History of Christmas

>>2134545
Depends on where you live. Scandinavia can track most of their traditions back to pagan times. Japanese people can track their whole obsession about KFC to Americans in Japan missing eating turkey.

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Ad campaigns from the late 19th to early 20th century.

>>2134553
>Scandinavia can track most of their traditions back to pagan times.

most of europe can

Most "western" Christmas traditions were fed into America by Germanic immigrants and then fed from America back into the west

It's what irritates me about people being all like "Christmas trees are Germanic pagan in origin therefore Christmas is a pagan holiday :DDDD" when in my country Christmas trees were practically unheard of up until about 60 years ago

Gift giving and having the day off is a holdover from Saturnalia.

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I already knew where this thread was headed before I even clicked on it.

CHRISTMAS IS NOT PAGAN REEEEEE

>>2134687

Saturnalia was the feast dedicated to the Roman god Saturn. Established around 220 B.C., this feast was originally celebrated on December 17. Eventually the feast was extended to last an entire week, ending on December 23. The supposed connection to Christmas is based on the proximity of the two festivals to each other.

If the suggestion were correct, one would expect to find at least a single reference by early Christians to support it. Instead we find scores of quotations from Church Fathers indicating a desire to distance themselves from pagan religions (http://www.catholic.com/blog/jon-sorensen/the-early-church-fathers-and-paganism).

>>2134545
The religious aspects are Christian obviously.

The obligation to buy shit comes from consumerism.

Christmas trees come from German Lutherans.

Mistletoe and Yule logs and things like that have their origins in pre-Christian traditions.

>>2134714
This tbch kind of, it's fine to say that the festivities of one bled into the other, or that the date may have been picked because of its symbolism or proximity to other celebrations, but to say that there was a big conspiracy to steal them pagan holidays is a bad meme.

Not to mention that there are older dates for Christmas, Armenian Christians still celebrate it on the 6th of January (the actual 6th of January, not just the 25th on the Julian calendar like most Eastern Orthodox do). In the very ancient church it was marked in Spring (at least in Egypt).

>>2134545
Rome

>>2134714
The ultimate point isn't that it's pagan, the point is that the tradition isn't based in real Christianity. It's not biblical.

>>2134545
Germany is where most American christmas memes come from

>>2135111
Thank Finland for Joulupukki though. The guy who designed the first Coca-Cola Santa Claus was a Finn.

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>>2135105
Although the date of Christ’s birth is not given to us in Scripture, there is documented evidence that December 25 was already of some significance to Christians prior to A.D. 354. One example can be found in the writings of Hyppolytus of Rome, who explains in his Commentary on the book of Daniel (c. A.D. 204) that the Lord’s birth was believed to have occurred on that day:

>For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.

The reference to Adam can be understood in light of another of Hyppolytus’ writings, the Chronicon, where he explains that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of Creation. According to his calculations, the world was created on the vernal equinox, March 25, which would mean Jesus was born nine months later, on December 25.

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>>2135105
Nineteenth-century liturgical scholar Louis Duchesne explains that “towards the end of the third century the custom of celebrating the birthday of Christ had spread throughout the whole Church, but that it was not observed everywhere on the same day” (Christian Worship, Its Origin and Evolution: a study of the Latin liturgy up to the time of Charlemagne, p. 260).

In the West, the birth of Christ was celebrated on December 25, and in the East on January 6.

Duchesne writes “one is inclined to believe that the Roman Church made choice of the 25th of December in order to enter into rivalry with Mithraism. This reason, however, leaves unexplained the choice of the 6th of January” (ibid., p. 261). His solution, therefore, was that the date of Christ’s birth was decided by using as a starting point the same day on which he was believed to have died. This would explain the discrepancies between the celebrations in the East and West.

Given the great aversion on the part of some Christians to anything pagan, the logical conclusion here is that one celebration has nothing to do with the other. In his book, Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI explains:

>The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion. However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception (p. 105-107).

http://www.catholic.com/blog/jon-sorensen/why-december-25

Can anyone ITT explain me why Christmas and New Year aren't celebrated on the same day?

>>2135105
>It's not biblical
>therefore it's not real christianity

>christianity = the bible

Nice meme

>>2135686
Your right, it's about clergy making shit up so they can get more power/influence.

>>2135681
Different holidays with different origins.

isnt Santa Claus a Coca-Cola product?

>>2135994
Yes and no.

>>2134545
Pagans

>>2134545

Trees from Germany