Christians love to take their traditions for granted.
“Have faith and do not doubt”
A favorite quote among many that basically translates to “what
we say is how things are, do not think something else is true”. And this is
exactly how things are with most Christmas traditions.
But, what does Coca-Cola have to do with this? You will see a little later.
Roughly Explaining Pagans
Let’s get this out of the way since the word pagan so often
ends up being referred to as just not believing in God. In reality, pagan is a
term that is made out of all people from Romans to the Scandinavian Norse.
When Christianity spread, it met several people, cultures,
and religions. Everything the Christians met became “pagan”.
What is interesting is that Christians did aim to spread
Christianity but they did like many pagan rituals and customs. Many ended up
being picked up, or simply stolen from the Druids, Norse, Celtics, and Romans,
among others. In this case, we are discussing traditions that celebrated the winter solstice, which
lands in December.
For pagans, the winter solstice was very important. It was
when they stopped farming and became more focused on celebrating various gods.
With this background in mind, here are some Christmas
traditions that do not have Christian roots.
Santa Claus
This is where Coca-Cola steps in. What we know as Santa
Claus was mostly invented in the thirties by Coca-Cola. However, gift-giving is
much older. In fact, the idea that an old man is offering gifts, especially to
children, is particularly old.
We have Father Christmas (St. Nicholas), the patron saint of
children, prostitutes, and the poor. He lived in the fourth century, was a
bishop, had a long cloak, and a big beard. And he gave gifts to the poor.
However, St. Nicholas was not the first one.
The older pagan guy we should talk about is Odin. Yes, the
Odin pagan deity worshipped by several Germanic pagan tribes. Traditionally, he
was portrayed with a white, long beard. He was old and his horse had 8 legs
(Sleipnir). With his horse, he was able to basically fly thanks to Sleipnir.
When winter came, children offered Sleipnir food (hay and
carrots) and Odin would reward children with small gifts. Simply put, the
Christmas stockings came from these booties offered to Odin’s horse.
The modern Santa Claus is a mix of Odin and St. Nicholas,
with Coca-Cola laying down the final bricks.
Gift-Giving
Besides the small gifts offered by Odin and the generosity
of St. Nicholas, we also have Saturnalia,
which was celebrated by the Romans, a pagan holiday honoring Saturn, the
agricultural god.
Saturnalia was very similar to how we celebrate Christmas
today. It involved joy, gifts, drinking, and feasting. What is different in
terms of gift-giving is that the Romans did not spend a lot on their gifts.
They just exchanged some small ones with the purpose of bringing good luck, a
good harvest in the next year. Also, the Romans would only give one gift to one
person. Not more.
Christmas Carols
The carols we know are Christian. But the tradition of going
from one door to the next comes from wassailing, a pagan
tradition. Every year there were wassailers who would sing loudly in the
villages to banish all evil spirits and usher in good health.
Wassailing groups also had a traditional drink. It was made
out of sugar, spices, eggs, roasted apples, curdled cream, and mulled ale.
It took until the thirteenth century to start Christmas
carols, with St. Francis being responsible as he took inspiration from
wassailing.
Decorating The Christmas Tree
Another tradition that was borrowed (not to say stolen) from
the Romans. They had a lot of fun during Saturnalia and so many interesting
activities. One of them was to hang metal ornaments on the trees around their
homes. The ornaments represented gods, usually Saturn and the personal patron
saint of the family.
There were also Germanic tribes that decorated their trees.
They used candles and fruits to honor Odin.
To keep things simple, Christians just merged all the tree
decorating traditions and created what we see today, an extravagant decoration
of the Christmas tree.
The Mistletoe Kiss
Mistletoe was heavily featured in the traditions of several pagans,
including the Norse, Druids, Celts, and Romans. The plant was seen as sacred so
it was used in many pagan rituals.
For Romans, mistletoe was used to honor Saturn. Fertility rituals
were performed under mistletoe. Nowadays, people only kiss. Romans did a whole
lot more, as they enjoyed doing.
For druids, mistletoe was a symbol of joy and peace. When
wars broke, if enemies were meeting under the mistletoe, they would stop fighting
for the day. Kissing was basically a truce.
Now, we just kiss.
Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly
Holly was sacred for pagans and, once again, connected to Saturn.
As Saturnalia happened, the Romans exchanged holly wreaths to get good luck.
The early Christians started to celebrate Christmas but they were persecuted.
Since Christmas happened at the same time as Saturnalia, the Christians hid
their customs. One way in which they did this was to hang the holly wreaths
during Saturnalia. With this practice, it was easy for the Christians to
recognize other Christians, all while also celebrating Christmas. As time
passed, holly started to symbolize Christmas, not Saturnalia.
No comments:
Post a Comment