Do You Really Know The Christmas History ?

Author: admin  /  Category: Education

Christmas ornaments

The Christmas tradition is heavily steeped in world heritage, from ancient Rome to Scandinavia. Today, our Christmas season seems so rooted and permanent, but there have been a number of rewritten rules and altered antiquities. Over the years, Christmas in America has been shaped largely by reformists, writers, advertisers, cookbook publishers and the flood of immigrants from the Old World.

Some religious scholars point out that the Christmas celebration is oddly placed, speculating that a more accurate birth might have been in September or sometime in the fall, when it was easier to travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. In fact, December 25th, Christmas Day, had been celebrated as “Winter Solstice” for three centuries before Christ’s birth. This time marked a day where the worst of winter was behind them and they could look forward to more sunlight and better days.

In Scandinavia, fathers and sons would bring home large logs that they would burn for 24 hours to bring good luck for the coming year. In Germany, people stayed inside to avoid the pagan god Oden’s nocturnal flights across the sky, where he would look down and judge those who would perish and who would survive. In Rome, the licentious feast of Saturnalia would boast plentiful food and drink, honor children and allow slaves or peasants to become masters for a month. It’s commonly believed that the church chose this date purposely to replace the pagan celebrations of the season and encourage people to embrace Christianity instead.

Of course, once the Christmas date was chosen, the struggle for mandating new observances had only just begun. It is said this transition first spread to Egypt around 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the eighth century, Scandinavia and the rest of Europe had caught wind of the Feast of the Nativity. At first, the celebration became a strange melding of religious and pagan traditions, as newly converted Christians attended church ceremonies on Christmas Eve and participated in raucous, booze-filled Mardi Gras parties on Christmas Day. For the Christmas season, class rule was turned upside-down and the poor would demand the best food and drink at the homes of the rich, threatening them with terrible mischief if they refused. Most times, the rich would oblige, paying back their “debt to society” with their kindness to the poor. However, the Church had suffered enough pagan drinking and philandering by 1645 and the Puritan reform movement canceled Christmas in their attempts to eradicate the decadence and mischief of this most holy day. The English separatists that first came to America did not want to bring over the bad habits of their brethren, so Christmas in Boston was outlawed. Jamestown, however, still celebrated some customs without incident. It wasn’t until 1870 that the first official Christmas was celebrated as a federal holiday in America.

Perhaps the complexity of the Christmas tradition is best seen in Charles Dickens’ novel “A Christmas Carol,” written in 1843. This heart-warming tale sought to imply that the Christmas season was all about charitable giving and good will toward men. The story called attention to the plight of paupers during the riotous Industrial Revolution period and begged of the richer classes to take mercy on the poor during this time. The best Christmas gift isn’t always a commodity, but rather may take shape as an epiphany, Dickens suggested. Compassion and family feasts take a prominent role in this novel as well, emphasizing that these are the things that matter most. “A Christmas Carol” was largely embraced and undertones of charitable giving, commercialism and family gathering are all part of the American celebration of Christmas today.

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