Christmas Rituals

Although Trump is pushing me to say "Happy Holidays," just out of spite.

Here we go again, and again, Valerie Tarico gives me the grounds to repeat myself (even as I assume her article is a rerun, not something original to this year).

Christmas has almost nothing whatsoever to do with "pagan" celebrations, Sumerian mythic tropes, or the "cult of virginity."  It probably involves from Hebraic tropes, but why is that an issue, unless you have a agenda against Judaism (a common problem in Christianity, but why give it credence?).  Anyway, she notes there is no mention of a Christmas celebration in the 3rd century, which is the first sound thing in her article( there is actually, as we will see; but not in Rome).  While she provides links to her own articles about Sumerian myths (she links to her own interview with a world religions scholar who makes no mention of Sumeria at all, so I don't know what she's even talking about there) and a "cult of virginity,"* she plunges into pure speculation and uninformed conjecture about "winter solstice celebrations" with no supporting links at all.  If this were one of my students' research papers, I'd pull out the red ink right there and start slashing.

First, let's stop this nonsense about Saturnalia and "Latin peoples" (there were no "Latin peoples" in Europe; there were Romans who spoke Latin, until the language died out.  The Church and the British kept it alive, but for radically different reasons.).  To do that, though, we have to unearth a great deal of history in a very short space.

Yes, Christians did start adopting pagan temples as places of worship, pagan heroes as saints (I can think of a couple of Irish saints off the top of my head), and pagan practices as Christian:

This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.

They started that in the 4th century; but doing so is not the same thing as adopting pagan ideals, and the practice only came under critique about 500 years ago, by the Reformed movement of the Reformation.  That Christianity did not have its own practices, apart from the eucharist instituted by Paul, is not an indication that the practices and customs it did acquire are therefore tainted or even an indication of superstition (a word associated with falsity only by those who overlook their own rituals and superstitions.  Even the scholar Tarico interviewed uses the word without making it a perjorative, something Tarico can't quite bring herself to do, for all her claims of "rationality.").

Did Christmas have anything to do with Saturnalia?  No.  That was on December 17 to December 23, but by 354 C.E. it was only on December 17.  It was more like the Feast of Fools than anything we think of as a Christmas observance (and remember we're talking about a religious ceremony here, not a civic one.  Christmas as we know it is an amalgam of medieval practices (feasting, mostly, anymore) and Charles Dickens' childhood memories (Pickwick and Scrooge are the roots of our modern Christmas, as well as Clement Clarke Moore).  Saturnalia was a holiday on the Roman calendar (city of, not empire of) that held on as a holiday on the Roman calendar until the mid-5th century (curiously, Constantine did not see fit to convert it to a Christmas celebration.  Indeed, he was probably unaware of any concept of a Christ Mass at the time of his death):

December 17 was recognized as the date of the Saturnalia as late as AD 448, when it was notated in the ecclesiastical calendar or laterculus ("list") of Polemius Silvius. But now, deprived of its pagan significance, it is identified only as feriae servorum ("festival of the slaves").

By then Christmas had been observed on December 25 in Rome for at least 60 years, so I don't think they were confused about the dates.  So maybe it was "Natali invictii"?  Well, maybe, as the date is the same as Christmas.  However:

But even should a deliberate and legitimate "baptism" of a pagan feast be seen here no more than the transference of the date need be supposed. The "mountain-birth" of Mithra and Christ's in the "grotto" have nothing in common: Mithra's adoring shepherds....are rather borrowed from Christian sources than vice versa.

Mithra's shepherds is one of those "chicken or egg" problems, and Luke came before Mithra.  Maybe Tarico is connecting Mithra with Sumeria through Zoroastrianism, but that definitely came after Christianity.  Whatever link there is doesn't really mean anything.

If you noticed the date 354 C.E. and wondered why that year was singled out, be patient.  History is complicated and not really at all linear; we have to circle back and jump forward in order to put some things in context, and to begin to explain how things came to be.  So, to reiterate:  Saturnalia was celebrated from December 17 to December 23, but by the mid 4th century it was only celebrated on one day, not several.  We used to have 12 days of Christmas, too (Shakespeare knew it; the familiar song knew it.  It was observed in rural Ireland into the 20th century.  Anybody today aware of it, outside that song?  Anybody today realize the song refers to actual calendar days, or what they are?  How quickly did that disappear?  In America, it never appeared at all.  Hmmmm.....).  And no, Saturnalia was never celebrated on December 25, and it never celebrated the "birth of the unconquerable sun."

So when did December 25 become the day observed for Christ's birth?

The December 25 feast seems to have existed before 312—before Constantine and his conversion, at least. As we have seen, the Donatist Christians in North Africa seem to have known it from before that time. Furthermore, in the mid- to late fourth century, church leaders in the eastern Empire concerned themselves not with introducing a celebration of Jesus’ birthday, but with the addition of the December date to their traditional celebration on January 6.

Tarico jumps to the 7th century, but let's stay with the earliest centuries of the Church a bit longer.  history doesn't become simpler and less complicated the further back in time you go, and it isn't "made" just by the people you've heard of:

In Cyprus, at the end of the fourth century, Epiphanius asserts against the Alogi ... that Christ was born on 6 January and baptized on 8 November. Ephraem Syrus ....proves that Mesopotamia still put the birth feast thirteen days after the winter solstice; i.e. 6 January; Armenia likewise ignored, and still ignores, the December festival.... In Cappadocia, Gregory of Nyssa's sermons on St. Basil (who died before 1 January, 379) and the two following, preached on St. Stephen's feast (P.G., XLVI, 788; cf, 701, 721), prove that in 380 the 25th December was already celebrated there....

This is all in the late 4th century, a good 300 years before Pope Gregory wrote about converting the use of pagan temples.  As we will see, some authorities note the first mention of the date (25 December) in Rome was in 354; but the observation of a "Christ Mass" for the birth of the Savior came earlier, and did not originate in Rome.

Jerusalem

In 385, Silvia of Bordeaux (or Etheria, as it seems clear she should be called) was profoundly impressed by the splendid Childhood feasts at Jerusalem. They had a definitely "Nativity" colouring; the bishop proceeded nightly to Bethlehem, returning to Jerusalem for the day celebrations. The Presentation was celebrated forty days after. But this calculation starts from 6 January, and the feast lasted during the octave of that date.... Cyril declares that his clergy cannot, on the single feast of Birth and Baptism, make a double procession to Bethlehem and Jordan.... He asks Julius to assign the true date of the nativity "from census documents brought by Titus to Rome"; Julius assigns 25 December.... But Julius died in 352, and by 385 Cyril had made no change; indeed, Jerome, writing about 411 (in Ezech., P.L., XXV, 18), reproves Palestine for keeping Christ's birthday (when He hid Himself) on the Manifestation feast. 

Lots of controversy over dates, in other words, well into the late 4th century.  I thought the date was chosen to take over Saturnalia.  No?

Antioch

In Antioch, on the feast of St. Philogonius, Chrysostom preached an important sermon. The year was almost certainly 386, though Clinton gives 387, and Usener, by a long rearrangement of the saint's sermons, 388 (Religionsgeschichtl. Untersuch., pp. 227-240). But between February, 386, when Flavian ordained Chrysostom priest, and December is ample time for the preaching of all the sermons under discussion. (See Kellner, Heortologie, Freiburg, 1906, p. 97, n. 3). In view of a reaction to certain Jewish rites and feasts, Chrysostom tries to unite Antioch in celebrating Christ's birth on 25 December, part of the community having already kept it on that day for at least ten years....

Finally, though never at Rome, on authority he knows that the census papers of the Holy Family are still there. [This appeal to Roman archives is as old as Justin Martyr (First Apology 34-35) and Tertullian (Adv. Marc., IV, 7, 19). Julius, in the Cyriline forgeries, is said to have calculated the date from Josephus, on the same unwarranted assumptions about Zachary as did Chrysostom.] Rome, therefore, has observed 25 December long enough to allow of Chrysostom speaking at least in 388 as above (P.G., XLVIII, 752, XLIX, 351).

Constantinople

In 379 or 380 Gregory Nazianzen made himself exarchos of the new feast, i.e. its initiator, in Constantinople, where, since the death of Valens, orthodoxy was reviving. His three Homilies (see Hom. xxxviii in P.G., XXXVI) were preached on successive days (Usener, op. cit., p. 253) in the private chapel called Anastasia. On his exile in 381, the feast disappeared.

The Romans were quite pantheistic.  They never forced a Saturnalia observation on Jerusalem, or cared much about the worship of the God of Abraham going on there, so long as it didn't disturb the Pax Romana.  There is no record of a strong influence of the Saturnalia in Antioch or Constantinople.

Rome

[This is where it gets very complicated, so let's just cut to the chase:]

In the West the Council of Saragossa (380) still ignores 25 December .... Pope Siricius, writing in 385 to Himerius in Spain, distinguishes the feasts of the Nativity and Apparition; but whether he refers to Roman or to Spanish use is not clear.... By the time of Jerome and Augustine, the December feast is established, though the latter ... omits it from a list of first-class festivals. From the fourth century every Western calendar assigns it to 25 December. At Rome, then, the Nativity was celebrated on 25 December before 354; in the East, at Constantinople, not before 379, unless with Erbes, and against Gregory, we recognize it there in 330. Hence, almost universally has it been concluded that the new date reached the East from Rome by way of the Bosphorus during the great anti-Arian revival, and by means of the orthodox champions. 

But certainly not before the end of the 4th century, and not at all because of "Saturnalia."  First:  yes, Christians did start adopting pagan temples as places of worship, pagan heroes as saints (I can think of a couple of Irish saints off the top of my head), and pagan practices as Christian:

This would change only after Constantine converted to Christianity. From the mid-fourth century on, we do find Christians deliberately adapting and Christianizing pagan festivals. A famous proponent of this practice was Pope Gregory the Great, who, in a letter written in 601 C.E. to a Christian missionary in Britain, recommended that local pagan temples not be destroyed but be converted into churches, and that pagan festivals be celebrated as feasts of Christian martyrs. At this late point, Christmas may well have acquired some pagan trappings. But we don’t have evidence of Christians adopting pagan festivals in the third century, at which point dates for Christmas were established. Thus, it seems unlikely that the date was simply selected to correspond with pagan solar festivals.

To complicate matters further, let's go back to the very beginning of any reference to a mass celebrating the birth of Christ.  That occurs in Alexandria, which is not coincidentally in Egypt, where the culture proposed the significance of people at birth:  Pharaohs.  ("Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday.") It's a short step from that to deciding the birth of Christ (which, after all, Paul had absolutely no interest in; nor does Mark or John) is a significant event, too:

The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt. About A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria (Stromata I.21) says that certain Egyptian theologians "over curiously" assign, not the year alone, but the day of Christ's birth, placing it on 25 Pachon (20 May) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus. [Ideler (Chron., II, 397, n.) thought they did this believing that the ninth month, in which Christ was born, was the ninth of their own calendar.] Others reached the date of 24 or 25 Pharmuthi (19 or 20 April). With Clement's evidence may be mentioned the "De paschæ computus", written in 243 and falsely ascribed to Cyprian (P.L., IV, 963 sqq.), which places Christ's birth on 28 March, because on that day the material sun was created. But Lupi has shown (Zaccaria, Dissertazioni ecc. del p. A.M. Lupi, Faenza, 1785, p. 219) that there is no month in the year to which respectable authorities have not assigned Christ's birth. Clement, however, also tells us that the Basilidians celebrated the Epiphany, and with it, probably, the Nativity, on 15 or 11 Tybi (10 or 6 January). At any rate this double commemoration became popular, partly because the apparition to the shepherds was considered as one manifestation of Christ's glory, and was added to the greater manifestations celebrated on 6 January; partly because at the baptism-manifestation many codices (e.g. Codex Bezæ) wrongly give the Divine words as sou ei ho houios mou ho agapetos, ego semeron gegenneka se (Thou art my beloved Son, this day have I begotten thee) in lieu of en soi eudokesa (in thee I am well pleased), read in Luke 3:22. Abraham Ecchelensis (Labbe, II, 402) quotes the Constitutions of the Alexandrian Church for a dies Nativitatis et Epiphaniæ in Nicæan times; Epiphanius (Hær., li, ed. Dindorf, 1860, II, 483) quotes an extraordinary semi-Gnostic ceremony at Alexandria in which, on the night of 5-6 January, a cross-stamped Korê was carried in procession round a crypt, to the chant, "Today at this hour Korê gave birth to the Eternal"; John Cassian records in his "Collations" (X, 2 in P.L., XLIX, 820), written 418-427, that the Egyptian monasteries still observe the "ancient custom"; but on 29 Choiak (25 December) and 1 January, 433, Paul of Emesa preached before Cyril of Alexandria, and his sermons (see Mansi, IV, 293; appendix to Act. Conc. Eph.) show that the December celebration was then firmly established there, and calendars prove its permanence. The December feast therefore reached Egypt between 427 and 433.

So, again, the picture is complicated.  The celebration began in Egypt, even though Origen still thought such observations the province of sinners, not saints.  And the celebration moved all over the calendar finally, by the 5th century, settling on December 25 throughout the Church.  Need I remind you that Saturnalia, a Roman (as in city of) holiday, was still on the ecclesiastical calendar as late as 448, but had no significance at all by then except as a "Feast for slaves"?  And it was observed on December 17, and had been by then for several centuries.  And the earliest evidence for the December 25th date in Rome is a calendar from 354.  Saturnalia had been observed on December 17 for a long time by that year.  And it wasn't replaced by Christmas; indeed, they continued side by side for almost 100 years, on the church's own calendar!  Can we stop this "Saturnalia" nonsense now?

Ironically, later in her article Tarico quotes Increase Mather on this subject:

“The early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”

Ironic because Mather and his fellow Puritans are responsible for this spurious connection between December 25 and Saturnalia.  Mather offers no evidence for that claim, either, except as an appeal to the prejudices of his audience, a context Tarico also unwittingly provides:

“If it had been the will of God that the several acts of Christ should have been celebrated with several solemnities, the Holy Ghost would have made known to us the day of his nativity, circumcision, presentation in the temple, baptism, transfiguration, and the like.” . . . . “This opinion of Christ’s nativity on the 25th day of December was bred at Rome.”

You don't need a secret decoder ring to catch the contempt dripping from that phrase:  "bred at Rome." The Reformed movement (of which Tarico's evangelical church is a descendant) practiced a particularly scathing contempt for Rome which has not much ebbed in 500+ years.  Almost everything she says in this article is a product of that heritage though she thinks herself well beyond it and a "reasonable" person.  Reason, however, is always grounded somewhere, and is a demanding taskmaster if you would use it to discover truth.

Tarico doesn't go much beyond the Puritans and their contempt for Christmas.  Christmas in America started this way:

It fell to Puritan reformers to put a stop to the unholy merriment [of the English Christmas celebration, which had little to do with giving gifts and much to do with getting drunk] and to bend arguments over the proper keeping of Christmas into an older and more basic one--whether there should even be an observance of the day. Defying the decisions of the Anglican Convocation of 1562 to maintain the church calendar, the Puritans struck Christmas, along with all saint's days [no Hallowe'en!], from their own list of holy days. The Bible, they held, expressly commanded keeping only the Sabbath. That would be their practice as well.

Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America,  Oxford 1995, p. 7.

With words like this, the kind Tarico might well have heard thundered from the pulpit of the church of her childhood:

"Into what stupendous height of more than pagan impiety...have we not now degenerated! [Christmas out to be] rather a day of mourning than rejoicing, [not a time spent in] amorous mixt, voluptuous, unchristian, that I say not pagan, dancing, to God's, to Christ's dishonour, religion's scandal, charities' shipwracke and sinne's advantage."

That's from William Prynne's Histriomastrix (1633), quoted in Restad,  p. 7.

The contempt for it sprang from two sources:  the unruly behavior connected with the celebration of the season; and the deep connection to Rome, because "Christmas" itself derived from the "Christ Mass," a term far too Roman for Puritans to find acceptable.  We can take up the words of Increase Mather again, to drive the point home:

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved t that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ." (Restad, p. 14)

The Puritans wanted to return to a worship in keeping with what they thought "Apostolic times" were, even though that would have included far more Jewish practices than they would have been comfortable with, and a regular celebration of the eucharist (it's to the Reformed movement that we owe a celebration of "communion" only four times a year).  In fact, Christmas wasn't widely observed in 19th century America:

Christmas day is no religious day and hardly a holiday with them: New-year's day is perhaps a little, but only a little more so. For Twelfth-day, it is unknown; and the household private festivals of birthdays are almost universally passed by unsevered from the rest of the toilsome days devoted to the curse of labor."  Restad, p. 17.

 That's an English actress touring America in 1832 (what there was of it).  I especially like that "curse of labor" line, since the European celebrations of the season were meant to be a relief from that curse.  But good Puritans that we Americans are, we still take our holiday all on one day and one day only, and work like dogs to get to it, and work almost as much to get over it.

Christmas didn't officially become a holiday in America until 1870, but almost 150 years later we still like to think ourselves superior to those who passed the holiday on to us, and sneer at the "pagan" roots we imagine it has, as if we are not pagan ourselves.  The line between "pagans" and "us" is one the Puritans drew, and we re-draw it every time we imagine we know a secret truth hidden from the benighted who enjoy Christmas on whatever terms they like.

My preference is still to say:  "May it be unto you according to your faith."  But please, don't speak nonsense.  Better to be silent, and all that.

*This is what Tarico is told by by Tony Nugent, which she blithely ignores in order to force modern sensibilities on a millennia old story:

Or consider the idea that Mary is a virgin. The Greek writer of Matthew quotes Isaiah as saying: “a parthenos shall conceive and bear a child.” The Hebrew word in Isaiah is “almah,” which means simply “young woman.” But the Greek word parthenos can mean either a virgin or a young woman, and it got translated as “virgin.” Modern Bible translations have corrected this, but it is a central part of the Christmas story.

Yes, there is an idea of Mary ever virginal in the Roman Catholic teachings; but Tarico betrays her Puritanical roots on this subject.  The virginity of Mary is certainly overstated in the Christmas story.  Modern scholarship doesn't exactly ruin the tale by emphasizing Mary's youth rather than her physical state.  The emphasis on "cult" doesn't make Tarico entirely unreasonable; but it doesn't make her coldly rational, either.

War on, Christmas!

Mrs Breuer's mother, Rita, began collecting antique Christmas decorations in the 1970s. Her husband had said he wanted the sort of old-fashioned German tree that his grandmother used to have. But Rita Breuer and her daughter soon started to unearth bizarre tree decorations that had little to do with the traditional Christmas. First World War items included a miniature glass soldier carrying a hand grenade and military tree baubles in the shape of shells and tanks.*

"The trend continued into the Nazi era," Mrs Breuer said. The church was too intimidated to protest, and the majority of Germans continued with the traditions they had become used to. "The Nazi Christmas ideology appears to have been adhered to most by the families of party activists who lived in towns," she added. The Nazi version of some German carols that were stripped of their Christian content survive and are still unwittingly sung by today's Germans.

I want to say the Hallmark ornaments like the above are in-line with the miniature glass soldier carrying a hand grenade; but then again, Hallmark hasn't made a Punisher ornament yet, or a Rambo, for that matter; so I guess it's all good.

I will add that the idea that Christians "stole" Christmas traditions from pagans is a bit rich, as well as a sign of information deficit disorder.  It's a common problem, especially in an information besotted age like this one; or the 19th century, for that matter.  It's hard today to read Frazer's The Golden Bough without being aware of how prejudiced he was against most things Roman Catholic (he writes like a Puritan on anything to do with Catholic traditions in Europe) as well as most things not befitting an English gentleman to the manor born.  In other words, by modern standards he comes quite a bloomer about many details and conclusions.  I mention him because he could be the patron saint of many a comment on the internet about the origins of Christmas and its traditions.

None of which, frankly, are correct.  Nothing about Christmas was "stolen" by Christians; the very idea that it was is one founded in Puritanism (the infection that led to Deism in the late 18th century) rather than anthropology or any branch of scholarship.  And the irony is, it is neo-puritanism that insists Christmas must be cleansed of such traditions, but where the Puritans wanted to remove the Catholic influence from Christianity, neo-puritans want to remove Christianity from Christmas.

Which things like Hallmark ornaments should prove has already been done, despite the best efforts of Linus van Pelt.

The Puritans were not fans of Christmas celebrations, in no small part because they considered all the traditions associated with Christmas to be pagan in origin, much like the Catholic church itself (which the Anglican church was modeled on.  The name "Puritan" started as a pejorative because they wanted to "purify" the Church of England; later they wore it as a badge of honor.  History is full of such ironies.).  So anything they considered "pagan" was not to be admitted into the purity of their Christianity.  The Puritans are long gone, but they're argument about Christmas lingers on.

So we get statements about how many traditions of Christmas were "stolen" by the Church, which actually didn't adopt any of them.  Some churches do decorate their worship space with evergreen branches (but never mistletoe; or rare enough the exception proves the rule) or maybe even holly and its berries (or plastic simulacra), but that's as far as it goes.  No Santa Claus; no wassail bowls; you can even raise eyebrows if you serve hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls on Christmas Day.

Yule logs, roast meats, grand feasts, evergreens, etc., etc.:  all kept in cultures that converted to Christianity because the church didn't expunge them.  Protestants did, to some degree; it's one reason the Carmina Gadelica preserved the prayers and charms of the Highland people; the Presbyterians were busy eliminating such practices.  Most of what was kept was either deemed harmless or, like St. Brigid in Ireland, converted to Christianity.

But that doesn't make St. Brigid an invalid saint; well, unless you're a Puritan, and then all saints are invalid.

It's not, in other words, an "objective" position on Christmas traditions to say they were "stolen."  It's not even a valid position; no anthropologist would agree with you (no credible one, anyway).  Most of the anthropology that did argue for such "theft" (Sir James Frazer comes prominently to mind) has been discarded in favor of more objective (!) assessments, assessments that don't assume Frazer's prejudices are also the truth.

My favorite example of this is Wikipedia entry which argues that it is transparently clear many Christmas traditions were overlaid on pagan ones, meaning the Church "stole" them in order to keep the people.  Well, first, that appropriation of culture by Christians goes back to Paul (his fight with Peter was over how much of Jewish law to impose on Christian converts), so:  duh.  But  I don't put much stock in Wikipedia, and this entry is as good an example why as any.  The article notes that the word "Jule" doesn't appear in any source until 900 C.E.   I'll just point out that's medieval Europe, not pre-Christian, or even pre-Roman, Europe.  So if "Jule" was popular in 10th century Germanic regions, it was a Christian Europe it was popular in.

You can make the same argument about the Christmas tree, which descends from the paradeisbaum of German passion plays (the tree in the Garden.  The Feast Day of Adam and Eve is in December).

The entry also makes the usual lazy assertion that Christians appropriated "pagan" traditions and rituals, and therefore those things we like most about Christmas aren't really "Christian."Most people converted to Christianity and kept living the lives they'd been living.  Some Protestants objected to that, as I said; sometimes the Roman Church objected.  But for the most part, the Church converted people and left their familiar traditions intact because those traditions didn't offend Christianity.  Christians from Catholics to the UCC have done enough stomping on native cultures around the world; there's no need to make up responsibility for things they didn't do.

And it's not really an offense against God (especially if you don't believe in God) or common humanity to sing for "Peace on Earth" under a bough of mistletoe or while swigging eggnog laced with bourbon standing near as big a burning log as your host could find, or while waiting for the Buche de Noel to be served.

So get over it.  It's not like Christianity was imposed on Europeans as if the Christians were colonizers and the natives mere slaves.  Hell, even the Indians on the subcontinent enjoy cricket.

Did they steal that from the British?

Anyway, I hate to bring the Nazis into this, since our cultural appropriation of Christmas is hardly as evil in intent as they were.  But it is nearly as hegemonic as the Nazis wanted to be.  Ironically, though, the "spirit of Christmas" prevails.  It is the one time of the year we are called to listen to the angels of our better nature, to at least pretend (as Bill Murray says at the end of "Scrooged") that we are as nice as we say we are, that "peace on earth" and "goodwill toward all" is supposed to be a universal sentiment.  We don't get there, but we try to.

And despite comic book characters fighting each other one somebody's tree this year, that's a Christmas gift worth cherishing every December.  It's the last Christian remnant of our popular Christmas, but it endures.  It is the part we haven't managed to remove, despite our best efforts to render the rest of the holiday as religion-free as possible.

Long may it survive.  It does us good to at least remember to express the sentiment annually.

Yes, Virginia, there is a "War on Christmas"

But it didn't start with "liberals" and the U.S. Supreme Court:

"Into what stupendous height of more than pagan impiety...have we not now degenerated! [Christmas out to be] rather a day of mourning than rejoicing, [not a time spent in] amorous mixt, voluptuous, unchristian, that I say not pagan, dancing, to God's, to Christ's dishonour, religion's scandal, charities' shipwracke and sinne's advantage."

You want to hear someone rail against Christmas, John Gibson? You could learn a thing or two from this guy.

That's from William Prynne's Histriomastrix (1633), quoted in Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America (New York: Oxford 1995, p. 7). Prynne, as you might imagine, was a Puritan, in England, in the 17th century. Their issue was the issue of my grandparent's Primitive Baptist lay preacher: "whether there should even be an observance of the day." Maybe the "liberals" have more in common with the Puritans than we realized, eh, Bill O'Reilly?

O'REILLY: By the way, if Alito is confirmed, that will be a good thing for conservatives. That's the bottom line. Because Alito will take a more traditional view than a [Supreme Court justices Stephen G.] Breyer or a [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. OK? He'll look at things, and he'll say, "You know, the Founding Fathers didn't want partial-birth abortion. The Founding Fathers didn't want all mention of Christmas stricken from the public arena." That's what Alito will do. He's a traditionalist. He's going to rule that way.

Now, "Founding Fathers" obviously would have to be stretched a bit, here, but since the Founding Fathers included Puritan New England, we should start the question of the "War on Christmas" by asking: when did this start? And it turns out it started long before the nation was founded.

In fact, it started with those "Pilgrims" whose landing on Plymouth Rock we'll be celebrating in a few weeks. As Restad puts it:

It fell to Puritan reformers to put a stop to the unholy merriment [of the English Christmas celebration, which had little to do with giving gifts and much to do with getting drunk] and to bend arguments over the proper keeping of Christmas into an older and more basic one--whether there should even be an observance of the day. Defying the decisions of the Anglican Convocation of 1562 to maintain the church calendar, the Puritans struck Christmas, along with all saint's days [no Hallowe'en!], from their own list of holy days. The Bible, they held, expressly commanded keeping only the Sabbath. That would be their practice as well.

Restad, p. 7

The Christmas Dickens tried to re-create actually arose about this time, interestingly enough. Shanges in social life actually transformed Christmas "into 'a symbol for hospitality towards the poor, and understanding between the different levels of society, and happier and more prosperous times in now neglected villages.' King Charles I went so far as to direct his noblemen and gentry to return to their landed estates in midwinter in order to keep up their old style of Christmas generosity."

I mentioned the Pilgrims. They "arrived at Plymouth in December 1620, [and] spent Christmas building 'the first house for commone use to receive them and their goods.' " And, in words that I could find on the Internet today, Increase Mather wrote in 1687:

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved t that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ." (Restad, p. 14)

Because, as I said, people drank a lot, and got rowdy. Dishonoring the name of Christ in the name of commercialism came after Clement Moore's "Night Before Christmas." (This according to Which, of couse, is the Christmas Mr. Gibson and Mr. O'Reilly want to preserve. And they defend it so they can make money off of it.

But let's come forward a little bit. By 1832, surely Christmas was being observed in America. No, not according to the English actress Fanny Kemble:

Christmas day is no religious day and hardly a holiday with them: New-year's day is perhaps a little, but only a little more so. For Twelfth-day, it is unknown; and the household private festivals of birthdays are almost universally passed by unsevered from the rest of the toilsome days devoted to the curse of labor."

Restad, p. 17. Other 19th century Americans remember only Thanksgiving and the 4th of July as holidays; Christmas was not celebrated.

According to Restad's history, this didn't change until about the middle of the 19th century. Which means O'Reilly is right: "The Founding Fathers didn't want all mention of Christmas stricken from the public arena." It wasn't there in 1776, anyway. Or at anytime in the 18th, into the mid-19th, century. Whether or not it should be "stricken from the public arena" was never a question for them.

Christmas became an official national holiday on June 26, 1870. (Restad, p. 104) And then the second "war on Christmas" started: the war on what it should be about. Clement Clark Moore did more to change that than Ebenezer Scrooge did, actually. Moore's poem "The Night Before Christmas," another historian has argued (and my inability to find that book this morning has caused great consternation in the household), turned the home invader (which some of the rowdier Christmas revels turned into) into a kindly old peddler who meant no harm, and only brought beneficence, not drunkenness and mayhem. And from then on, the "war" was over what commercialism was doing to the "Christian holiday."

(The book is The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum. Finally remembered that much.)

Which culiminated, I guess we could say, with Charlie Brown.

So Mr. Gibson's "war" is just the newest front in this on-going battle. And he and FoxNews are just bringing the forces of commercialism to bear, once again, in defense of Christmas, for the purposes of....commercialism.

Really brings Christmas close to a person, doesn't it, Charlie Brown?

[UPDATE: Found my copy of Nissenbaum's book, finally. I'll try to post some of his more interesting insights as the holiday nears. He has a great deal of information about the "traditional" celebrations of Christmas, and how and why it became such a commercial holiday in America, as well as how tightly it has ever been connected to more somber religious observances.]

Bunnies, Eggs, And Bonnets

Fox News hosts claim Biden turning U.S. 'pagan' after hyping Easter with bunnies and eggshttps://t.co/4SHOGnj0Wl

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 31, 2024

Now I have to ask: what is particularly Christian about Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, or anything about Easter celebrations not connected to the resurrection??

According to the Guardian, both Easter eggs and bunnies have connections to paganism.  

“All the fun things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare. Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures," the outlet noted.

Yeah, no. Ahistorical bullshit. And still nothing to do with the Christian holy day. I mean, at least Santa Claus is somewhat related to St. Nicholas, and the Christmas tree to the Paradeisbaum. But bunnies and eggs are…symbols of Christ’s resurrection? Huh?

I have a book detailing the historical bestiary of Christ. Animal imagery used by Christians for 2000 years. Eagles, lions, lambs; but no bunnies. There is the lamb of God. There are animals for all four Evangelists. There is no “bunny of God.” 

I suppose Easter ham is pagan, too.

Like I said, eggs probably got associated with Easter because of Lent. I suppose eggs and bunnies aren’t Christian, and that makes them “pagan.” But only if you’re a Puritan.  Or an idiot.

Don’t be an idiot. Go enjoy Easter, and be nice to everyone. That’s the better message of the day.

Speaking of disrespecting the day:

L - Joe Biden’s first post of the day on Easter.

R - Donald Trump’s first post of the day on Easter. pic.twitter.com/Zdb0VFTyoY

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) March 31, 2024

The Ghost Of Increase Mather Still Stalks The Land

Meet the New Puritans, same as the old Puritans.

Today is Christmas Day, a connection to some of the most ancient of all known northern European shamanic traditions. Like people living in the north for millennia, we continue to embrace them with regional, national, and religious tweaks. 

It occurs during the week of the shortest day and longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, when ancient holy men and women lit “yule logs” to push back the darkness and implore the gods or nature to bring back the light of summer.

When I was a teenager, I had a pair of leather sandals with a leather peace sign prominently displayed on them.

Yeah. That one. No one knew in the ‘70’s that it was a symbol designed for a British anti-nukes group in the ‘50’s, so rumors abounded that it was Satanic. I still remember the mother of a girl I knew warning me I was trafficking with Satan just by wearing comfortable footwear. I realized then and there that she thought the symbol had magical, or demonic, powers. I knew even then a symbol is what you want it to be, even as that symbol no longer conjures up opposition to nuclear weapons, but more generally to conflict itself (or maybe it just conjures up hippies).  In any case, the origin of the symbol means nothing anymore. It’s what we associate it with that matters.

Thom Hartman associates Christmas with “ancient holy men and women” lighting ‘yule logs,’ which is a new one on me.I’d always understood the custom came from the Nordic countries and simply involved keeping the fire going through the long, dark winter. Or barons in England filling baronial fireplaces with massive logs. Never heard of it being part of any religious practice.

But that’s the legacy of Increase Mather. Anything he didn’t like was European and, if it needed to be worse, it was Roman Catholic and/or pagan, two conditions which, to Mather, were completely alike. His Puritans came to America to “purify” themselves from all three strands of tradition. So, to this day, in America, the annual observance of Christmas is accompanied by the annual ritual of “Everything about Christmas is PAGAN!” Which would please Increase Mather no end.

It’s utter bullshit.

Let’s start with the Yule Log, since this article is behind a paywall and these two paragraphs are all I’ve got. The closest any Christmas celebration today comes to a Yule log is a Buche de Noel. Most of us don’t even have chimneys for Santa to slide down, much less fireplaces below them large enough to hold Yule Logs. I don’t even care if Yule logs were burned by Druids or shamans to chase away the darkness gods and sympathetically return the Sun to the sky (that’s parody anthropology, by the way, about one step removed from James George Frazer, whose work is parodic in modern terms). Today they refer to a delicious chocolate cake with marzipan or meringue mushrooms. The term refers to a seasonal dessert, nothing more.

As for that “week of the shortest day and longest night of the year”, that’s not because the Church started celebrating the Christ Mass in order to stamp out the pagan winter solstice. That coincidence is the result of Pope Gregory XIII replacing the Julian calendar… in the late 16th century. That would be a full millennia, plus about 200 years, after the first celebration of the Christ Mass. Attentive readers may remember that St. Lucy’s Day fell on the day of the solstice on the Julian calendar, which is part of the reason she was associated with light, and young girls in the Nordic countries wore a wreath of candles to celebrate the saint, and the return (slowly) of sunlight. Now St. Lucy’s Day is December 12. And Christmas used to be on January 6th, which is why in the “Cherry Tree Carol” the unborn Jesus tells Joseph “on the 6th day of January my birthday will be.” As it was, until 1582.

If anything was supposed to supplant pagan solstice observations, that would have been St. Lucy’s Day. But Mather preferred to focus on the holiday he didn’t want imported to America. Saints days were extraneous, just another problem with the Roman church. Christmas Day was the big fish Increase wanted to fry.

Now, of course, the date of the solstice remained close to the date of Christmas no matter whether the calendar was Julian or Gregorian. But the proximity to the solstice is as coincidental as the proximity of All Saints’ Day to Samhain. That date was chosen by the Pope in Rome . There’s little indication Ireland was foremost in his mind. Pope Gregory III fixed the date in the early 8th century. Patrick converted Ireland in the 5th century, but it’s hard to tell how the importance of the westernmost reach of the Church so influenced Rome. There’s more coincidence than connection.

And if there was a connection, what would it matter? What’s the connection between Hallowe’en and Samhain? I spent my childhood blissfully unaware of the latter while annually enjoying the former. And what I know about the latter now still doesn’t explain begging for candy or wearing a costume or getting to walk the streets with your friends after dark and ring strangers’ doorbells.

So, are our Christmas traditions pagan? Most of our December customs have nothing to do with the church. How much of Advent is celebrated outside the liturgical church? Do you associate the penitential roots of Advent with anything observed in December? Have you ever heard of Gaudete Sunday? Who are you more familiar with? Zacharias or Simeon? Or Scrooge and Marley? Apart from a reference to a church service on Christmas Day, what part of Dickens’ “Carol” involves the “reason for the season,” except in the words of Tiny Tim, told to us by his father?

Santa Claus is supposedly based on St. Nicholas, but did he drive a sleigh pulled by reindeer? In Turkey? Was he familiar with chimneys? Cookies? Milk?  The Christmas meal is a remnant of medieval England, when food freshly harvested had to be eaten before it rotted.  Christmas celebrations also have their roots in medieval Europe, when the knights and barons and dukes hosted parties over days, largely because the harvest was in and hunting passed the winter days (all you have to do is read “Gawain and the Green Knight”). We just have our parties in December, so we can go back to work on December 26th, another remnant of our Puritan heritage.  In medieval times the rich spent 12 days, from December 25th to January 6th, celebrating. We have a few parties, and the day off on Christmas. Gift giving? Again, more to do with Henry VIII than anything else.

Every way you look at it: Advantage: medieval Europe.

There is precious little that we do know that doesn’t have roots in history, though most of that history for our December traditions dates back only to the 19th century. Xmas trees go back to the 16th century in Germany, where the Paradeisbaum of Adam and Eve (their feast day was/is on December 24th) became a German Xmas decoration, a decoration that didn’t reach England until the 19th century. And it was more widespread in America before it was in England. So the pagan roots of those traditions are much more conjectural than actual.

And who cares, anyway? Most of our American Christmas customs started with Clement Moore, far more than started with pagans in pre-Christian Europe. And most of our Christmas traditions and celebrations have little or nothing to do with the traditions and celebrations of the church. You can celebrate one; you can celebrate the other; you can do both and a little bit of neither. It can be for you according to your faith, whether you have faith in God or just your own reason. 

But there’s no reason to celebrate the lack of reason that pseudo-anthropology rests on. Especially just to make yourself feel clever.

Xmas Time Is Here

Christmas was a lot different in the 1800s. In Boston, New York and Philadelphia, drunken gangs marauded through the streets. Not even the neighborhood watchmen could deter them. https://t.co/cnaqSTaV5q

— Anthony DeRosa 🗽 (@Anthony) December 26, 2020

Jason Zweig's argument rests on the work of Stephen Nissenbaum and Penne Restad, two authorities I've relied on more than once.  On the strength of that I consider his argument sound, at least to the extent he argues Christmas went from a time of flamboyant excess in celebration to: “As soon as Santa Claus entered the picture,” says Prof. Nissenbaum, “people had to go shopping.”

Good enough to begin with.  But it also utterly demolishes the supposed connection between Christmas and Saturnalia.  It's a Christmas myth that just won't die, even though Saturnalia has been dead as a holiday since at least the middle of the 4th century.  The myth lives on because it sounds clever, and clever is easier than thinking.  And because the cold, dead hand of Puritanism still rests on American popular culture.

For New Year, Posumus, ten years ago,

You sent me four pounds of good silver-plate.

The next year, hoping for a rise in weight

(For gifts should either stay the same or grow),

I got two pounds. The third and fourth produced

Inferior presents, and the fifth year's weighed

Only a pound--Septicus' work, ill-made

Into the bargain. Next I was reduced

To an eight-ounce oblong salad-platter, soon

It was a miniature cup that tipped the scales

At even less. A tiny two-ounce sppon

Was the eighth year's surprise. The ninth, at length,

And grudgingly, disgorged a pick for snails

Lighter than a needle. Now, I note, the tenth

Has come and gone with nothing in its train.

I miss the old four pounds! Let's start again!

That's Marcus Martialis, the 1st century Roman poet, tr. James Michie.  The tradition of gift-giving there is between friends; not parents to children.  The connection of Christmas Day to Saturnalia usually runs through the gift giving associated with the latter. This was gift giving between peers, though, not the gifting to children from adults through Santa Claus. (Nissenbaum points to that as a major shift in the 19th century.) Gift giving was associated with Christmas celebrations, mostly in the form of gifts to the poor from the rich. But these gifts were usually food and drink. That tradition has withered down to Boxing Day, not surprisingly a holiday unknown in America. Gift giving today is primarily an inter-family affair. The burden on adults at Christmas is gifts for children, not for friends. Saturnalia was about gifts to friends. And as I say, the Roman holiday died 1500 years before Clement Clarke Moore brought capitalism to Christmas’ rescue.

So, was Christmas connected to Saturnalia at all? Nope. (that link is for those of you who want to get into the historical weeds of the issue.)

The Christ Mass was first observed in Alexandria, Egypt. Saturnalia was a Roman holiday.  And by “Roman” I mean “City of,” much like Mardi Gras in this country means New Orleans, or Mummers means Philadelphia. Rome celebrated it, but not Alexandria. And by the time the Mass for the nativity was starting in Egypt, Saturnalia was already considered the “slave’s festival,” and on its way out in Rome. It overlapped the rise of the Christ Mass (not to be confused with the secular celebrations we call “Christmas”), but it no more affected our secular holiday celebrations than Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans affects our national non-observance of Epiphany or Ash Wednesday. If only because the roots of our secular Christmas lie in medieval Europe, not Roman Europe.

Most of the celebrations of Christmas we have today (in America, anyway) have roots in Tudor England and the court of Henry VIII.  There was gift giving, but to my earlier point, Henry expected the best gifts to come to him. He was rather how you imagine Donald Trump to be on Christmas morning: his gifts are small, what he expects to receive is large. Not exactly the spirit of Saturnalia. Peer to peer gifting was far in the future from Henry; adult to child giving further away still. Today Christmas is for children, first and foremost. What Roman or pre-Christian history is that rooted in (indeed, concern for children is arguably a Christian teaching. It certainly isn’t a pre-Christian one)?

Henry’s Christmas celebrations also lasted for 12 days and included many feasts (mostly because the food was available and food storage almost nonexistent. Use it or lose it was the rule for much of Europe for centuries). It included the “Lord of Misrule,” usually a courtier given license to lead the drinking and carousing and general carrying on. That doesn’t reach back to Rome, either. But Puritans in America, like Increase Mather, tried to argue that it did.

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ.

--Increase Mather, 1687.  

“If it had been the will of God that the several acts of Christ should have been celebrated with several solemnities, the Holy Ghost would have made known to us the day of his nativity, circumcision, presentation in the temple, baptism, transfiguration, and the like.” . . . . “This opinion of Christ’s nativity on the 25th day of December was bred at Rome.”

Also Increase Mather.

Here we meet the great irony of American myths about Christmas. Most of them are thinly-veiled attempts to tell Christians their beloved Christmas is actually pagan. The irony is that argument starts with the puritans in America who aimed their criticism at Catholics (and Anglicans). The Puritans didn’t believe Catholics were Christians (or almost anybody else), so the cudgel they laid down is now picked up by others. Whatever the Puritans deemed “unChristian” they labeled “pagan,” and most commonly used that label to decry Roman Catholic practices. So if you’re concerned about the roots of practices, the practice of saying customs were “originally pagan” is itself originally anti-Papist. You’re really appealing to anti-Catholic bigotry, not to sweet, objective Reason.

Know your memes.

I mentioned Penne Restad earlier.  Let me quote from her work Christmas in America, a bit:

It fell to Puritan reformers to put a stop to the unholy merriment [of the English Christmas celebration, which had little to do with giving gifts and much to do with getting drunk] and to bend arguments over the proper keeping of Christmas into an older and more basic one--whether there should even be an observance of the day. Defying the decisions of the Anglican Convocation of 1562 to maintain the church calendar, the Puritans struck Christmas, along with all saint's days [no Hallowe'en!], from their own list of holy days. The Bible, they held, expressly commanded keeping only the Sabbath. That would be their practice as well.

Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America,  Oxford 1995, p. 7.

On the same page, Restad quotes William Prynne's Histriomatrix (1633):

Into what stupendous height of more than pagan impiety...have we not now degenerated! [Christmas out to be] rather a day of mourning than rejoicing, [not a time spent in] amorous mixt, voluptuous, unchristian, that I say not pagan, dancing, to God's, to Christ's dishonour, religion's scandal, charities' shipwracke and sinne's advantage.

In fact, the idea that capitalism saved Christmas may be a sound one, but it doesn't mean Christmas sprang full-blown from the pen of Mr. Moore in 1823:

Christmas day is no religious day and hardly a holiday with them: New-year's day is perhaps a little, but only a little more so. For Twelfth-day, it is unknown; and the household private festivals of birthdays are almost universally passed by unsevered from the rest of the toilsome days devoted to the curse of labor.  

Restad, p. 17

That passage is quoting an English actress touring America in 1832 (what there was of it).  I especially like that "curse of labor" line, since the European celebrations of the season were meant to be a relief from that curse.  But good Puritans that we Americans are, we still take our holiday all on one day and one day only, and work like dogs to get to it, and work almost as much to get over it.  Gift giving and Christmas didn't get connected really until the late 19th century; there are some arguments the whole "shopping days until Christmas" didn't start until World War II, when shopping became a patriotic act (and a way to lift us out of the Depression).  I'm not sure most Americans had even heard of "Saturnalia" in the 1940's.

But the connection of Christmas to parties among adults (or office parties) and Santa for the kids on Christmas morning, is really of very recent vintage; and it's a very modern, very tame version of Christmas compared to celebrations of the past.  And the "past" does not mean "long passed:"

"Christmas that year, not one to look forward to, was one we should alway look back on."

That's the opening sentence of "Looking Back on Christmas" by William Owens.  I don't know if it's memoir or fiction, but it's become one of my favorite Christmas stories.   It's the story of a family gathering in rural Texas on Christmas Eve.  The family gathers, then sits down to dinner, and after dinner:

After the first table [old Texas tradition my family carried on with in my childhood:  the men ate first, then retired, and the women and children ate.  Yeah, my wife was appalled by that, too, and it was long before we were married that she encountered it.] the men and the bigger boys built up a big fire in the pasture between the house and the front gate.  Then, while the women stood on the front porch to watch, Uncle Charlie gave the little children firecrackers and showed them how to shoot them.  He put a paper fuse against a live coal.  When it had lighted he threw it away from the fire into the dark.

"Don't ever let one go off in your hand," he said, "And don't throw it close to nobody.  Somebody might get hurt."

While we went through the firecrackers he had given us, the men made a trip back to the kitchen.  This time they brought the jug with them and set it in the back end of a wagon.  They brought out more fireworks, and Monroe had the sack of powder in his coat pocket.

"Time for a roman candle," Uncle Charlie said.

He took a long red roman candle and went to the fire.

"You all watch now," he said, "I'm gonna hold it like I was aiming to shoot the gate."

Charlie runs into the dark and let's the candle shoot balls of fire, then he gets Othal to join him in a roman candle battle.  Full disclosure:  I once did something similar with my cousin, although in summer, not winter.  We used plastic tubes from his golf bag to launch bottle rockets at each other.  We didn't even have the excuse of alcohol, we were just young and dumb.

Anyway, you get the flavor of the celebration.  Firecrackers going off, then roman candles being fired at each other in close range.  Then when those are exhausted and everyone's tired of running around and through the house:

Uncle Charlie was not ready for the fun to be over.  He went up the steps and across the front porch.  Aunt Niece was standing in the door, with the lamplight behind her.  He lifted her chin with his fingers and went on past her, to the chimney corner where he kept his double-barreled shotgun.  Then he came out with the gun under his arm and a box of shells in his hand.

Near the fire, he loaded both barrels and set the stock against his shoulder.

"You aiming at the gate?" Othal asked.

"You got to aim at something."

He fired, and after the first blast we heard shot rattle against the gate.

"Got it first shot," Othal said, and ran for his own gun.

In no time at all, five guns were blazing away at the gate, and the little children were running for hiding places under the house.  I shivered at the sound, but felt safe, for their backs were to us and they were aiming at the gate.

Then Othal came running around the house, loading and firing as he ran, and some of the others took after him.  The women had run inside, but I could hear them telling the men to stop.  Too scared to stay under the house, I crawled out and started for the door.  In the darkness I can straight into Otha's knees, and he let a double-barreled blast go off right over my head, leaving a burning flash in my eyes and a ringing in my ears.

The gate was "a wide, heavy gate made of oak timbers fourteen feet long and an inch thick."  However, the next morning:  "We went to look at the gate, and found it half hanging from the posts, with the timbers drilled and splintered by shot."  The story ends this way:

Uncle Charlie came in with a backstick for the fireplace.  My grandmother was waiting for him.

"You ruint the gate," she said.

"I reckon we did."

He laughed and the light in his blue eyes showed he was not sorry.  She frowned and went out to the front porch.

Aunt Niece came in, with a peeled orange in her hand.

"Christmas gift," he said to her.

She went up to him and stuck a slice of orange between his teeth.  They were both laughing without making a sound, and once he leaned over and kissed her.

"I had me some Christmas," he said.

Not so long ago, that story.  It wasn't just in the 1800's that Christmas was a lot different.

And so this is Christmas....again

First, Christmas as we know it in America didn't really get started until the 1820's. It wasn't widely celebrated until the 1860's, and didn't become an official national holiday until 1870. So the "observance" of it (whatever that means) is not all that old. (For a bit of perspective, A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and many scholars today attribute the "revival" of Christmas celebrations in England to Dickens). And from almost the moment the holiday was observed as a holiday, it was connected to commerce. So the connection between Christmas and shopping, in America, is as old as Christmas in America itself.

Now there are all kinds of nonsense about Christmas being "stolen" by the Church from pagan rituals, as if the Church were a monolithic power which imposed its will on people, or performed clever subterfuges to foil their innate desires, or simply forced them to "Christianize" what were otherwise "pagan" rituals. Which is, anthropologically and historically and even sociologically speaking: balderdash. As succinct and reliable a history as any on the Web is at New Advent, the Catholic encyclopedia. It's notable that the Christ Mass (from which "Christmas" is derived) didn't exist until the 11th century (quite some time after the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the extinction of the Empire's culture. Not too many Saturnalia's going on in the 11th century, in other words.). The first recorded observance of the birth of Christ (which is what, according to Linus Van Pelt, "Christmas is all about". I'll explain my "neutrality" on that point in a moment) is in Egypt in 200 C.E. Again, not a hotbed of Roman culture. Undoubtedly, though, the same Roman culture which inspired the idea of a republic among the "Founding Fathers" in America, and gave London it's "circus," and left behind ruins that the Danes who told the story of "Beowulf" thought the work of "giants," left its mark on celebrations around the time of the winter solstice. So probably there was a habit of exchanging small gifts among friends at the time eventually set aside for Christmas. But it wasn't the church that "stole" that from the pagans because they needed it. As I say, the Church seems to have gotten along without a formal recognition of Christmas for most of its first millenia. (If you want an idea how winter became the birthdate for Jesus, look at the New Advent link above. There are as many explanations as there are scholars to explain it, though, so don't imagine any one explanation is the "truth."). It wasn't, as I say, that "the Church" stole anything (and the distinction between the Church and the people will become important in a moment). More like something survived, or more likely, was revived. Which means the modern assumption:

Capitalism has of course very successfully colonized established holidays, in much the same way as Christianity nicked Halloween, etc., from the pagans. Christmas is nowadays pure capitalism; Santa is all about the advertising, and the marketing, and the purchasing of consumer products, despite what the kitsch figurines tell you.

is not all that historically sound. Which is where I want to take us, tripping lightly through the thorough and excellent scholarship of Penne L. Restad and her book, Christmas in America (New York: Oxford University Press 1995). It is from that book that the historical information in this post, comes.



The fact is, Christmas as we know it and celebrate it in America, is pretty much an invention of the market place, and has only and ever tangentially been related to Christmas as a religious observance, as the "Christ Mass" held to honor the birth of the Savior. It's more like the two celebrations occur coincidentally at the same time of year, than that one is a vulgar and degrading corruption of the Platonic ideal of the other. Once you understand that, the picture becomes much clearer; or perhaps darker.

If you want to understand how Christmas got started in America, consider the example of the European Feast of Fools. As New Advent says, it was "a celebration marked by much license and buffoonery." Scholars again differ on the reach and importance of this festival; some crown it as a n important "release valve" of the tensions and pressures of feudal society. Others, like Michel Foucault, downplay it was limited to northern France and a few other regions of Europe, and always opposed by the Church. The lesson for us is that this 'feast' was a folk celebration, not a church one, and its irreverence was tolerated by the Church because they couldn't stop it, more than it was encouraged as a way of reminding the peasants of their place in the hierarchy (a comparison to Christmas in the slave holding South will prove instructive here, if I remember to mention it again). Christmas, too, was a folk celebration, one more honored in the British South (thanks to the presence of the Episcopal church) than in Puritan New England (where it was officially banned for a time, in at least some of the New England states). Restad's history presents Christmas as largely a folk celebration, in contrast to Thanksgiving, which was vigorously promoted in the 19th century by Sara Josepha Hale, who did more than any individual to promote Thanksgiving as a national holiday (ironically, the objections to it were on church/state grounds. It was argued that a national day of giving thanks would violate the First Amendment, an objection that was finally obviated by the times, when Lincoln established that later became the holiday) Aside from the religious entanglement objection, Thanksgiving was regarded as more of a "New England" celebration than a national one, for much of that century. Christmas, on the other hand, crept into public celebrations from many lands and many hands, and was early on largely disconnected from any religious observance, and while promoted as connected to the Christchild, was really no more dependent upon Church sanction than it is now. The idea, in other words, that there was a "pure" Christmas observance once upon a time, which the marketplace or the public square corrupted, is as false as the idea that the Christmas celebration we know now descended in an almost unbroken line from the Saturnalia. It just happens that people like an excuse to exchange gifts and eat a lot of food, and especially for people from a northern European culture, winter is a jolly good time to do that.

The interesting thing about Christmas in America is that it's always been a glorious bastard, a jackdaw of a project grabbing "Christmas trees" from Germany (which may, or may not, be related to the "Paradeisbaum" of the medieval German morality plays) and decking the halls and boar's heads and feasting from England (which may or may not be related to, or even influenced by, Druidic practices. It's always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me to go from kissing under the mistletoe directly back to Frazer's "golden bough"). Carols were a medieval creation coming, per Restad, from pagan folk dances that people liked and simply "Christianized" (like most things, the Church couldn't beat 'em, so it joined 'em), although many of the carols we know today are products of the mid- to late 19th century (so it goes). As Restad points out, Christmas in America was cobbled together from European bits and pieces, and the parts that fit in America stuck, and the parts that didn't fell away.

We forget, too, that America initially had no holidays. Europe had them because of the church, which was universal throughout the different countries of Europe, and because of local customs. But without a universal church, or established local customs, America went, for almost a century, without any national holiday which all citizens could claim as their own. Ironically, again, that holiday became Christmas; but not because all Americans were, or were even presumed to be, Christians.

Stephen Nissenbaum argues that the American Christmas was formed more by Clement Clark Moore's poem than any other single source. Accepting his position arguendo, what is most notable about "The Night Before Christmas" is that it creates a holiday and the celebration of it, without ever getting closer to religion than the word "Christmas" (which the Puritan New Englanders despised as a "Romish" word, but which, by Moore's day, had lost almost all religious connotation). This was more a feature than a bug in the 19th century. Dicken's Christmas Carol comes closer to invoking the religious reasons for the season, but he does it mostly in terms of Victorian sentimentality, than in terms of any church doctrine. Penne Restad points out that Christmas was grabbed onto by merchants in America almost as soon as it emerged as a public celebration. The emergence of the holiday coincided with a renewed interest in the power and importance of domesticity, an interest probably prompted by the Industrial Revolution and the quick acceptance by Americans of the ideals of the Romantic movement. Personally I think it was a combination of Romanticism and the Pietistic movement of the 17th century, which effects lingered long in a Protestant dominated culture, but Restad makes clear the connections between the desires for domestic values and the importance of a uniting holiday, one everyone could gather into despite cultural ("Germany" as we know it, for example, didn't exist in the 19th century. We often overlook how many cultural differences there were between Europeans, differences that carried over into America) and doctrinal differences. In this sense, Christmas was the first truly "American" holiday. Grafted onto European roots, without doubt; but made a holiday both observant Christians and non-Christians (and yes, there were some, even in the 19th century!) could engage in. It's not at all insignificant that Christmas in America began as a religious observance almost anyone could join, and quickly became a public holiday everyone could revel in. And aside from the Puritan's objections to the holiday's Catholic roots, it was the revelry they objected to almost as much.

I have a book of Texas related Christmas stories, one of which tells the fictional story of an East Texas Christmas celebration. The celebration consists largely of a family gathering in the isolating woods of East Texas farms, and the children setting off firecrackers, followed by the men firing off guns and drinking rather heavily. To modern sensibilities, it's a bit of a frightening tale, and you keep expecting someone to get hurt in the semi-controlled mayhem. The climax of the festivities comes when the men take their shotguns and fire at the target of the gate down the drive from the house. They end up splintering it into kindling, and it was a nice, new gate. Fireworks exhausted and shotgun shells expended and whiskey consumed, they go to bed and wake early the next morning to eat a simply country meal. But the story closes with the family patriarch, who did the most damage to his own gate, kissing his wife (in public!) and grinning widely as he says: "I had me some Christmas!" No presents, no treats, no store-bought goodies except the firecrackers and the shotgun shells, but a raucous celebration nonetheless. Connected to the Feast of Fools, or Saturnalias? Not likely; but as I say, it's a good time of year to celebrate a bit freely.

As for the Roman Saturnalia, this will give an idea how it was celebrated:

For New Year, Posumus, ten years ago,
You sent me four pounds of good silver-plate.
The next year, hoping for a rise in weight
(For gifts should either stay the same or grow),
I got two pounds. The third and fourth produced
Inferior presents, and the fifth year's weighed
Only a pound--Septicus' work, ill-made
Into the bargain. Next I was reduced
To an eight-ounce oblong salad-platter, soon
It was a miniature cup that tipped the scales
At even less. A tiny two-ounce sppon
Was the eighth year's surprise. The ninth, at length,
And grudgingly, disgorged a pick for snails
Lighter than a needle. Now, I note, the tenth
Has come and gone with nothing in its train.
I miss the old four pounds! Let's start again!

Martial, tr. James Michie

I'm not sure what the Church took from that, but it wasn't much of a bargain.



Where were we then? Oh, yes: Christmas has always been two things at once, especially in America. It's never been a particularly religious holiday, so much as it's been a holiday named for and celebrated around a religious observance (which is still more honored in the breach than in the keeping). Christmas became, almost as soon as it was universally celebrated, a celebration of hearth and home, of domesticity (to this day, does a Christmas tree remind you first of Rockefeller Center, or of your childhood home?) Restad shows us that the Christmas tree itself became an American custom because it came with stories of German families gathered around a small tree on a table top, revealed in all its decorations and offerings of presents by the parents to the excited children. It was the American twist that the tree got bigger and bigger until it had to scrape whatever ceiling it was placed under from the floor on which it had to sit. Some things truly never change.



So is our Christmas ruined by all this commercialism? Depends on whether or not you agree with Linus about "what Christmas is all about." I like his answer, personally. But that's the answer for some of us; it isn't, and doesn't have to be, the answer for all of us. Let it be unto you according to your...well, faith, is how the German E&R Church concluded that blessing. But this isn't necessarily a matter of faith. So let it be unto you according to your best interest. Keep Christmas as it best suits you. And may it be a blessing unto you. Now, and into the ages.

little tree

"little silent christmas tree"

The Christmas Tree isn't of "pagan origin." In fact, of all things related to Christmas, it's probably the only one that is almost entirely a product of a Christian culture.

Not that it really matters; the insistence that "Christian" practices be pure and untainted by non-Christian (i.e., "pagan") practices is a silly one that dates back (again!) to the Puritans (see below).   Why we insist on keeping it up is another cultural practice very peculiar to Americans (equally peculiar is the idea that we are the world and our Christianity is world Christianity.  But that's another hobby horse....).


The tree is a seasonal decorative item.  Rather like the concept of communion, it springs not from some cultural icon co-opted by the new dominance of Christianity in the dark places of ancient history, but from Christian sources:  specifically, the Genesis story and the Paradeisbaum inspired by German morality plays and the veneration of Adam and Even in the Eastern church which spread, unofficially, westward.

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice, their veneration spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples, and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

That first connection, to traditional stage decorations, is not to be overlooked.  The tree really is just a seasonal decorative item, just as Christmas in America is now just a time of year, with almost no connection to either Christ or the Roman Mass.

As Penne Restad documents it in Christmas in America, the small tree put up in German households on Christmas Eve (feast day of Adam and Eve) became the dominant feature of room-filling tableaus in 19th century America, tableaus complete with landscapes made of dirt hauled in for the purpose (think of Richard Dreyfus in "Close Encounters" hauling in dirt to build the Devil's Tower in his living room.  Now cover it with snow....).  It was never more than an excuse for decoration,  in other words.

There's also the fact that, at best, you are only likely to see "Chrismon" trees in Christian churches, and then only in the worship space of some Protestant churches.  You may find a decorated tree in a Christian place of worship, but odds are the decorations are specifically religious symbols, and even then the tree may (or may not) be up near the altar or pulpit.  It's a secular decorative item, not a religious "Xmas" item at all.

So the tree we get so manic about now is as American as Santa Claus and 24 shopping days 'til Christmas.

And while we're on the subject, no, Christmas is not Saturnalia sanctified.  It probably is taken from the Natali Invictii of Rome (at least when it started in Rome).  But it also started elsewhere on January 6, and where it was set on December 25th the reasoning had to do with the Day of Atonement and Zechariah's Temple duty.  You could look it up.  The idea that it was the Saturnalia is most likely from Increase Mather (or some other Puritan), who was no fan of Christmas to begin with, for reasons a lot of atheists and others sick of the holiday taking over the last 3 months of the American calendar might well sympathize with:

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ." (quoted in Penne Restad, Christmas in America, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1995,  p. 14)

You want a war on Christmas?  Take it up with the Puritans.  Although that last sentence could have been uttered today, rather than 300+ years ago; if you still want to protect Christmas from commerce.  If you do, let me recommend Bill McKibben as your guide.

As for the word itself, that didn't come into use until 1038; at least, New Advent says that's the earliest recorded appearance of the word.  The feast first appeared in 354 in Rome; as early as 200 C.E. in Alexandria.  And as for "Xmas," well....we've done that.

"Running from the law King Herod has impos-ed"

"Why does this story never wear out?"

As part of the long process of formalizing a celebration of the birth of Christ–which includes shifting the purported date of Jesus’ arrival in the world to midwinter to co-opt pagan observances and then suppressing said observances–Saint Nicholas gets mashed up with other figures. 

Is this a religious claim?  Or a claim for power?

The usual "historical" analysis of the timing of Christmas (wrong, for the most part) is that it stomped all over a pagan holiday.  Some say Saturnalia (completely wrong), some say, more soundly, that it took root in the Natali Invictii observed in Rome on what is now Dec. 25.  The importance and singularity of Rome there cannot be overstated, as the observance of a feast for the nativity began as early as 200 C.E. in Alexandria, although it was in the spring, not winter.  Several locations took up various times of year for observing the Nativity, and only over 2 centuries did it settle on first January 6, and then December 25.  The shift in dates in some regions had to do with a calculation based on the Day of Atonement and Zechariah's Temple duty.  You could look it up.  The idea that it was the Saturnalia is most likely from Increase Mather (or some other Puritan), who was no fan of Christmas to begin with, for reasons a lot of people sick of the holiday taking over the last 3 months of the American calendar might well sympathize with:

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ." (quoted in Penne Restad, Christmas in America, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1995,  p. 14)

But the date of December 25 probably corresponded with a holiday in Rome, and so as Rome Christianized such holidays were made over into Christian holidays.  Then as the church centralized in Rome, important feast days regularized to prevent confusion.  By the same token the Thunderbird stopped being something from Native American lore and became an automobile (and alcohol, ironically).  Yes, Native American culture was crushed in America, but not so we could name a car.

You want a war on Christmas?  Take it up with the Puritans.  Although that last sentence could have been uttered today, rather than 300+ years ago; if you still want to protect Christmas from commerce.  If you do, let me recommend Bill McKibben as your guide.

As for the word itself, that didn't come into use until 1038; at least, New Advent says that's the earliest recorded appearance of the word.  The feast first appeared in 354 in Rome; as early as 200 C.E. in Alexandria.

I mention this because the history we "remember" is not the history humankind necessarily lived through.  It is perfectly valid to say Europeans crushed the native cultures of America almost as soon as they could; and perfectly ridiculous to even infer we did so in order to name an automobile.  But the idea that Christians oppressed Rome into giving up a holiday for Jesus is equally as absurd.  That is the convention, though; that "pagans" were "suppressed" by Christians in ways apparently analogous to how Native American culture was suppressed by Europeans.  We see it through an ahistorical lens, in other words; and then decide "religion" is, and was, predominantly about power.

We are humans.  One way to look at us is to identify everything we do as being about power.  What makes that an interesting analysis at this time of year is that the Christmas story is all about powerlessness.

Joseph is a carpenter.  He is not a man of means, a union member, a journeyman who sits atop the rest of the construction workers because he has skills that make him valuable from ground breaking to completion.  He is an almost employed beggar.  There is no market economy in 1st century Palestine.  Joseph lives like everyone else does:  by connections to a patron.  But as a carpenter, he has few such connections.  He may be slightly better off than the fisherman who come into the story later, but they might exceed him because at least they have something to sell that everyone needs.  Only people with extra money need a carpenter, and then only briefly.  Joseph is a poor man.

Mary is a child.  She's lucky Joseph doesn't accuse her of adultery, when she turns up pregnant without him.  And Jesus is born in a feeding trough because that's where peasant babies are laid in 1st century Palestine.  And he's visited by shepherds, the bikers and outlaws of the day; men who stink of sheep and sweat and are more like the "mountain men" of American history than not.  And his life is threatened within two years of his birth; his family has to flee to Egypt while Herod exerts his power as king, his absolute power over life, by slaughtering every male child two years old and under in Bethlehem.

This is a story of power, but the power doesn't reside with the mensch, the virgin, or the god.

These concerns over power are themselves "religious," if by "religious" you mean endemic to any community of believers.  Pope Francis, for example, is moving to reform the Vatican, shifting the emphasis from rules to mission.

"The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle."

He is not interested in church reform that amounts to a mere rearranging of the ecclesiastical furniture. Authentic ecclesial reform will be in service of the church's mission. In an address to the coordinating committee of the Episcopal Conference of Latin America, or CELAM, during his visit to Brazil in July, he said:

The "change of structures" [from obsolete ones to new ones] will not be the result of reviewing an organizational flow chart, which would lead to a static reorganization; rather it will result from the very dynamics of mission. What makes obsolete structures pass away, what leads to a change of heart in Christians, is precisely missionary spirit.

 That, of course, prompts a response:

"The service of the Roman Curia is part of the very nature of the church, and so that has to be respected," Cardinal Raymond  Burke told EWTN, a U.S.-based Catholic cable network that spotlights conservative views.

"I can't imagine that somehow the Roman Curia is going to take on a completely different figure. It just doesn't make sense," Burke said. The interview was broadcast Thursday as the centerpiece of a program that highlighted concerns about the direction of the church since Francis was elected in March.
...
 But Burke told EWTN that it was "not altogether clear what the results of the reform will be" and lamented what he described as "a kind of unpredictability about life in Rome in these days."

 Indeed, you can draw a very bright line between Cardinal Burke and Pope Francis from their own words:

"One gets the impression, or it's interpreted this way in the media, that he thinks we're talking too much about abortion, too much about the integrity of marriage as between one man and one woman," Burke said. "But we can never talk enough about that!"
 ....
 "When the dialogue among the people and the bishops and the pope goes down this road and is genuine," the pope contends, "then it is assisted by the Holy Spirit."

The Holy Spirit, need I say, is never about power; not even the power of persuasion.  Access to the Holy Spirit comes only through vulnerability; through what St. Therese of Lisieux called "The Little Way."  One might say the Pope wants his church to be more "catholic" by being more small, more concerned with little things.

Whether that is seen as co-opting what was in place when he rose to the Papacy, or not, depends on your perspective.