There are no strangers on Christmas Eve. – Michael O’Brien (Charles Winninger) in Beyond Tomorrow
Christmas is the oldest continuously-celebrated holiday in the world, dating back at least 5000 years to the ancient festival of Lenaea, celebrated by the ancestors of the Mycenaean Greeks; it may be much older still, but since even our oral traditions don’t go back before the early Bronze Age we have no real way of knowing. Personally, I suspect it dates back to 3900 BCE, when the climate abruptly cooled and dried, creating the Sahara and spurring the settlement of river valleys, the first large, centralized governments and the development of agricultural calendars. One can imagine the dread with which those early people would have reacted to the failure of the rains and the shortening of the growing season; over time the stories of how pleasant things used to be would have become exaggerated until they grew into the belief that man had once existed in a paradise from which he had been expelled due to some dreadful offense against the gods. They might have seen each winter as a threat of worsening conditions, and developed religious rituals to placate the gods and bring back the sun. Nearly every temperate-zone agricultural society had some sort of “return of the sun” ritual at this time of year, and even today Christmas is celebrated by a larger fraction of human beings than any other holiday.
To anyone who knows anything at all about the origin and development of Christmas, the insistence by American Christians that the holiday belongs to them and them alone is bizarre indeed; it’s rather like someone buying a used car, giving it a new paint job and then declaring that he was the inventor of the internal combustion engine. What makes this even stranger is that Christmas has been a largely-secular festival rather than a high-religious one for about 2500 years, since the formal Lenaea gave way to the popular Kronia. The early Church fathers were not at all pleased when recent converts associated Jesus with the sun-god and assigned the latter’s birthday to the former; Pope Benedict recently pointed out, “We don’t even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice.” But as I wrote in my first Boxing Day column,
…they were [eventually] forced to admit that, like prostitution, Christmas was not going to go away, so by the Middle Ages the Church embraced the celebration and worked to insert as much Christian symbolism into it as possible. Nativity scenes first appeared in 10th-century Rome, and were popularized by Saint Francis of Assisi beginning in 1223 (St. Francis also popularized religious Christmas carols sung in the vernacular). Christian explanations were developed for pagan traditions like the Christmas tree…By the Renaissance Christmas was fully established as an important Church festival…and then the Reformation came, bringing preachers who thundered against Christmas as “popery” or even the dreaded “heathenism”. The Church responded by trying to make the festival more religious, and many German Protestants continued the celebration quietly but replaced Saint Nicholas or other traditional gift-giving figures with the Christkindl (Christ child), a term corrupted in English to “Kris Kringle”…in the English-speaking world the Protestants continued to hammer away at Christmas, which was actually banned in England under the Commonwealth government from 1647-1660…Puritan influence made it unpopular [in America, and]…it was [only] due to German, Dutch, French and Spanish influence that Christmas finally “caught on” in the United States in the first quarter of the 19th century…
In other words, the whole “Keep Christ in Christmas” nonsense is based on a premise as spurious as the fallacy that “Xmas” is a modern abbreviation intended to “X” Jesus out of the holiday (in reality, the “X” is a Greek Chi, short for “Christ”, and the use of “Xmas” dates back to the 11th century). Christmas belongs to the entire world, not just to the most selfish members of one religion, and we cannot allow this Cult of Grinches to steal it and all of its symbols, the majority of which predate their sect by centuries.
It is true – we learnt in our history lessons in the UK that Christmas was once banned under Oliver Cromwell (who headed the Commonwealth). We also learnt (got taught?) in class that Christmas in the UK was on and off throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries until Queen Victoria’s time – popularity rose since then mainly because Prince Albert (Victoria’s husband) imported the tradition of the Christmas tree and Christmas cards to Britain.
It’s kind of odd, bizarre and laughable to British-raised people like me when we see there are so many people in (mainly) the USA going at each others’ throats about Christmas/no Christmas. In the UK, even atheists say “Merry Christmas” to each other and think nothing of it. Here in Hong Kong where I live now, even Buddhists say “Merry Christmas” to each other because they simply take it as a matter of good manners for the greater good of society.
Anyway, good tidings and good cheer to you and yours for the holiday season (or Yuletide, as appropriate) and best wishes for the new year.
Well, also, during the industrial revolution consumer goods became widely available to the middle class, and merchants such as Marks and Sparks promoted the idea of gift giving to sell more goods.
The UK does Christmas well, and I often miss it.
When I was a girl, the shops became a decorate wonderland, and Woolies was a marvel.
I don’t recall any fights over religion.
A happy season to all.
@comixchik: Oh, you sure got me terribly nostalgic now by mentioning Woolworths. Brings tears back that…Merry Xmas to you and yours.
Just go to Foot Locker and think… that’s what Woolworth’s became. 🙂
On Christmas, in the afternoon, there was the Queen’s speech. Now I look forward to the Dr. Who Christmas special. One year I actually found Christmas crackers and had those.
Okay, I get that the final art is a big “F*** You” to the red-state Bible-thumpers, but why have the Tannenbaum-decorators be witches, not just pagans/heathens?
Second question: Who’s the artist for that picture?
It’s not a “fuck you” at all; in New Orleans witches aren’t remotely controversial, and what do non-witch pagans look like (graphically speaking)? As for the picture, it’s just a nice one I found on Magickal Graphics about a year ago, and kept in my picture folder until I found a nice use for it (a lot of my pics are like that).
Maggie beat me to the punch. Unless you have some super-power similar to “sex rays” you aren’t going to tell a devout Christian from a secular person from their clothing. The point was that you can recognize a witch from that costume and that Christmas is for EVERYBODY, not just Christians.
Another exquisite Maggie McNeill quote: “To anyone who knows anything at all about the origin and development of Christmas, the insistence by American Christians that the holiday belongs to them and them alone is bizarre indeed; it’s rather like someone buying a used car, giving it a new paint job and then declaring that he was the inventor of the internal combustion engine. ”
Damn! You sure can turn a phrase.
Thank you! 🙂
I have this vision of Maggie waking up in the middle of the night with those lines, writing them down and going back to sleep laughing. 🙂
I was going to post very similar sentiments to the nakedlistener. Perhaps it was the ban under the Commonwealth, or simply that in Britain we always knew Christmas was something older, but except for a few on the right who tried to import “The War on Christmas” people see Christmas for what they want it to be.
Perhaps of course living somewhere that needs some light and happiness when you have only 7 hours of daylight helps. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow it may rain!
@jemima101: Exactly. In my day in the UK (shh! decades ago!) we had sleet every bleedin’ winter (global warming wasn’t invented then) – we couldn’t care less about the origins of Christmas and just wanted the grub and booze.
Seriously though, it kind of takes an effort of willpower to not see that Christmas had to have been much older in history because the UK was/is littered with Christmassy stuff from Roman times and there are still lots of non-pagan churches (chapels?) there with absolutely no Christian imagery in them.
Here’s one of the older bits I always found interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbots_Bromley_Horn_Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8WYyWTCOG8
DNA has shown the antlers to date back to the 11th century, and they likely replaced older ones.
I have a friend in London who is atheist, but he told me that he preferred to receive religious Christmas cards because he preferred “Christmas=birth of Christ” as opposed to “Christmas=buy as much junk as possible.”
I don’t know any “Christians” who would say that. I think you’re referring to a fringe element of Christianity – the kind of folk I went to High School with – where the girls weren’t allowed to cut their hair because it was a “sin” to do so.
The Christians I personally know now – well, they’d have no problem with a Muslim telling them “Merry Christmas”. In fact, they’d prefer everyone use the term regardless of religious affiliation. None of the Christians I have ever known – including the “fringe” had any problems with Hanukkah – and that’s kind of “Chirstmas” for Jews. Kwanza is a different story – it’s pretty much an invention to keep people of African ancestry “balkanized” from the other races – so yes, I know Christians who kind of sneer at that one.
I’m just saying here – the image of Christians as being “obstinate” and “absolutist” is kind of faux one. I’m IN the Bible Belt – I can walk two minutes from my house to the nearest church (if I went to church). There are actually a lot of “forward thinking” Christians in the mainstream – hell, the Founding Fathers were pretty “forward thinking” and most of them were Christians.
Did you miss the line, ” the most selfish members of one religion”? It’s obvious most Christians aren’t like that, but the Bill O’Reillys are very vocal.
krulac,
I personally think that RamaHanaKwansMas should be the official holiday…
And, particularly appropriate to this forum, Happy Christmas and “Ho, ho, ho!”
Nollaig Shona Daoibh! Sláinte!
I think I like Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day. I think it is the anticipation in the air. All of the preparations culminate on this night and you just sit back and look at the beauty of the holiday. When I was a wee girl, I’d stay up to see if the angels still sang….until one of my parents would remind me that Santa wouldn’t come if I was still up then I zoomed to bed. Heh.
I can relate but for a slightly different reason. Being of eastern European heritage I fondly remember that Christmas was celebrated very much on Christmas Eve day. I’m not sure how widespread that tradition is, but it was definitely the case in my family and extended family.
Christmas Eve was the festival day. All gifts (just one exchanged per person) were opened late at night, after or during Christmas Eve dinner and then midnight mass and singing.
Christmas Day was, in a sense, a day of recovery – sober prayer, reflection, sleeping off the previous day/night of eating, drinking (well, the adults drunk), story telling, worshiping, decorating, singing etc. I no longer identify as catholic but Christmas is still a pleasant memory.
Stateside, and certainly in my own experience, Catholics celebrate more on Christmas Eve than Christmas Day. Many of my early religious and family traditions were heavily influenced by our Catholic friends and family even though we were not Catholic ourselves but Presbyterian.
Also here in Chicago, many people are of Eastern European background and they also continue to have most of their celebrations on Christmas Eve.
Nifty. I figured it was much more of a wide spread thing and have found it echoed in a number of Catholic or Catholic raised households. I always felt a bit of an odd duck on Christmas with all the Protestant flavors around when I was growing up – mostly Baptists and Presbytarians.
Toward the end of putting christ back in christmas, may I offer this modest proposal???
When I lived in Nagoya, Japan in the red light district – which has Kokosei Prepatory schools on one end and a public auditorium at the other with the middle filled with cabarets, Lobu Hoteru, and dance revues, the local proprietors would go all out for Christmas.
Now in Japan, the BIG HOLIDAY is O-Shogatsu (New Years) and if you ever have a chance to see the crowds at the temples on New Year’s Day, it is quite a sight with money offerings flying out of the crowd toward the monks and their collection troughs.
But in the red light district, possibly because they were catering to gaijin (foreigners) there wasn’t a single cabaret that didn’t have the “come on girls” dressed up in their idea of what Mrs Claus should look like. At least from the waist up. Waist down, they were all in nylons and high heeled shoes and it was cold out there. I was wearing every stitch of clothing I could find because that wind coming off of Siberia made it pretty darn cold.
I remember wondering exactly how they could be so cheerful given that they had to be half frozen in that weather.
I like your theory about the sudden climate change and the whole expelled from paradise myth. It puts it right in line with my theory that the flood myth was due to a tsunami in the Mediterranean, because the babalonian have similar myths at right around the same time.
I know I’m a few days late (and yet, I managed NOT to be a dollar short, thanks to the people in my life), but here is news about the most famous reindeer of all.