Question by Brainwashed_Poet: Why did Christians begin to celebrate Christmas if…?
…if it was originally a Pagan holiday? I know that Christmas (Christ–Mass) was named to convert many Pagans to Christianity, but it kept their pagan rituals. December 25 for the Pagans was to celebrate the winter solstice and the birth or the Pagan’s sun god, as i have come to find out. The trees were chopped down and placed into houses. It and the holly plants were only plants used to show fertility… It is known that the December is too cold for the shepards, who were tending their fields, to be out in such weather. September, at the most would be near the most accurate time of Christ’s birth, wouldn’t it? Why did the Christians continue the Pagan rituals of Christmas? (Not intended to cause controversy… please help me out on this one, if you all do not mind…) Thanks =^-^=
supposed to be
*birth of their sun god (sorry)
Best answer:
Answer by Jonathan F
Okay…how should I explain this…
Religion isn’t SUPPOSED to make any sense. That’s why it’s religion.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
When the Roman government was trying to convert the masses to Christianity, they Christianized a lot of the ancient Pagan holidays that the people did not want to give up. This made people more willing to convert.
The Winter Solstice festival became Christmas, even though Christ’s birthdate was not in December.
A lot of fertility symbols from Beltane, such as rabbits, flowers, and eggs, became associated with Easter.
This allowed people to celebrate Christian holidays, but not give up their ancient rituals.
To provide order in a time of chaos to people who would end up murdering, stealing, etc…instead the concept of christ, was enforced to help bring about order…and control society in a time when it was needed.
and they had to take one ritual and bury it and bring about their own as the birth of jesus!
anway…what came of it…is a lot of shopping these days!
Well Constantine imposed christianity as the official religion of the roman emperor, they had to create new christian traditions to replace the pagan ones. Rather than completely change, the traditions of the pagan holidays were taken in to celebrate the birth of Christ rather than the origianl pagan holiday. So the reason for the holiday changed, but the traditions, like the tree, remained popular amongst the people to this very day.
Actually, scholars believe Christ was born in April, closer to the time we celebrate Easter… in fact, the entire Christian calendar coincides with pagan rites and rituals. I chalk it up the similarities between all religions–themes include: the hanged (or crucified) man, the virgin birth, a great flood or fire (general destruction of earth), a cosmic egg or circle from which the earth began… that or it was just easier to keep the calendar the pagans had been following for years than to ask people to change their holiday schedule entirely!
Christianity became an adulteration after constantine the great. He gave us the 25th as christ’s birthday as it was his birthday and he was on much the same level as a God. He brought about sunday worship as the christians could worship the Son of God and the pagans could worship the sun. All so called christian holidays and worship are of pagan origin. Remember the Sabbath day as all else is the commandments of men.
For Christians, it’s not really about the rituals and traditions, Christmas is about celebrating Jesus’ birth. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s His actual birth date or if the Christmas tree or whatever were originally pagan symbols, to us it’s just the time of year that we remember Jesus’ birth and what it means to us. Hope this answers your question!
Quentin is correct
Ellie is right too!
The process of incorporating one tradition’s practices into another tradition is called syncretism.
When forced to accept another religion, people find it very difficult to give up the more “domestic” practices (reverence for gods of the hearth or childbirth, for example, or patron saints) and holidays. Failure to replace these comforting elements of the original religion undermines adherence to the conquering religion. Syncretistic incorporation of the Germanic tribes’ celebration of Yule and the Roman Saturnalia into Christian practice made it easier to “sell” Christianity to Romans and Germanic peoples.
Other examples of Christian/pagan syncretism are the celebrations of Easter, from eastern European spring fertility festivals, and Halloween, from the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain.
In northern cultures, particularly, holidays are more frequent during the winter, to keep people’s spirits up and to pass the time during the long nights and less active days of winter. In most cultures, there is often an important midwinter celebration to remind the people that light and warmth will return.
The syncretistic Christmas celebration developed by the early Christian church contains enough elements of this type of celebration to satisfy the cultural need that such holidays address while co-opting the holiday itself and strengthening the culture’s belief in Christianity by incorporating enough Christian symbolism to mask the pagan origins of the holiday.