What's REALLY Behind Our Favorite Christmas Traditions

What's REALLY Behind Our Favorite Christmas Traditions

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
1:24 The Date: December 25th
11:55 The Yule Log: Ancient Origins and Modern Traditions
21:06 Evergreens and the Christmas Tree: Ancient Roots and Modern Traditions
31:37 Santa Claus and His Predecessors: From Mythical Figures to Modern Icon
41:35 Gift-Giving: A Timeless Tradition Across Cultures and Eras
53:06 Feasting and Merrymaking: The Heart of Holiday Celebrations
1:03:53 Caroling: The Melody of Christmas Tradition
1:15:56 Mistletoe and Holly: The Symbolic Greens of Christmas
1:27:15 Lights and Candles: Illuminating the Christmas Tradition
1:39:40 Conclusion: The Timeless Legacy of Christmas Traditions

[kavikv.d.hexenholtz]

PART 3 –

Let’s quickly look at two more things with alleged pagan roots – the yule log and mistletoe (as well as other green plants like holly and ivy).

Yule, for the ancient Germanic people, typically referred to the Winter Solstice and celebrations were held around that time. Yule was subsequently placed on 25 December by King Haakon the Good in the 10th century AD to coincide with Christmas. This goes back to the early historian Snorri Sturluson, and his book "Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway." Snorri says before this, “Yule was celebrated on a midwinter night (the Winter Solstice), and for a duration of three nights". He gives no specific dates, but St. Bede in “The reckoning of Time, ” opined the Northmen calculated their seasons according to the cycles of the moon, so the date of Yule probably changed every year to align with the Winter Solstice. Pliny the elder also says the Gallic tribes calculated their months according to the moon. Last, according to the Chronicler, Theitmar, the Danes sacrificed to pagan gods in January after the 6th. So, Yule kind of gets moved around. One thing associated with pagan Yule is of course the Yule Log.

Yule Logs however do not go back to paganism, despite the name. Yule is also an English word to mean "mid-winter period." The first mention of yule logs is in Robert Herrick’s, "Hesperides” a poetry collection, and he calls it a Christmas log. It wasn't called a yule log until Aubrey's work “In the West-Riding of Yorkshire on Christmas Eve” which dates to 1686. So, the Yule Log is really a more recent concept and has zero connections back to some pagan antecedent.

Many people associate mistletoe, ivy and holly with the ancient Celts as all three plants were held as sacred in Druidism. Thus, they opine, their inclusion in Christmas is pagan and this is proffered as just one more reason not to celebrate Christmas due to its pagan origins.

Again, historical similarity does not equate to historical sameness. The first mention of mistletoe in connection with Christmas goes back to only the 1600’s. The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe comes even later, the end of the 1700’s. Again, no ties to an ancient pagan past.

Most people have heard the story about how the ancient Germanic people brought evergreen trees into their houses around Winter Solstice (Germanic ‘Yule’) and typically hung them upside down from rafters. It leaves us with images of a Viking long house bedecked with several trees hanging from the rafters while those gathered inside made merry with fire, feasting and mead.

Except that never happened. There is no historical evidence from any of the eddas or sagas or any writings, that offer a shred of historical evidence to support the idea that pagan Germanic peoples brought evergreen trees into their homes at Yule.

There was no borrowing of this Germanic custom from the Romans who borrowed it from blah, blah, blah, who borrowed it from blah, blah, blah. This custom has absolutely zero ties to any supposed Biblical reference.


The origins of Christmas trees are rooted in present-day Germany and date to the 16th century. The first mention of Christmas trees is in an Alsace ordinance in 1561. Almost no early Germanic pagans thought pine trees were sacred, let alone associated with Christmas. Germanic tribes believed the oak was sacred, not the evergreen tree.

The Christmas tree morphed over from so-called paradise trees. There were many allegorical-type plays done in the Middle Ages at various markets. One such play was called the Paradise Play, performed to celebrate the feast day of Adam and Eve, which fell on Christmas Eve. In the dead of winter, not a lot of trees are available, so the “tree of knowledge” was represented by an evergreen fir with apples tied to its branches. There is documentation of trees decorated with wool thread, straw, apples, nuts and pretzels. After the play, the treats would be eaten. The practice likely gave way to having trees in the house at Christmas. In 1419 for example, a guild in Freiburg put up a tree decorated with apples, flour-paste wafers, tinsel and gingerbread. The Christmas tree is not historically attested any earlier than this time period. Again, historical similarity does not equate to historical sameness.

[angelaknight]

We shouldn’t buy these expensive gifts, I say grace before I eat quietly in my head ❤

[XenobiaWolfMoon]

Said in Gordon Ramsay's voice "ITS F---ING RA" It's pronounced Rah not R A.

[redcurrantart]

Oh how I hate AI voice overs? The Egyptians celebrated and honored R.A.? You mean the Sun God Ra? Seriously.

[TheLeonhamm]

LOL The usual mythology about de-mythologising myth. There was no 'pagan Christmas', fact, not fiction .. and certainly not myth. Thus, traditions related to the Mass (liturgy, public service by Christians) to celebrate Christ .. are Christian - not, however, necessarily of Jewish origin, though the Roman Liturgy is similar to old-time Synagogue-type meetings (some are related to the Jerusalem Temple Cult, some to the witness of the Apostles, some to the formal manner of Roman public address).
Note well, the Romans - Pagan and Christian - were great assimilators though also stick-in-the-mud traditionists .. if something fitted the Roman manner it could be accommodated, with modification, if it could not fit, it was rejected (at times vigorously). Burning a Yule Log, for instance, in the Imperial military capital at Trier or in a Saxon Great Hall in Britain was a necessity not a niceity .. even among Christians; however, sacrificing a virgin youth to the Oak Grove (the Green Man myth) was not; each one would have fallen, more or less, on either side of the time set for the Christ Mass - but one survived, even among Roman Christians, yet the other did not make into the Roman Pagan grade of decorum.
So the current (and long-standing) attempt to separate the Roman Christ from the Roman Catholic Mass, and both from the Anglo-Saxon forms of Christmastide (duly Victorian-ised) as found in the US of A (with some German Lutheran customs) is itself a form of popular myth-creation, not antique myth-busting, much the same with Pascaltide and the Germanic customs called Easter in English (not in the older Roman terminology); a Spanish or Greek or Coptic Christmas and Pasch have a very different feel .. having different Roman customs around them, many not at all dissimilar to the Pagan ways considered decorous all those many centuries ago (when Christians read or heard Hesiod and Cicero as well as Maccabees and Deuteronomy, in Greek or Latin translation, rather than the local usually truncated KJV or advertising newspaper alone).
History can be fun .. as well as informative .. when we let it. Yey! ;o)