Should Christian’s Celebrate Pagan Festivals

[The Hammer]

My complaint with 'Christians stole Christmas from the pagans' has less to do with keeping Christianity special, especially since I'm not a Christian. And every culture has cultural drift and Christians are no different.
It comes more from criticism of people like Joseph Campbell and monomything. Which tends to flatten actual cultural drift and abhors that similar ideas can rise independently due to common experiences. Especially when it just exists for some conspiratorial jab (ala Zeitgeist) or some gotcha to Christians. When people talk about Christmas trees, Saturnalia, or equinox rituals in general, it's often not coming from a place of authentic scholarship but just really superficial pop-takes.

To me it's the equivalent of saying the global flood was real because there's flood mythologies in every civilization. It's reductive, it doesn't look at how civilizations arise in flood plains, so of course they'll have some common myths about flooding. Same is true of how things became rituals revolving around specific seasons. Spring is going to be about new beginnings, fall is going to be about harvest, winter is going to be about thankfulness, meditation, using up final perishable stores, longing for light in the darkness, etc etc etc. The only places that you don't really see a lot of similar seasonal festivals are places on the planet that don't have highly visible seasons.

Well things are culturally drifting away from Christianity and back to where it should be then, in Natural cycles.

I don't have the mental capacity to actually go over the scholarship you say is only a jab at Christianity (it's not).

 

[The Hammer]

"The Wheel of the Year is a symbol of the eight Sabbats (religious festivals) of Neo-Paganism and the Wicca movement which includes four solar festivals - Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox - and four seasonal festivals - celebrating or marking a significant seasonal change.

Contrary to modern-day Wiccan claims, there is no evidence of an ancient Wheel of the Year in its present form but it is clear that the Celts of thousands of years ago celebrated the festivals the wheel highlights, even if these celebrations were known by another name now long lost."

Wheel of the Year

The Wheel of the Year is a symbol of the eight Sabbats (religious festivals) of Neo-Paganism and the Wicca movement which includes four solar festivals - Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice...

www.worldhistory.org

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Well things are culturally drifting away from Christianity and back to where it should be then, in Natural cycles.

I don't have the mental capacity to actually go over the scholarship you say is only a jab at Christianity (it's not).

No, the authentic scholarship isn't just a jab at Christianity. But ones that lead with 'Christians stole this pagan thing,' are. Like aforementioned Oestra/Easter or Christmas trees or other pop-history articles. And it makes my head hurt in the same way as when people think all ideas originated in one great story in one original location (ala Joseph Campbell.)

 

[The Hammer]

No, the authentic scholarship isn't just a jab at Christianity. But ones that lead with 'Christians stole this pagan thing,' are. Like aforementioned Oestra/Easter or Christmas trees or other pop-history articles. And it makes my head hurt in the same way as when people think all ideas originated in one great story in one original location (ala Joseph Campbell.)

Yeah I guess you're right. Hard to say someone stole something when the burned all the evidence to the contrary.

History IS written by the cultural winners in society.

 

[The Hammer]

And it makes my head hurt in the same way as when people think all ideas originated in one great story in one original location (ala Joseph Campbell.)

Most anthropologists don't take him seriously either fyi. He's an armchair ethnologist (aka never left his desk).

 

[Callisto]

"The Wheel of the Year is a symbol of the eight Sabbats (religious festivals) of Neo-Paganism and the Wicca movement which includes four solar festivals - Winter Solstice, Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox - and four seasonal festivals - celebrating or marking a significant seasonal change.

Contrary to modern-day Wiccan claims, there is no evidence of an ancient Wheel of the Year in its present form but it is clear that the Celts of thousands of years ago celebrated the festivals the wheel highlights, even if these celebrations were known by another name now long lost."

Actual Wicca doesn't make that claim, the fallacy persists thanks to the persistence of shoddy "Wicca" books and internet plagiarism tainting the self-taught who rely on social media channels for information instead of actual research. It's no secret the Wheel is a modern calendar created in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner (the founder of Wicca) and Ross Nichols (founder of the Druidic Order OBOD). The two were friends, their groups often interacted, and Nichols was the editor of Gardner's book "Witchcraft Today".

 

[Augustus]

Yeah I guess you're right. Hard to say someone stole something when the burned all the evidence to the contrary.

History IS written by the cultural winners in society.

What evidence do you think "they" burned though? What would it be? Why should we assume there was any regarding this issue when they couldn't even begin to eradicate (what they saw as) far more important heretical ideas? Without modern transport or communication technologies, "they" had far less control over vast and diverse territories than people assume. Even the Roman Emperor had far less control that we think, and regional governors frequently ignored imperial edicts they didn't want to comply with.

Far from hiding the dating, "they" recorded that Saturnalia and Christmas were celebrated on different days in the same societies for over a century. The fact that they were being celebrated along side each other on different days does kind of ruin the theory, but why split hairs?

The dating to 25 Dec also seems to significantly pre-date any desire to celebrate this as a feast day, as, unsurprisingly, Early Christians were interested in dating significant events in Jesus' life for reasons other than getting drunk and having a party. Their calculations behind these are somewhat convoluted, but this is far from "stealing it from the pagans".

 

[The Hammer]

What evidence do you think "they" burned though? What would it be? Why should we assume there was any regarding this issue when they couldn't even begin to eradicate (what they saw as) far more important heretical ideas? Without modern transport or communication technologies, "they" had far less control over vast and diverse territories than people assume. Even the Roman Emperor had far less control that we think, and regional governors frequently ignored imperial edicts they didn't want to comply with.

Far from hiding the dating, "they" recorded that Saturnalia and Christmas were celebrated on different days in the same societies for over a century. The fact that they were being celebrated along side each other on different days does kind of ruin the theory, but why split hairs?

The dating to 25 Dec also seems to significantly pre-date any desire to celebrate this as a feast day, as, unsurprisingly, Early Christians were interested in dating significant events in Jesus' life for reasons other than getting drunk and having a party. Their calculations behind these are somewhat convoluted, but this is far from "stealing it from the pagans".

K... I have no desire to defend myself.

**** it, I'm wrong.

Christianity took nothing from the indigenous people's it encountered. Everything in Christianity is wholly from original cloth.

 

[Augustus]

K... I have no desire to defend myself.

**** it, I'm wrong.

Christianity took nothing from the indigenous people's it encountered. Everything in Christianity is wholly from original cloth.

Christianity obviously did utilise non-Christian ideas and concepts as nothing emerges from a vacuum. That doesn't mean it is entirely "stolen" or derivative either.

I don't see why we should claim whatever we like as being "pagan" regardless of any evidence for or against though just because we would like it to be true.

It's just the other side of the coin to claiming "Christianity is wholly from original cloth".