Noel is a popular name for boys born on Christmas Day. And for girls, it’s typically spelled as Noelle. But what’s the noel spiritual meaning? Is it just the French translation of Christmas? Let’s take a closer look at this word and learn its spiritual significance for modern faithfuls.
Noel Spiritual Meanings
1. The Birthday of Jesus
Christianity is the world’s biggest religion with around two billion believers. And most of these denominations see Jesus as the Son of God. But Jesus is the human form of God. He was born as a man, lived 33 years, was crucified by the Romans, and came back to life after three days. His birth was the fulfillment of a prophecy, so it was kind of a big deal at the time.
Because historical records are tricky, his exact birthday is unclear. In 350 AD, Pope Julius I dedicated 25th December as the official birthday of Jesus. And in Old French, noel means birthday. So noel became a popular name for Christmas. It signifies God coming to earth as a man, taking the form of an innocent baby that was immaculately conceived by a virgin mom.
2. Conversion to Christianity
In the old days, people had lots of indigenous practices. Different communities prayed to natural deities based on the things around them. For example, the sun, soil, and water were all holy because they facilitated life. Some animals were revered for giving us food while trees gave us shelter and medicine. Some special plants were used as shrines and worship centers.
Christian leaders would often convert locals by adapting the neighborhood customs to suit Christian values. Among the Anglo-Saxons, the winter festival of Yuletide involved things like a yule log, singing yule songs, and decorating with yule goats. This was transferred into noel by translating Christmas carols and the Lamb of God. They assimilated Christmas trees.
3. The Joy and Hope of Nativity
These days, Christmas trees and mistletoe are the primary symbols of Christmas. It’s become quite commercialized. But while many places are decorated with candy canes, elves, and such, you may still see little shepherds, a drummer boy, angels, and the nativity scene. It typically shows Mary and Joseph holding baby Jesus in a manger, surrounded by hay and livestock.
This scene gave hope to believers because the prophesied Messiah had come to rescue God’s people. The word nativity comes from Latin, where it was known as Natus Christus, meaning the feast of nativity or the birth of Christ. In French, natus became noel. We carried this term into English, and noel distinguishes the spiritual side of Christmas from its commercial one.
4. Peace Among Men
In 2014, Sainsbury’s produced a commercial with soldiers singing Christmas carols together and forming a truce for Christmas Eve. They shared bars of chocolate with enemy soldiers on the front lines. Some say it never happened, but recorded evidence proves the 1914 truce that lasted several days. The fighting only resumed when military leaders threatened their troops.
As it turns out, the soldiers recognized each other as humans, young boys far from home on Christmas Eve. They no longer wanted to shoot each other and would deliberately miss their targets. This is part of the noel spiritual meaning. They sang the same Christmas songs in their own languages, feeling the peace and joy of Jesus in those tunes. That was a good noel.
5. A Gift for Humanity
While noel initially referred to any birthday, it now specifically means Jesus Christ’s birthday whereas bon noel and joyeux noel mean merry Christmas while bon anniversaire refers to any other birthday. According to Christians, Jesus was sent to us as a sacrifice and a gift. He was pure and innocent but took on humanity’s sin and cleansed our souls by dying on our behalf.
He was also God in human form, and God’s greatest treasure since he was God’s only child. It was the greatest gift God could give us – his son’s life and suffering for our salvation. Today, we give each other Christmas gifts and celebrate Santa Claus and/or Saint Nicholas. But the true meaning of presents on noel is to remind us of Jesus, God’s ultimate gift to all humans.
6. The Heavens Opening Up
Many religions view heaven and earth as two separate dimensions, portals, or planes. It takes special rituals, tools, and alignments for these realities to fuse or for anyone to cross them. In the case of noel, Jesus took on human form and was born as a child. He used a mortal vessel, his mother Mary, who was a virgin. He accepted and respected Joseph as his earthly father.
This event was celebrated by angels appearing to shepherds and a bright star in the sky. He was born in a stable or manger where animals sleep, so he was from the humblest and lowest beginnings even though he was the God of all creation who made everything we see around us. Noel is therefore the magical fusion of heaven and earth to produce this precious baby.
7. A Miracle of Time and Space
Along the same lines, moving between planes and portals is a form of astral travel. But in the Christian tradition, God saw the end before he launched the beginning. To him, time is all a single moment. That’s why he can jump between points to give foreshadows and prophecies that span thousands of years. Noel is the uniting thread that connects all these holy histories.
In this sense, the noel spiritual meaning is the ultimate tale of time travel. When God made the world, Jesus was there. They looked forward in time to see how bad humanity would get and that they’d need a savior. They put elements in place that would betroth the beloved virgin, Mary, to a kindly man who wouldn’t abandon her. Then they prophesied everything.
8. An Invitation to Immortality
The spiritual story of noel began in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were warned that if they ate the fruit of knowledge, they would die. And they did. Centuries later, Abraham had a miracle son through his menopausal wife, the fulfillment of God’s personal promise to him when he converted. But later, God asked Abraham to sacrifice this son, Isaac, on a mountain.
God was testing Abraham since it was God who gave him this miracle son, and now God wanted him back. Abraham passed the test, but at the last minute, God substituted Isaac with a ram for the sacrifice. God used this to foreshadow sacrificing his own son, Jesus, the Lamb of God. This restored the immortality of humans in heaven when they died on earth.
9. A Universal Form of Faith
The First Noel is one of the most popular Christmas carols, and it explains some of the finer noel spiritual meanings. Jesus was born as a Jew, which was – and still is – a segregated faith. To be a Jew, your mother has to be a Jew, or you can convert to Judaism. For men, one of the steps is circumcision. God asked Abraham and his sons to do this as a visible outward signal.
But when Jesus was born on that first noel, the angels appeared to poor shepherds before anyone else. Then the three wise men, who came from another land and weren’t Jews at all, saw the message in the stars. This marked Christianity as an accepting faith that honored poor people and foreigners. Jesus reinforced this by making friends with outcasts in society.
10. The Value of Every Life
We’ve already discussed root words like natus and nativity. Other words associated with noel include nasci, nael, nowel, and natalis, meaning ‘to be born’. Christmas celebrates Jesus the newborn that just landed on the planet. Prophecies said he would be a great man, and that he was both fully human and the one true deity. We were rejoicing in who he’d grow up to be.
In this sense, noel marks every human’s significance. The angels went to poor shepherds who weren’t considered important in society. Jesus was crowned as a baby, not as a teenager or an adult. Remarking his birth was a sign of faith in all the things God promised his people, and it extended God’s banner to gentiles, poor people, everyone. It was no longer exclusive.
11. Proof of the Spiritual Plane
The literal meanings of noel include good news, birthdays, and Christmas carols. But the noel spiritual meaning is about heavenly beings communing with mortals. God took on a human body in the form of Jesus. He lived as a person, going through all the drama of infancy, toddlerhood, teenage, and adulthood as a carpenter who hung out with fishermen.
But then the story of his birth, the miracles he performed, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection proved he was the Son of God. As part of the Holy Trinity, he was God himself. But we didn’t celebrate his birthday while he lived in human form. It’s only centuries after he ascended to heaven that we acknowledged it. Noel is proof that heaven is real and God exists.
