Where does the tradition of Christmas gifts comes from?
score:9
Most recently? From the 1840s, at least in England.
Christmas has many fathers, as traditions like gift-giving and feasting have periodically risen and then been suppressed over the centuries, and then revived with newly Christian significance retroactively applied to what might have originated in a secular or pagan custom.
The most recent father of our modern idea of the Christmas season in the "Anglo-Saxon" world, is the Victorian era, with certain customs developing independently in England and in the United States. Christmas trees, Christmas cards, turkey dinners, and caroling were all popularized in the mid-19th century. This is thoroughly covered in J.A.R. Pimlott's The Englishman's Christmas: a social history (harvester, 1978).
Gift-giving was, as in many cultures, originally a New Year's Day custom; the Scots have Handsel Monday and the French the étrenne. The latter term derives from the Latin strena, a term for both the gift and the gift-giving of the Roman festival of Saturnalia, and attests to its ancient origins. In addition to gifts to each other, medieval Europeans were to offer gifts to the sovereign; the 13th century chronicler Matthew Paris writes of Henry III extorting gifts from his court.
The heathen custom was rationalized into Christianity by associating it with the gifts of the Magi described in Matthew 2 (observed on Epiphany, January 6 in the Western Chruch) and with the story of Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, who was said to have given away his entire inheritance to the needy (observed on December 6). Saint Nicholas, of course, is the origin of the name "Santa Claus," and some of the associations of Santa Claus. Still, it was frequently suppressed, notably by the Puritans, and Christmas was not a particularly special holiday for centuries.
The gift-giving custom was revived in the Victorian age. It was an era where there was strong interest in reviving old customs (real and imagined), but as the popularity of Christmas grew, it displaced New Year's; Prince Albert called Christmas "a day for the exchange of presents, as marks of mutual affection and good-will." This image of Christmas was popularized by Charles Dickens in a series of Christmas season stories published from 1843 to 1848, the most famous of course being A Christmas Carol.
Upvote:2
I'm not saying this is The Truth®, but here's the argument typically given for the Ancient Romans you mentioned.
Nobody is really sure exactly when Jesus was born (even the year, much less the exact day). The biblical authors do not seem to have felt it was particularly important information. The earliest two Gospels don't even mention Jesus' birth at all. The first time somebody deigned to come up with a date for it was two centuries later, and that date was May 20. March 21, and several different days in April have also been used. The earliest reference we have that uses December 25th is from 200 years later (400 AD). So it seems highly unlikely this date was decided upon due to certian knowledge that it is correct.
So why this particular date? Well it just happens that the Romans had a big solistice festival called Saturnalia. Of course the solistice happens a few days earlier, but Roman practice at the time was to have a week-long celebration, culminating in the Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun, on December 25. Saturnalia was a very popular festival amongst the Romans, and involved gift-giving.
So the logic for the Roman origins is that the Christians settling on the same day for the Son of God's birthday as the Roman's Birthday of the Unconquerable Son is not a really weird conincidence, but rather a purposeful attemmpt to co-opt for Christianity what was otherwise an inconveniently popular Pagan holidy. So the gift-giving came over from Saturnalia.
More post
- 📝 Was lighter or darker skin pigment valued higher in ancient Greek civilization?
- 📝 Right before D-Day, how were naval mines cleared secretly?
- 📝 Which George V stamp would be used for a letter sent from London to Sweden in 1919/1920?
- 📝 When did flogging and other corporal punishments get abolished in Europe?
- 📝 Mass distribution of the Macedonian Sarissa pike
- 📝 How did commoners in late medieval to early modern Europe learn to read?
- 📝 Did any deputies in the USSR ever get recalled via provisions in the 1977 constitution?
- 📝 Who started/popularized the department store perfume gauntlet?
- 📝 How were expelled ministers "witnessed" during the Great Ejection of 1662?
- 📝 Katabami mon (Japanese crests of wood sorrel) Crest family identity
- 📝 Why did the Germans wait until it was too late to reinstate their unrestricted submarine warfare in WWI?
- 📝 How long did it take to build earth dikes with low-tech tools?
- 📝 When and why was Seleucia ultimately abandoned?
- 📝 Third Reich? What were the other two?
- 📝 Where was Olitei?
- 📝 Sculpture identification
- 📝 Have the Pyramid Texts been translated into German?
- 📝 Why did Puerto Rican families send their children to New York?
- 📝 What role did Jews play in the Punic Wars?
- 📝 Were there established "denominations" for coins of different metals in ancient times?
- 📝 What statuses did Black Africans have in the court and royal family of Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and do their descendants survive?
- 📝 M4A1 sherman vs StuG III ausf. G — what were the odds in favor of the Sherman?
- 📝 What is the original German version of Bismarck's phrase about intentions and capabilities?
- 📝 Have fair-skinned peoples ever been the lower/oppressed class?
- 📝 What Insubordination Did Colonel Sanders Do With Prudential Life Insurance?
- 📝 More Scientific Discoveries Outside Academia Past 50 Years?
- 📝 When has serious unemployment among educated young populations not led to revolution or war?
- 📝 For whom would this priest write a long geographical report on his parish?
- 📝 What are some good references for the history of legal business entities?
- 📝 What would be the problem if Turkey admits Armenian Massacre?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Where does the tradition of Christmas gifts comes from?
- 📝 From where does the superstition about Friday the thirteenth originate?
- 📝 Why does German money from the 1940s not bear Nazi symbols?
- 📝 Why does this London Underground poster from 1924 have a Star of David atop a Christmas tree?
- 📝 Where did the “vikings wear helmets with horn” stereotype come from and why?
- 📝 Where does the name 'D-Day' come from?
- 📝 Where does the name of the country "Belarus" come from?
- 📝 Where does Lincoln say the South wants us to believe as they believe?
- 📝 Where does Herodotus discuss judging the wisdom of decisions by the evidence at hand vs. the consequences?
- 📝 Where did the money come from to build the Colosseum?
- 📝 Why does the Gregorian calendar start where it does?
- 📝 Where does the concept of traffic keeping to the "right" side of the street originate?
- 📝 Where does Akbar the Great's "Great" come from?
- 📝 In the coat of arms of Georg von Frundsberg, where does the ostrich come from?
- 📝 Why does the Star of David feature on these African coins from 20th century?
- 📝 Where can I find documents from the Nuremberg trials about war crimes of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 Where in the sources does it say that Syagrius claimed to be "merely governing a Roman province"?
- 📝 Where is the other surviving chest from the Boston Tea Party?
- 📝 Where does the phrase "behind the wind" come from?
- 📝 What does this quote from the Roman imperial poet Rutilius mean?
- 📝 What does this sentence from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms mean?
- 📝 Where/when does the wok start to differentiate itself from pot-style cooking vessels?
- 📝 Why does the UK buy some of its major military hardware from the USA while France is self-reliant?
- 📝 Where can I find a world map from the Victorian period?
- 📝 In the past were there gifts on the days leading up to Christmas instead of them all being on the one day?
- 📝 Where did the masquerade ball come from and what was its original concept?
- 📝 Where does George Buchanan say in “The History of Scotland” that Macbeth used (specifically) Belladonna to poison the Danes?
- 📝 Where can I find the official response to Austria from Serbia in the July Crisis?
- 📝 How frequently did the KMT use telegrams to communicate; from where (roughly) and to whom?
- 📝 In a feudal system the king would give land to the knights in exchange for military services. Where did he get his money from then?