I have no idea what that sentence means.
Even if early Christians were influenced in their Christmas celebrations by previous generations, that doesn't mean 1600 years later any of these practices remain in any meaningful sense (unless we just revert to saying everything is pagan like food and having fun)
You over-sell Christian periods of persecution. For most of the first 300 years, Rome was indifferent to the Christians Roman persecution of the Christians was sporadic, was often incidental and totaled up to about 50 years here and there. Which is tiny in comparison to the subsequent 1700 years of persecution that Christianity meted out on the rest of humanity.
You are projecting a lot into your readings that is not in the text.
"At times they have also been trying to very clearly differentiate their beliefs from “paganism” though, to the point they were persecuted for this."
Any "overselling" is in your mind, not the text.
On the other hand "1700 years of persecution that Christianity meted out on the rest of humanity"... Hmmm.
Anyway, even if Christians had killed every single non-Christian after 500AD it would make not a single bit of difference to the point that Early Christians often went out of their way to differentiate themselves from Pagans, and at times, were persecuted for this. It has nothing to do with a competition for who did more persecuting.
Hmm. So according to you, pagan relates (in some undescribed manner) to undefined religious philosophies and undefined practices of "many" pre-Christian societies.
Is that seriously your criteria for what is and is not pagan?
One can use the term monotheism in general, while also looking at the specifics of Islam, Judaism, et al.
One can use the term Paganism, and also look at the specific religious traditions of Europe and the Middle East.
That statement reflects a lack of accountability. When words come from your mouth or fingers, you are the one delivering the message. You chose to process the concepts, interpret them, evaluate them, and ultimately present them as true. That is the act of telling. You cannot deflect responsibility by claiming someone else said or wrote it first. So yes, you did tell me this.
I've already explained why I consider it relevant to threads on this topic:
What you seem to have misunderstood is that I said that many of the common “Christmas is pagan” tropes began as anti Catholic polemics in the post reformation era. The desire to paint Christmas as pagan was a sectarian dispute.
They were far from “sociologically neutral” but instead came out of the climate of hatred for “the vilest popery”. They were not making nuanced arguments about cultural continuity, but that Catholics are secret pagans in the pay of Satan.
These are still the common tropes although were appropriated and added to by ideologically motivated 19th c historians and “Enlightenment rationalists”.
Among many (not all) today, the “Christmas is pagan” tropes are very much repeated in this same cause, which is a mean spirited attack on “stupid Christians who don’t know the real history” which I find ironic because much of the nonsense spouted in these threads was made up by Protestant fundamentalists.
That doesn’t mean there are not legitimate scholarly questions about the influences on Christmas, but the idea that basically everything is entirely derivative of ancient paganism is not really supported by the evidence, not least because most traditions are modern.
That is what you are telling me. Are you going to demonstrate that what you are telling me is true?
Demonstrate that when asked for the scientific consensus on a subject for which there is a popular misconception, that ChatGPT will present the popular misconnection, and not the scientific consensus.
This isn't a scientific question, it is a historical one. How do you think an LLM works though if you don't think they will often repeat common misconceptions? Just ask chatGPT "why does gen ai repeat common misconceptions"
It's largely just a red herring though as the list is so generic to be worthless: singing, having fun, using candles, decorating with seasonal flora, giving gifts are not things that need to be "appropriated" or things archaeology needs to (or can) tell us about as to their origin.
This is "Christmas, E-sports, Pop Tarts and Michael Jackson are pagan as everything is pagan" level arguments that are too reductive and trite to have any value.
The only semi-meaningful one is the Yule log, and what sources exist that show this to be 500BC?
Yule is not mentioned in any sources until the 8th C (and no Tacitus didn't mention it in any meaningful sense), let alone Yule logs which are first mentioned in a Christian context as Christmas logs
People make all sorts of claims about XYZ being pagan, yet when you ask them to support this with actual historical evidence, they never seem able to do so.
Other than "everything is technically pagan" level truisms about having fun and singing songs, what is the evidence for any current Christmas tradition existing in the pre-Christian era, in the medieval era and in the modern era?
If folk can't point to anything that actually meets these criteria, it is more likely that current Christmas traditions are fairly modern trends that are largely disconnected from ancient pagan traditions.
For me at least, history is far more interesting when you look at things in their own contexts, with their own nuances, causes and reasons rather than trying to zoom out to the lowest possible resolution just so we can say everything is in some way derivative of everything that happened before.
