When you gather around the Christmas tree or participate in Christmas eve service, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.
Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.
As Christians spread their religion into Europe in the first centuries A.D., they ran into people living by a variety of local and regional religious creeds. Early Christians wanted to convert pagans, but they were also fascinated by their traditions. Perhaps that's why pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver .
The Church was slow to embrace Christmas. Despite the spread of Christianity, Midwinter festivals did not become Christmas for hundreds of years. The Bible gives no reference to when Jesus was born. With no Biblical directive to do so and no mention in the Gospels of the correct date, it wasn't until the fourth century that church leaders in Rome embraced the holiday. At that time, many people had turned to a belief the Church found heretical: that Jesus had never existed as a man, but as a sort of spiritual entity .If you want to show that Jesus was a real human being just like every other human being, not just somebody who appeared like a hologram, then what better way to think of him being born in a normal, humble human way than to celebrate his birth? Midwinter festivals, with their pagan roots, were already widely celebrated, “O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born, Christ should be born," one Cyprian text read.
But if the Catholic Church gradually came to embrace Christmas, the Protestant Reformation gave the holiday a good knock on the chin. In the 16th century, Christmas became a casualty of this church schism, with reformist-minded Protestants considering it little better than paganism, The Puritans hated the holiday This likely had something to do with the raucous, rowdy and sometimes bawdy fashion in which Christmas was celebrated .In England under Oliver Cromwell, Christmas and other saints' days were banned, and in New England it was illegal to celebrate Christmas for about 25 years in the 1600s.
Gifts are a new and surprisingly controversy tradition .While gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Year's Day. They were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends. It wasn't until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas. According to the Royal Collection, Queen Victoria's children got Christmas Eve gifts in 1850, including a sword and armor.
There are many different traditions and theories as to why Christmas is celebrated on December 25th.
A very early Christian tradition said that the day when Mary was told that she would have a very special baby - Jesus, (called the Annunciation) was on March 25th - and it's still celebrated today on the 25th March. Nine months after the 25th March is the 25th December! March 25th was also the day some early Christians thought the world had been made, and also the day that Jesus died when he was an adult.
The date of March 25th was chosen because they thought that Jesus was conceived and had died on the same day of the year.
Some people also think that December 25th might have also been chosen for Christmas because the Winter Solstice and the ancient pagan Roman midwinter festivals called 'Saturnalia' and 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti' took place in December around this date - so it was a timewhen people already celebrated many things.
Christmas has emerged from many traditions, but Its meaning has only deepened for Christians.
Gifts are a new and surprisingly controversy tradition .While gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Year's Day. They were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends. It wasn't until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas. According to the Royal Collection, Queen Victoria's children got Christmas Eve gifts in 1850, including a sword and armor.
There are many different traditions and theories as to why Christmas is celebrated on December 25th.
A very early Christian tradition said that the day when Mary was told that she would have a very special baby - Jesus, (called the Annunciation) was on March 25th - and it's still celebrated today on the 25th March. Nine months after the 25th March is the 25th December! March 25th was also the day some early Christians thought the world had been made, and also the day that Jesus died when he was an adult.
The date of March 25th was chosen because they thought that Jesus was conceived and had died on the same day of the year.
Some people also think that December 25th might have also been chosen for Christmas because the Winter Solstice and the ancient pagan Roman midwinter festivals called 'Saturnalia' and 'Dies Natalis Solis Invicti' took place in December around this date - so it was a timewhen people already celebrated many things.
Christmas has emerged from many traditions, but Its meaning has only deepened for Christians.
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