With Thanksgiving approaching, and
Christmas also around the corner, it’s the time of year people start thinking
about all the things they are grateful for. I see all over Facebook how people
are doing a “25 days of thankfulness”. Seeing these posts gives me mixed
emotions. I don’t understand why people only feel a need to be grateful during
the holiday season. I’m glad people are being thankful, but thankfulness should
be a year round thing, not just a month or two a year.
The
holidays are supposed to be a time of family, celebration, and giving. However,
I think it’s obvious that for most people, especially people with families,
that it can be most the stressful and expensive time of the year. I often hear
people saying things like “You need to remember what Christmas is really all
about” or “Remember Christmas is about love and giving, not money and gifts”.
Being the curious person I am, I make it a habit to find out what things REALLY
are about. Where do they come from? Why did they come at all? Who? What? When?
So, in honor of the holidays, and in favor of my insatiable curiosity, I’ve
decided to get the story on Christmas, what it’s really all about, and how it
came to be what it is today. There’s the story everyone already knows, which is
that Jesus was born in a manger on December 25th to the Virgin Mary,
but what where did this story come from? Whose idea was it to spread this story
around the world? Well… I’ve done a little investigating, and this is what I’ve
discovered.
The roman emperor Constantine said he had a vision of
the sun superimposed with the cross of Christ, three centuries after the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, leading him to victory in battle, and so,
he instituted the Edict of Toleration in 313 A. D. for the roman empire
which he ruled, declaring the equality of all religions, including
Christianity, which had been harshly persecuted for three hundred years
previously.
The “Christmas Season” was created
to match up with the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, a month-long festival to
honor Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture. Saturnalia was a lively
holiday where all classes of people – from slaves to royalty – were encouraged
to fellowship, eat meals together, and
exchange gifts. The festivities also included hanging garlands
and decorating the household. Constantine decided to merge the Christian
celebration of Jesus’ birth with the winter solstice celebrations and
Saturnalia. The nature of the festival declined over the
centuries (as did the Roman Empire), but many of the pagan traditions stuck to
the holiday and became a part of Christmas forever.
One of the reasons that Christmas caught
on across the world was that many pagan cultures also had celebrations that
fell around the same time of the year. This gave Christmas a rich blend
of traditions to draw from, and helped other cultures adopt it more easily.
In Scandinavia and Germany,
winter solstice celebrations were always held around the late December/early
January time-frame, and adding a new god – Jesus – to the mix was no problem
for their polytheistic culture. These pagan influences formed the basis for Christmas trees,
and gave us the name Yuletide, which meant “the turning of the year” in ancient
Norse.
Americans did not widely celebrate
Christmas when the country first emerged. Congress was in session on
Christmas day for many years, and the holiday was not officially recognized by the
government until 1870. By the end of the Civil War,
people all over the country were warming up to the idea of celebrating
Christmas. The Santa Claus legend started growing, and decorating and
gift-giving became the standard. Sending Christmas cards became a yearly
tradition as the Post Office connected friends and families across the country,
and Charles Dickens brought attention to the holiday as a time for family and
love in his famous work, “A Christmas Carol.”
There is the left side, the ride side, and then there’s
the truth. I think digging into the past will teach us that things are always
what we thought they were. There is always something to be learned.
If you highlight the underlined sentences, it will show you the websites where i found this information. ENJOY :)
I really like how you've delved back into the history of Christmas. Not a lot of people really knew what really brought on Christmas as a gift giving holiday other then the real reason we have the holiday: the birth of our Savior.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with the first part because everyone should be thankful all the time for what they have. Somewhere there are people who don't have the luxuries many of us have been graced with. We need to be thankful because all of that can be yanked from us in a blink of a eye.
The history of Christmas is very interesting. I have known we had adopted different things for Christmas but I hadn't known where or whence they came. Thanks for educating me on all that! :)
I remember my dad explaining the origin of Christmas when I was younger. Of course it couldn't really be about the birth of Christ because he was born in the spring, not winter. Perhaps it was Constantine who also turned the pagan holiday Easter into a Christian one. I used to ask what bunnies and eggs had to do with Christ's resurrection and was told that the holiday actually celebrates a goddess of fertility and spring named Astarte (that explains the highly reproductive critters and eggs!).
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's Thanksgiving. Although it doesn't have any connection to pagan holidays, it's not exactly what it seems. I was always told that it was about the Indians teaching the pilgrims how to produce corn and other crops. Whenever we hear "Thanksgiving" we think of Indians and pilgrims eating a bountiful meal together. But in fact, that's not what Thanksgiving is about! I did some research and found that it was actually about a failed form of government. The pilgrims experimented with socialism, but found that it only led to their starvation since, as William Bradford said:
"For the young men that were able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children, without recompense. The strong, or men of parts, had no more division of food, clothes, etc. then he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labor, and food, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignant and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc. they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could husbands brook it."
"The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst the Godly and sober men, may well convince of the vanity and conceit of Plato’s and other ancients; -- that the taking away of property, and bringing into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort."
So they turned instead to capitalist government - they kept everything they earned. This produced larger crops than ever and the colony was saved.
Cool, huh?
Wow, that was pretty good information that I did not know. The holidays and Christmas in general is just so busy for me and most other people that it just kind of comes and go every year without even realizing the history behind it. The best part about it though at least for me is that the family gets back together and for a couple of days we hang out, laugh, tell everybody what has been going on in life, take pictures, and just enjoying each others company and let to me feels so magical. You are absolutely right when you were talking about more people should be grateful and thankful all year round not just during the holiday season.
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