Is Christmas Pagan?

[Bear Wild]

And fying reideers, Rudolf and the elves?

Very Nordic isn't it.

 

[Bear Wild]

One could argue that Christianity was the change. Even then, it hardly justifies these petty, shallow, and unfortunately annual attempts to deprecate Christmas and Christianity.

It beats the petty and shallow attitudes from Christians that adopted the pagan symbiology and rituals and renamed them as Christian. Saint Brigit. Oh wait there was the goddess Brigit that had the same symbiology but was pagan. That's right changing her to a Christian saint and claiming it for themselves is definitely not shallow, petty and unfortunate.

 

[joelr]

I find we can even go back further than the Persians, going all the way back to the non-biblical concepts tracing back to the base of ancient Babylon.
As the people migrated away from ancient Babylon they took with them their religious-myth concepts and practices and spread them world wide into a greater religious Babylon or Babylon the Great.

The creation stories closely follow Mesopotamian myths but the nations that were being called "pagan" were rivals to Christianity. But Christianity actually had many pagan elements. The pagan religions had messianic savior gods who resurrected and underwent some struggle or passion and were personal saviors to members of the cult and so on. Many pagan cults told outsiders about the story and placed it on Earth but when members were initiated they were told the real story that the events happened in the celestial realm.
Many events that happened in the celestial realms were later euhemerized and put back on Earth. It's possible that this also happened with Christianity. Paul didn't seem to know any Earthly Jesus, just a vision and stories about a resurrection.
40 years later when the first gospel was written there was suddenly a complete wildly fictitious story about events on Earth.
These are all pagan elements.

First century apologist Justin Maryter already says that Jesus is not any different than all the other sons and daughters of Gods but is the "real" version. Basically confirming that back then it was obvious all of the religions in the Mediterranean were pagan.

 

[joelr]

Please tell, how is the celebration of the Eucharist borrowed?

All religions are syncretic, they take practices from older cults and change them slightly to fit their theology and stories.
The eucharist would not be an exception.

"
Mystery cults
Parallel to the religious duties to god and state, "the Hellenic world also fostered a number of 'underground' religions, which countless thousands of people found intellectually and emotionally satisfying."[90] They were known as the "mysteries," because their adherents took oaths never to reveal their rites to the uninitiated. Several honored young male gods born of a divine father and human mother, resurrected after a heroic death. In some of these secret religions "celebrants shared a communal meal in which they symbolically ate the flesh and drank the blood of their god."[90]

Dionysus cult
Early Christianity spread through a Hellenized populace. Jewish feast practices had taken on Hellenic forms as noted above. Dionysus was "god of 'the vine' - representing wine, the most universally popular beverage in the ancient world." [91] Barry Powell suggests that Christian notions of eating and drinking the "flesh" and "blood" of Jesus were influenced by the cult of Dionysus.[92] In contrast, the ancient Greek tragedy, The Bacchae, a ritual involving the wine of Dionysus is not drunk, but poured out as a libation. In the Greek novel, Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius, Dionysus is said to have given a sheperd of Tyre his first wine. When Dionysus shows the grape cluster where he got the wine from, Tatius parodies the Christian eucharist rite.[93]

Totem-sacrifices
In the chapter "Totem-Sacrifices and Eucharists" of his 1920 book Pagan and Christian Creeds, Edward Carpenter advanced the theory that the Christian Eucharist arose from an almost universal practice of a tribe occasionally eating the animal that it identified with, a practice that he saw as developing into ceremonial eatings of shared food by lamas in Nepal and Tibet, ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Peruvians, Chinese and Tartars. He concluded: "These few instances are sufficient to show the extraordinarily wide diffusion of Totem-sacraments and Eucharistic rites all over the world."[94]"

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Such as?

Singing Away in a Manger or Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Going to the Christmas Pageant at the local Baptist church or to a Christmas mass. Putting out a creche. That sort of thing.

 

[rational experiences]

Christ mass.

If a scientist says O God the Earth always owned its own created heavenly mass as a planet, yet back in the old days science did not use the same modern day gas spirit science quotes. Did the Christ reasoning exist in Nature?

Yes....and it was owned by the natural planet and not defined by some thinking human.

So if you said ICE got rid of the giant beast life that was once living where I once used to live, and it took over possession of life. Then you would as a bio psyche, aware, conscious and spiritual be telling a human truth.

To then quote, ICE, every end of year keeps animal and human baby life stable in the heavenly star theme, and be telling a human truth for human life continuance.

 

[ChristineM]

Singing Away in a Manger or Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Going to the Christmas Pageant at the local Baptist church or to a Christmas mass. Putting out a creche. That sort of thing.

All come after the pagan mid winter celebrations that christianity adopted. Addons to make mid winter celebrations a christian thing

 

[Augustus]

It beats the petty and shallow attitudes from Christians that adopted the pagan symbiology and rituals and renamed them as Christian. Saint Brigit. Oh wait there was the goddess Brigit that had the same symbiology but was pagan. That's right changing her to a Christian saint and claiming it for themselves is definitely not shallow, petty and unfortunate.

Why would it be 'petty and shallow' for "Irish" people to create yet another iteration of an Irish myth that had been through probably hundreds if not thousands of iterations before (and that the Irish probably "stole" from some other culture)?

Do you see "pagans" adapting the myths of different "pagans" as being 'petty and shallow'? "Pagans" were countless different cultures after all.

Myth is neither fixed nor owned 'intellectual property', it is a fluid medium that adapts and evolves to its environment, and is repurposed accordingly.

The idea that everyone can do this as a valid means of cultural expression except Christians seems to very much miss the point of how cultures evolve.

 

[IndigoChild5559]

All come after the pagan mid winter celebrations that christianity adopted. Addons to make mid winter celebrations a christian thing

They are the HEART of Christmas. No one really cares where holly and ivy came from. No one. It's forgotten and irrelevant. But everyone knows the holiday celebrates Jesus' birthday (which is why Jews don't celebrate it).

 

[ChristineM]

They are the HEART of Christmas. No one really cares where holly and ivy came from. No one. It's forgotten and irrelevant. But everyone knows the holiday celebrates Jesus' birthday (which is why Jews don't celebrate it).

You mean you don't care, you shouldn't speak for everyone else. If no one cares why are pagan Christmas traditions still practiced by christianity?

On what date was jesus born?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

It beats the petty and shallow attitudes from Christians that adopted the pagan symbiology and rituals and renamed them as Christian. Saint Brigit. Oh wait there was the goddess Brigit that had the same symbiology but was pagan.

OMG, are you seriously whining about St. Brigit and her adopted pagan symbiology [sic]? I can't wait to hear you rail against the dreidel.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

On what date was jesus born?

 

[Rival]

If you somehow managed to take a Pagan bloke from the 1st century C.E. from, say, Greece, and stuck him in a modern Latin Christ Mass he'd have no idea what was going on.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

I am saying that Christmas is a celebration for pagans, Christians and Secular people

I don't celebrate Christmas. In Heathenry, it's called Yule and lasts about 2 weeks. We have trees, wreaths and such but just apply the original pre-Christian meanings to them and focus a lot on fire and rebirth of light. It doesn't start on the 25th, either. Christians can have Christmas.

Yule - Wikipedia

 

[IndigoChild5559]

You mean you don't care, you shouldn't speak for everyone else. If no one cares why are pagan Christmas traditions still practiced by christianity?

On what date was jesus born?

They are still practiced because they were adopted as practices that generally expressed mirth and celebration, and that's what they continue to mean today.

No one knows the date on the Calendar when Jesus was born, and to be very honest, Jesus himself would not have used the Gregorian calendar, but would have used the Lunar Jewish Calendar, which does not line up the same dates each year.

The Christian Church chose December 25 because it was nine months after the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, when Jesus is supposed to have been conceived.

Basically, any date the Christian church wants to celebrate the Nativity is as good as any other.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

No one really cares where holly and ivy came from. No one. It's forgotten and irrelevant.

Actually, many people do. It's of great interest to those seeking to revive indigenous folkways and there is scholarly interest in it, of course: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594770921/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_3U31FbP691DE8

 

[ChristineM]

They are still practiced because they were adopted as practices that generally expressed mirth and celebration, and that's what they continue to mean today.

No one knows the date on the Calendar when Jesus was born, and to be very honest, Jesus himself would not have used the Gregorian calendar, but would have used the Lunar Jewish Calendar, which does not line up the same dates each year.

The Christian Church chose December 25 because it was nine months after the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, when Jesus is supposed to have been conceived.

Basically, any date the Christian church wants to celebrate the Nativity is as good as any other.

They are still practiced as a throwback to the original "join our christian club and you can still have your winter celebration"

Correct, no one knows so maybe the whole birth of Jesus thing is a farce. Different calenders would make little difference to the to the physical time, the earths seasons are not effected by whose calendar is used.

The current thinking is Jesus (if he actually lived at all) was probably born late spring, early summer, a winter birth is highly unlikely.

It is likely the mid winter date was chosen to appease those pagans who had converted.

 

[Augustus]

They are still practiced because they were adopted as practices that generally expressed mirth and celebration, and that's what they continue to mean today.

So they didn't just steal the idea of using commonly available local flora for decoration, they stole the very concept of mirth and celebration from the pagans too?

Bloody Christians!

 

[amorphous_constellation]

No one really cares where holly and ivy came from. No one.

I kinda think this assumption is extremely weird.. By the same token, I could also say that no one cares what the hebrew says beneath the KJV english, but I don't do that. But when it comes to paganism beneath christianity, you're willing to come out and skewer that idea before it gets out the gate. Quite frankly, I have nothing against the old testament being complete as it is, and I doubt a lot of pagans do either

 

[amorphous_constellation]

OMG, are you seriously whining about St. Brigit and her adopted pagan symbiology [sic]? I can't wait to hear you rail against the dreidel.

A pagan has absolutely no motivation to 'rail against the dreidel,' and I am absolutely perplexed as to why that would be your expectation.. You have succeeded in completely confusing me