What's the story behind Christmas?
score:6
While Christmas has roots far in the past, many of our traditions in the English world were introduced by the Victorians. This was the period that moulded Christmas into important celebration is it today, deciding on the themes we recognise (charity, goodwill, gift giving etc), the traditions (many drawn from Germanic ones) and even the commercialism (cards, Christmas crackers etc) This BBC link should be useful.
As for the pre-Christian background: check out the wikipedia page for Christmas. "Modern Christmas customs include: gift-giving and merrymaking from Roman Saturnalia; greenery, lights, and charity from the Roman New Year; and Yule logs and various foods from Germanic feasts". Actually, read all of that section.
This Britannica article goes into some other detail. It also mentions Mithras.
(There is lots of info online, but I hesitate to link to non-wikipedia or encyclopaedia articles on such a touchy issue). This is decent where it provides references but has a massive agenda.
Bonus: If you think Christmas is mostly about the food (who can blame you) you'll find this answers everything.
Upvote:3
Christmas was originally a pagan tradition in northern Europe where they were celebrating that the sun had started to rise again. Winters were difficult to survive in those days with no lights, bad clothing, worse housing and heating and sometimes not even enough food etc. So winter and its end was a much bigger deal back then than it is today.
Then when Christianity came to northern Europe it was adapted to the already existing traditions to ease the conversion, which included Christmas, or Jul as it was called.
More post
- 📝 Why were there so few American deaths in the Bataan Death March?
- 📝 Need help identifying 2 old coins? Struck coins, one with two standing human figures facing each other
- 📝 What do written sources say about disability in early civilisations?
- 📝 Did Roman Britannia leave any impacts on English?
- 📝 How would a musician travel from Venice to Dresden around 1700?
- 📝 Are there records of federal courts under the Articles of Confederation?
- 📝 Has the U.S. Navy ever commissioned the building of a warship overseas?
- 📝 Can you help identify this European military uniform and medals?
- 📝 Queen Anne of England died without surviving issue despite 17 pregnancies. Did any other monarch try so hard to produce an heir without success?
- 📝 Why did Uesugi Kenshin never marry? Was it common practice for Japanese Buddhists of the time?
- 📝 Did the Sword of the Republic really fall from the Arc de Triomphe on the first day of the Battle of Verdun?
- 📝 Is there a known society without cult of love?
- 📝 What was the National Revolutionary Army's "Training Brigade"?
- 📝 How would emigrants travel the railway lines going from Grajewo to Bremerhaven in 1911 and from Grajewo to Rotterdam in 1917?
- 📝 What does this Swiss banner/blazon/coat of arms/flag stand for?
- 📝 Slave owners mobbed and murdered?
- 📝 Why didn't the Romans use the army to repel the siege of Rome in 410?
- 📝 What is an open city?
- 📝 What major historical event opened the door to the passage of a homesteading bill?
- 📝 How much of an impact did the Roman emperors' civil wars have on their decision to debase the coinage?
- 📝 Did the Axis try to "bribe" Turkey into joining them during World War II?
- 📝 The situation in nazi Germany of a Jewish male married to an "aryan" female vs Jewish female married to an "aryan" male?
- 📝 Were sailing ships of the line understaffed with gunnery crews so that there were not enough for 2 broadsides?
- 📝 Was the sprouting of seeds for food production known in Europe before 1800?
- 📝 How close did the US come to removing the Electoral College in 1970?
- 📝 Did Franco really ask "Why? Are they going somewhere?"
- 📝 Why was IJN apparently inactive mid-war?
- 📝 Why were schoolchildren in the USA taught virtually nothing about the Holocaust during the fifties and sixties?
- 📝 Did the US's push to dissolve the imperial preference become an underlying reason for the collapse of the British empire
- 📝 Do we have any records of what pirates during the golden age of piracy would actually sing?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What is the story behind the tall Northern offshoot on the West Virginia map?
- 📝 What's the story behind this photo of hikers who brought white plague cure to President Wilson?
- 📝 What's the story behind Christmas?
- 📝 What is the back story behind the Baja California towns of "Purgatorio" and "Providencia"?
- 📝 What is the story behind the Education of Alexander the Great by Aristotle - Jose Armet Portanell
- 📝 What's the story behind Allahabad's name?
- 📝 What's the story behind this photo from WWI?
- 📝 What is the significance behind "40 days" that often appears in the Bible?
- 📝 The WWI Christmas truce of 1914 resulted in no consequences, in spite of clear warnings against such beforehand - why were there no courts-martial?
- 📝 Did anyone face consequences (charges / court-martial) for the 1914 Christmas truce in WWI?
- 📝 In WWII, what was behind the very early decision to accept nothing but unconditional surrender in 1941-42?
- 📝 What is the truth behind this speech by (Lord Macaulay)?
- 📝 What's the backstory behind the US federal regulation that requires buses to stop at railway crossings?
- 📝 Why did the Germans fall behind the Americans in the development of the atomic bomb after an initial lead?
- 📝 What is the story of war that started with "if"?
- 📝 What is the real story of the Lion of Gripsholm Castle?
- 📝 What is the historical evidence behind the claim that the Soviet armies perpetrated mass rapes during their stay in Germany?
- 📝 Is there any science behind this graph that suggests we'd be exploring new galaxies if not for the dark ages?
- 📝 What was the logic behind Stalin's brutality?
- 📝 What's the reason behind the 17th century tradition of British monarchs being depicted on coins facing in the opposite direction to their predecessor?
- 📝 How did the US fall behind in airplane technology from 1909-1917?
- 📝 Is the story about Mussolini and Oliver Hardy apocryphal?
- 📝 How/when did the halo shift from being a solid disk behind the head to being a floating ring above the head?
- 📝 Motivation Behind the USSR Assisting China's Nuclear Program
- 📝 Why didn’t the Chinese leave troops behind in North Korea after the Korean War?
- 📝 What defenses did Lee leave behind when the Army of Northern Virginia left for Gettysburg?
- 📝 Is the story "Conquistadors using plans of Constantinople in the new world" factual?
- 📝 What is the history behind the stripes on the East India Company's flag?
- 📝 Where does the tradition of Christmas gifts comes from?
- 📝 What was the context behind Felix Frankfurter's quote?