The Christians Who Stole the Holiday Season Its that time of year when us non-Christians who celebrate the Holiday Season will hear from many Christians that we are not celebrating this holiday correctly. Unknown to most Christians is the fact that this celebration began as a non-Christian celebration from a time long before there ever was such a person as a Christian. Shortly before this holiday was celebrated as Christmas, the Catholic Church had many times attempted to ban this celebration entirely. You know what they say, if you cant beat them, join them. And this is exactly what the Catholic Church decided was the best option to win over my particular group of so called Pagans. There were many of us so called Pagans, not just this one particular group of Pagans. But like what often happens in the world of stereotyping, a lot of different peoples were all lumped into one big group known as Pagans (the Greek word for country dweller). There is not a lot of recorded history describing the details of this original Pagan holiday. What little is recorded is from the perspective of the Catholic Church which so disdained it. Whether it was a specific day, had any special celebration around it or was gift giving a part of it, may never be known. Basically, the Catholic Church stole the time of year and the evergreen tree from our particular group of Pagans and added in various elements of Christianity. Christmas was born. And you thought the first time marketing was a part of Christmas was in the 20th century. No, the Catholic Church created Christmas as a way to market Christianity to us Pagans. As to whether the marketing alone was enough to convert many of us or it just made it easier to forcibly convert so many of us is a difficult question to answer. Either way, most of us were assimilated. Ask most Christians and for that matter most historians, they will mostly refer to our group of Pagans as a group living in Western Europe who worshipped things like trees and stuff. This in my opinion is somewhat presumptive. It is however understandable given that a group centered around the concept of worship would automatically assume if you are not worshipping their God, then you must be worshipping someone or something else. There is this misguided belief supported by the word primitive that leads a lot of people to thinking that ancient peoples were a less intelligent people believing in all kinds of mystical stuff. The thing is there is absolutely no basis for this assumption. If brain size has anything to do with intelligence (not that it does), it peaked 10,000 years ago and has been on a steady decline since. The whole believing in all kinds of mystical stuff is something we just have no way of knowing (at least at this time). So is there anything more we can know about this original holiday? Maybe there is more recorded history on this and I have either forgotten or not come across it. I have read a number of additional aspects of this holiday, but I was unable to find the original source of these aspects. There was some mention that the evergreen tree represented women. Whether this is true is not certain to me, but if so, it would have been a real sore point with the Catholic Church at the time Christmas was born. The Catholic Church was very much against anything that would give women any significant position in society. At this point, I am going to give my opinion of what all this tree stuff was all about. I really dont think my ancient ancestors even understood the concept of worship. They did not worship things, animals, plants, people or gods. But they did appreciate the Universe, the Earth, animals, plants and people. And yes, knowledge (not intelligence) was limited at this time, so there were probably all kinds of crazy theories as to how all of this worked and came into being. It was a time when survival was important and everything related to survival was appreciated. I also have reason to believe my ancient ancestors were far more gender neutral, but my reasons to believe this are too much to get into. In addition, I suspect there was a slightly greater appreciation of females over males in many ways. The ability to give birth to the next generation would also have likely been appreciated. For this reason, I would not doubt these ancestors may have made some kind of connection of women with an evergreen tree. Women give new life and evergreen trees represent year round life. Then again, maybe they just wanted to have a little green in the home in the winter season. Of course, we must keep in mind that any group of people both then and now would have some variation in how they view the customs of their society. I justed wanted to share the little I know about the origins of this holiday season and a few of my additional thoughts. Would love to hear from anyone with any additional thoughts or knowledge on the history of this holiday season. This is in no way intended to suggest that us so called Pagans have anymore ownership on this holiday season than Christians. I personally celebrate this holiday season in a non-Christian way, sometimes refer to it as chrismas (without the t) and at others times as the Holiday Season. I am not crazy about the over commercialization, but I am ok with the Santa Claus and gift giving to children aspects. This sums up my thoughts related directly to this Holiday Season. The following is some additional thoughts (not related directly to the Holiday Season) to help better understand who I believe my people are. I believe we were a people with an instinct of non-interference. This is a character identified in various groups of people around the world, including some of the aboriginal peoples in Canada. People with this character are known to show little desire to interfere with the ways or life course of others. When others attempt to interfere with our ways, we typically go along until such time as we can remove ourselves from the presence of these people. This may seem strange, but you have to understand it from our perspective. As we do not interfere with others, then we would never attempt to influence the lives of our own or ask one of our own people to do something they would not want. For this reason, there would typically be no need to say no and we are just not adapted to the concept that someone would wish to interfere with the course of our lives. Where do I get these thoughts from? Some of this comes from my interest and re-interpretation of history, anthropology and psychology. A lot of how I think my ancestors might have been comes from how I have always seen myself. It is somewhat like how gay people know they are gay even when young. I just have always known who I was, even when society tried to tell me I was someone different. Luckily I had a good head start having grown up in a family that did not push any way of thinking on me.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 11:16:39 +0000
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