While we're on the subject, try not to tell my cat, Molly, the truth about Santa. It would break her cute little heart. (And she's a bit daft, anyway.)It's assumed by the armchair historians that a Pope or a church father waved their mighty hand and "stole" the December 25 holiday from the Pagans, and they instituted the holiday of Christmas in its place. The truth is, traditions from the early church did not typically begin in this way.
For example, we don't know who started the tradition of crossing ones self to ask for God's protection or who first put confessional booths in a church. These traditions began in local areas and became so popular over time that the church would officially adopt them - Christmas is no different. It was celebrated in a variety of ways until a consensus was reached that December 25 would be the day the entire church celebrated Christ's birth.
This is pretty boring, so I'm going to add more pictures of cats as we go along to keep you entertained. Unfortunately, it's always more interesting to listen to the nutty alternative theories than it is for me to explain the boring stuff that actually happened. It's unfair to everyone.Why that date? Unfortunately, no one knows exactly how this started. (Keep in mind that most people couldn't read or write in these days, so keeping records was only done in certain places. Making things worse, the records that were made were often destroyed or lost.) We do know that the other religions celebrated a festival of the sun god on this date, and we also know that church fathers decried any association between this God and Christ. (Frankly, since we don't know when He was born, one day is as good as another; everyone understands the celebration to be symbolic and not an actual anniversary.)
So, why would Christians choose a day normally set aside for the sun god to remember the birth of their Lord? Keep in mind that Christianity was spreading rapidly within a culture that had previously embraced pantheistic or Platonic religions. Many centuries later, people would be pressured to accept Christianity, but in these early days people were walking away from their old ways and embracing the church on their own. By replacing pagan rituals with mass observances and church services they were putting their old religion aside and replacing it with a new one. Independently, believers were distancing themselves from their old ways by taking Pagan rituals out of their lives and replacing them with Christian rituals. No one forced them to do this, nor did anyone in the church "officially" associate this holiday with the sun god and plunder the Pagan holiday for its traditions.
Keep reading. It's almost over.Did the pagan rituals influence Christmas? No. There is nothing from a Pagan religion that has carried on in modern Christmas traditions. Every belief that Christians attach to Christmas was firmly in place long before the Christmas holiday was officially established. I've heard that certain customs we hold to on this holiday came from older Pagan rites, but it's simply not true; I've never seen a Christmas tradition that pre-dated the church. (I've heard such accusations, but they never hold up. It would be tedious to describe each of these things, here, so I'll just say that the arguments are very weak and not supported any amount of documentation or scholarship. Only armchair scholarship.)
It is true that a Pagan holiday took place on December 25th, but, other than a calendar date, the two celebrations have nothing in common.
13 comments:
Well, thanks for the update. Boring as you may label what really happened, it is fascinating to the rest of us armchair historians.
"By replacing pagan rituals with mass observances and church services they were putting their old religion aside and replacing it with a new one."
I totally get this. If I were the early century pagan turned Church, I would be really excited to understand how what I once worshiped is made full in Christ, Giver of Life and Light.
Thanks for this series, Adam.
Your blog looks nice and I like your cattitude. enjoyed your blog very much. Have a wonderful Christmas.
Adam, I didn't find your blog boring at all, and in fact would enjoy a brief blow-by-blow of some of the rituals people most often claim as pre-dating Christianity. I know Christmas trees, for one, are said by some to be associated with the solstice.
Thanks, all of you who told me I'm not boring!
Kyle, the list is staggering and doesn't come from informed minds. For example, one pagan god is said to have been born on Dec. 25. It sounds like Christians ripped off their religion from that guy, but, this pagan god actually is younger than Christianity, so it's not a discrepancy. Historians don't make claims like this - only the unschooled. I've been told that everything from candy canes to Santa Claus is a roll over from pagan days.
Good post.
I have a few things to add (more philosophical than historical). I believe that if the Pagans worshiped a sun god on (or around) the 25th of December then they chose the date because of the winter solstice. They were very aware of how God made the world but unfortunately misdirected their worship.
It is Christianity’s job to find what is inherently true in all of creation and redeem it. So for a Christian in the early church it might have meant engaging their pagan culture by showing them why that date is powerful by celebrating the birth of Christ on it (instead of completely forsaking the celebration all together in an attempt to “separate themselves from the world”).
This might have not been their mindset but like you said that it is doubtful that there will ever be enough records to really understand their mindset, so I speculate with the best of them.
Thanks, Jacob, I think you're right and I appreciate your input.
Ok, first of all what makes your opinion better then an "armchair scholar?" I do not want any answer that has to do with your religious, let me repeat that, religious academics because they hold no sway whatsoever.
I can not stand to read past part 2 two of your blog so forgive me, you should have no problem doing so being a minister.
Now, it is not a gross extrapolation to think that holidays are set on dates that have relevance with the sun or seasons. Especially living in a time when your food and shelter would be replenished only after the seasons had come and gone. Times of harvest have been given holiday traditions since the creation of the plow and the wheel.
In your blog you have stated that the pagan holiday existed. You agree that the holiday existed and was then adopted by christianity. So why is it so hard to believe the holiday would of had traditions that would carry over?
So, there are a few things that have crossed over from the previous holiday.
The tree, oh the tree, it is a symbol of the world tree that holds the world together. The stars in the sky are held in its branches, thus, lights in a tree. Not so hard to believe the symbolism there.
Wreaths, set on fire and rolled down a hill represented the sun. The sun was in fact going to be more apparent after the winter solstice since the days would now be longer.
Not to mention the countless amounts of stories and myths blatantly taken from Christianity's biggest rivalry at the time you talk about in your post, the Mithraic religion.
So since these other "pagan" religions wouldn't go away they mixed the older customs to make the transition easier, you even said that in your blog and then refute it later on. Blows my mind.
Nadd, I'm not giving my opinion and saying that it's better than that of an armchair historian. I am a medievalist at Southern Methodist University who primarily studies church and monastic history. There are no documents to support the claim that something like a Christmas tree was used in pagan celebrations on Dec. 25, or that any other pagan religious ritual came into Christmas that way.
I did say that a pagan holiday celebrating the sun was recognized on Dec. 25 and that Christians left their old ways and made a new holiday - but they did not bring with them the religious traditions of that holiday. The early Christians celebrated the new holiday of Christmas without religious influences of the old holiday. In fact, it normally amounted to taking mass. It was many centuries later when greenery and gift-giving were associated with it.
This is the data that we find in the documents from the early church period, and it is not my opinion.
The Christmas tree as we know it, is far to destructive of a ritual for pagans. But they did however decorate their homes with evergreen shrubbery and went out into the forest to decorate the trees.
""Tertullian (circa 160 - 230), an early Christian leader and a prolific writer, complained that too many fellow-Christians had copied the Pagan practice of adorning their houses with lamps and with wreathes of laurel at Christmas time"
"Not having evergreen trees, the ancient Egyptians considered the palm tree to symbolize resurrection. They decorated their homes with its branches during the winter solstice."
"The first decorating of an evergreen tree began with the heathen Greeks and their worship of their god Adonia, who allegedly was brought back to life by the serpent Aessulapius after having been slain."
The ancient Pagan Romans decorated their "trees with bits of metal and replicas of their god, Bacchus [a fertility god]. They also placed 12 candles on the tree in honor of their sun god"
Their mid-winter festival of Saturnalia started on DEC-17 and often lasted until a few days after the Solstice.
In Northern Europe, the ancient Germanic people tied fruit and attached candles to evergreen tree branches, in honor of their god Woden. Trees were viewed as symbolizing eternal life. This is the deity after which Wednesday was named. The trees joined holly, mistletoe, the wassail bowl and the Yule log as symbols of the season. All predated Christianity. "
"This is the data that we find in the documents from the early church period, and it is not my opinion."
Correct, it isn't your opinion, it's the opinion of somebody who's bias is on the side of making the holiday an "easy transition" for other religions.
Your basic argument is that the traditions that are practiced are not of pagan decent. It just couldn't be farther from the truth.
How can you study the origins of your religion from Texas? Your university is lovely and very nice but, its still owned by the United Methodist Church. makes me wonder how accurate your historical information is.
The Romans were meticulous in their documentation. Sometimes to much so. So piecing together the origins of Christmas isn't to hard if you put logic and reason to work and try and think like the people did at the time.
Nadd.
My University is not owned by any church or any Christian organization - that's not how colleges tend to work. But it is a pretty campus.
Furthermore, SMU has no interest in protecting Christianity from social attacks, and my teachers have not trained me to do so. In fact, our school has been celebrating Darwin's 200th by paying scientists to visit and lecture on evolution - in the process, many of these speakers (including some who are actually employed by SMU) have criticized Christianity at every turn and said very insulting things about Christians at large. This has been well received by the staff and faculty of my school, because there is not a pro-Christian point of view here. Around town, the SMU kids are known for wild parties. If you're picturing a college full of Religious Right dogma, then you've got the wrong place.
If Christians stole something from Pagans, the people at my University would gladly point it out - there are no church apologists, here. I make no effort to hide any actions of the church in my own research, because that's bad scholarship.
Tertullian does mention the pagan tradition of laurel wreaths in his work "On Idolatry," but these wreaths were hanged in homes all year long. Also, in his time, Christmas was not celebrated on any particular day (some early voices placed it in the late Spring) and there were no established church-wide customs for it when Tertullian was alive. It's circumstantial.
Why do you say the Romans documented too much, and how is that bad for historians? I am glad for their documentation because it provides us with so much information we would not otherwise know.
Finally, which part of Christmas can you piece together from earlier traditions? The idea of celebrating Christmas grew from taking Mass in honor of Christ. Do any Pagan religions drink symbolic wine to commemorate the earthly birth of their God? Is the incarnation of a Zeus or Ra recognized? You said that the Egyptians use palm trees to represent resurrection, but does this have anything to with recognizing the birth of Christ? The only similarity is that a completely different kind of tree is used at Christmas, today, and has nothing to do with resurrection (or birth, or anything, for that matter).
You've proven that trees were used in older cultures in a completely unrelated way - you have not shown a connection between this and the late medieval tradition of the Christmas tree. Such a tenuous connection does not stand without evidence. Some of these traditions LOOK like Christmas from a certain point of view, but are not necessarily evidence that Christmas was stolen from other beliefs.
You say, yourself, that Christmas Trees were not Pagan because such a thing is too destructive. To which Pagan groups do you refer, and are there any documents you have read to back up such a claim? Is there a universal pantheistic notion for the conservation of abundant pine trees? Do you think that the word "Pagan" refers to a unified system of beliefs and values? I agree, the Pagans were not known for Christmas Trees, but since these groups were not unified by anything other than broad pantheism, I cannot attribute it to any moral code. You do, however, so that you can make an underhanded attack on Christians who you say are being "destructive" in their habit of decorating with Christmas Trees. Thus, we see that you are approaching this with a bias which is what you accuse me of doing.
I'm just looking at the documents. I don't care where Christmas came from. I'm not trying to ease the transition, as you put it, I'm just an interested historian.
Lastly, why do you criticize the place where I live, and what does it have to do with the origins of Christmas? I am happy to live in Texas, where I am able to study the documents of the past because my school has excellent resources; few medieval scholars have more primary sources at their disposal than students at large universities. I also have traveled to other parts of the world to see places where these traditions began. Why would you think that being in Texas limits my scholastic ability? Would I know more about this if I traveled to Northern Africa where Tertullian and Augustine lived? I think the documents will say the same thing no matter where they are read.
Maybe "owned" was a little misleading, strongly "supported" and "related to" seems fair though.
http://scj.umportal.org/main/section.asp?id=561
You are in a sense, protecting Christianity with a puffy chest and a "It was here first" mentality.
Between your rhetoric and my bias I feel like we will never come to a conclusion. I never expected to. Who would of?
The comment about the Romans was my attempt at humor. After reading a thousand words about the consistency of somebody's feces you would get the point. It did teach us about them though. Knowing they are meticulous about documenting everything is a good sign. It leaves us able to trust original documentation, in a way.
Here is some spin of my own (my own rhetoric):
Documentation. It's about as broad a word as "Pagan."
(Love that your brought that up, questioning a word that you use over and again, give me the same benefit of the doubt I gave you when I read it.) Honestly, what I'm writing down on this blog is considered documentation. If I have a piece of paper and a following of millions of people. That piece of paper is whatever I say it is. It's the shroud of Turin for that matter. You want documentation in the form of a book or article. When all the proof you need is really just common sense.
I'll even change it up a bit. Where is your proof that these yearly rituals are of Christian decent? Who is Santa Claus? Why are we putting a tree into our house? Why are we decorating our houses with shrubbery? What explanations do you have?
So, I'll read your reply and if it merits a response I will respond but, I feel like we are very different and won't be in agreement ever. Even me posting in the first place is regrettable.
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