true light Jesus."
- Absorb and integrate: Even Saturnalia's gift-giving and celebration culture was incorporated, reducing friction.
This is exactly what we do in the startup ecosystem—rather than educating the market from scratch, find existing user behaviors and introduce new core values through familiar interfaces.
What's even more interesting is that this decision didn't come from some mysterious revelation, but from hundreds of years of A/B testing.
Between the 2nd and 4th centuries, different regions tried May 20th, November 18th... until the Roman church found that December 25th had the best data—high pagan acceptance, and the theological narrative flowed smoothly.
▍Isn't this our growth hacking?
Rapid iteration, data-driven, finding product-market fit.
Even the difference between Eastern and Western churches is like a distributed systems version compatibility problem: the East uses January 6th (Epiphany), the West uses December 25th. Eventually integrated through protocol, but to this day some Orthodox churches still use the Julian calendar, creating "backward compatibility."
So when we look at Christmas today—this festival that blends theological calculation, political strategy, and cultural customs—it's no longer just a religious commemoration, but an evolving open-source tradition, with each era committing new cultural code.
For me, this is Christmas's most fascinating revelation:
The best innovation often isn't built from scratch, but understands humanity's ancient underlying needs and recompiles them with new meaning.
This piece shares an interesting story from a friend.
As the Christmas season approaches, may everyone, regardless of which timezone you're in, share warmth and light with those you love.
Merry Christmas, and may your product iterations go smoothly!