[INTRO MUSIC]
Christmas is nostalgic for me because it’s always been a time of tradition,
Growing up, my father would drag a Christmas tree into the living room and my mother and
I would decorate it and deck all of the halls with boughs of holly.
Every night, my father would light a log in the fireplace and blast Bing Crosby’s Christmas
album loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.
Being raised Christian, I was taught that Christmas was the day that we celebrated the
birth of Jesus Christ.
But what do Christmas trees and mistletoe have to do with baby Jesus?
Where do all of these traditions come from?
[The Origin of Christmas]
Let's start with the Yule Log
We can track the origin of the Yulelog to pre-Christian Scandinavia in Norse Country
during a time of the year when the days are shorter and the darkness devours the light.
Fathers and their sons would venture into the snowy forest to fetch the largest log they could find.
They'd then drag it to their homes and set it afire.
This tradition marked the beginning of what is known as Yuletime, or the Winter Solstice.
The Yule Log would remain lit for 12 days and It is said that during this time sacrifices
were given to the fire to ensure fruitfulness and fertility for the year to come
During this time, Yule Trees would also be bought into the home to symbolize fertility
and immortality.
Norse Pagans admired Evergreen trees because, unlike other plants that were ravaged by the
winter, the Evergreen remained, well, ever green.
Having a Yule tree in your home during the Solstice was said to bless its inhabitants
with the spiritual power and resilience of the Evergreen.
But that wasn’t the only plant said to have magical properties during this time of year.
In norse mythology, Loki, the trickster god used mistletoe to fashion a spear to kill
Baldur, the son of Frigga: the wife of Odin.
When Baldur passed, it was said that from that point forward, the mistletoe would bring
love and not death.
Missletoe was considered an aphrodisiac that was never to touch the earth.
It was said that women who walked beneath it were intoxicated by it’s power and made
sexually available.
For the 12 days that the Yule Log burned, great feasts and joyous gatherings commenced
to honor the Norse god Odin.
Odin was said to roam the sky during to solstice collecting the souls that have passed on that year.
Meat was in abundance and as the winter raged outside, the Norse Pagans celebrated in the
warmth around the Yule Log.
But the Pre-Christian Norse weren’t the only ones with Winter Solstice traditions,
In Pre-Christian Rome, a Ruckus party called Saturnalia is under way
Saturnalia took place a week before the Winter Solstice to celebrate Saturn, the God of excess.
The Saturnalia Celebrations were a time where roles were reversed.
Slaves became masters and masters become slaves.
The orgy of drink, sex and over excess continued on for an entire month.
But a much more solemn celebration was practiced by an elite group of influential Romans who
worshiped The Persian God, Mithra- the God of the Unconquerable Sun.
They celebrated his birth, which signified the end of the dark days of winter and the
return of the dominance of the sun.
Mithra happened to be born on December 25th.
And of course that's not a coincidence.
When Rome invaded Britain in 54 BC their customs influenced the Britons and Saturnalia became
known as the Festival of Fools Fast forward a bunch and in the 4th Century,
Christianity began to spread and it struggled to compete with these Pagan traditions.
The church of Rome eventually said if you can't beat em, join em- and they appropriated
pagan symbolism as part of their official christianity.
And so December 25 became the birth of the Son of God, rather than the birth of the God
of the Sun and the The Feast of Fools became known as the Christ's Mass.
Despite the new association with Christianity,
the debauchery of the Feast of fools continued until 1652 when Christ's Mass eventually was
outlawed in England after the execution of King Charles the 1st.
However, when Charles the 2nd restored the Monarchy, the tradition continued on.
The Puritans were not very pleased with this.
See the Puritans believed that Christianity should be separated from paganism and they
took this belief with them to the New World.
But even then, Saturnalia traditions continued in early America.
In 1644, all activities relating to Christmas were banned by the Puritan-Dominated Parliament
of England.
Charlees the 2nd taking the throne lifted the ban in 1660, but Puritan influence in
New England made it so that Christmas wasn’t a legal holiday until 1856.
The American Sunday School Society fought for the validation of Christmas during the mid 19th Century.
They argued that they could teach children about the birth of Christ with reenacting
the nativity while bribing them with candy and subsequently filling their pews.
So Christmas, a tradition that was initially outlawed in America, slowly gained legitimacy and popularity.
In popular culture, literature like Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol helped establish
Christmas as a tradition.
Clemance Clark Moore’s the Night Before Christmas which solidified the mythology of
Santa Claus complete with reindeer and gifts delivered down the chimney.
Santa Claus was based on St. Nicolas, a Greek Orthodox Bishop from what is now known as Turkey.
The story goes that one day, St. Nicolas discovered that a neighboring family was destitute and
on the brink of selling one of their daughters into sexual slavery.
To save her, St. Nicolas collected coins and placed them in one of the daughter’s shoes at night.
Santa Claus as we know him today is an amalgamation depictions of St. Nicholas and stories like
the one of the Norse god Odin.
His contemporary appearance was initially solidified by an illustration by Thomas Nast.
but the santa we know and love today is a specifically Americanized santa designed by
Coca-Cola in 1920 and has become the official mascot of Christmas.
A holiday that seems to be more about consumerism than anything else.
There's a lot of debate about whether or not Christmas is a Christian Holiday.
Every year we hear about the "war on Christmas, which is supposedly about taking the "Christ out of Christmas"
My question is: was Christ ever IN Christmas?
The date of when Jesus was born isn't in the bible and I strongly doubt that shepherds
were herding sheep in the middle of winter.
Either way, what I love about this season is that it means something different to everybody
For you it may very well mean the birth of Christ and I honestly don't have a problem
with that.
But for me it's about being with the people I love.
It's about giving and making memories.
And ass per usual, I want you to always remember and never forget that you are beautiful and
you are loved