Hello and welcome to the forth and final part of this series.
Today we’re going to look at modern influence and the Yul influence, as well.
A mainly Scandinavian feast, also makes the list as a possible Christmas merging celebration.
To be honest I haven’t looked that much into it, as of now. But here are a few thing:
Again, it has nothing to do with Christmas. It’s not even on the 25th (like all the other examples) It took place on the 21th of December and it’s a celebration of the solecist. If you know Scandinavia, you know they are not always tanning in the sun. As such, they would celebrate “the return of the sun”
Now, there is also a very popular believe, that I like to call the "Zeitgueist believe” that states the Jesus is actually a “metaphor” for the sun, like so many deities before him… Well, without exaggeration I can say that this is 100% wrong. It has no basis on reality nor on sources. Both the "sun metaphor" as a “copy of pagan idols” However, since there is this believe going around, it is sometimes used to legitimise the Yul (sun celebration) is the basis for Christmas.
Then there is the Odin connection to Santa Claus. Odin is a Norse god and he would travel on the 21th. But even like that: Santa is not Christmas.
This is a great example, of the absolute chaos that this "pagan Christmas" is. It’s the sun, is saturnalia, is Scandic… I mean… It can’t be all of those. If you pick every single tradition in the world and take 1% of what you want and ignore sources and just go with popular myths, such as the Constantine one… I’m sure you can make anything look, like anything.
And people actually say it was a mix of all of the above. Plus, who in the world would care what the nordics did? Once they where converted (and stoped human sacrifice for example) they joined the Church. This was centuries after, other areas where already converted. And also, hard to believe but the Mediterranean was vastly “more important and advanced” than the nordic area.
However, I’m sure, many people can claim the birthdate being wrong or “it’s a metaphor for the sun” or this and that. But can anyone explain the Church's explanation for Christmas?
Then there are the ones, who say what we do now, has nothing to do with the original celebration, is all about consumerism, Santa comes from coca cola…
This might be the more legit approach. The main aspect of Christmas was the mass. Christ Mass. We still do it. People who follow the tradition go to mass on the evening of the 24th for example. Santa I think coca cola did made a gigantic propaganda with it, but it’s also a stretch to say that he was invented by them. We have S. Nicholas as well.
S. Nicholas is said to had given gifts. And on Jesus birth he also received gifts. (We also give gifts on aniversaries)
And a big part of the population, now a days is not in tune with the church. As such, we can see it as materialistic thing and all of it.
In short: Christmas is definitely not a pagan celebration. Not one argument for it, stands up. It’s a Christian celebration. Has it changed? Maybe, the world has changed, but still we have reasons to believe all of the original pillars are still here. If you don’t care about religion, it’s still a time to get together with your family and enjoy some nice food in peace. And you can rest assured that you are not taking place in a weird type of cult when doing it, but rather you’re taking an atheist approach of a Christian celebration, “left” by the foundation of Westerner civilisation.
Thank you for reading and Merry Christmas.
(All Photos from Pexels.com)
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I’ll leave a couple of videos for those who want to look a bit further into it. (THIS IS NOT MY WORK)
One on the birthday controversy:
And one, explaining all the traditions and so… And yes, it’s a priest, since we seem to leave the explanation of the church out of the “it’s a pagan myth”
