Yes, I'm sure you all saw this coming, but I couldn't resist! As you probably have guessed already, Christmas wasn't a new idea when Rome was in the Christianization (yup, this one's a real word!) process.
There was a popular Roman festival known as the Saturnalia that mark the winter solstice and also honored there god Saturn (where we got the name for the planet). More importantly, it was time for visiting friends, giving gifts, and general merriment.
“This festival [The Saturnalia]… usually occurred around December 25 on the ancient Julian calendar. During Saturnalia the Romans feasted, postponed all business and warfare, exchanged gifts, and temporarily freed their slaves.”
- Encarta Encyclopedia
"All of the similarities between Saturnalia and Christmas are no accident. Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25 as Christ's birthday because pagans already observed the day as a holiday. This would sidestep the problem of eliminating an already-popular holiday while Christianizing the population.”
- Don’t Know Much About Mythology
There is little doubt that Pope Julius I was trying to make conversion as quick and painless as possible. It was a convenient day to make a holiday, the foremost of which was the presence of the Saturnalia festival, but there were also other reasons that made this a handy day to party.
~ Attis, the vegetable god of the Persians and divine husband of Cybele (many times earlier mentioned), had his birth date on the 25 of December.
~ Mithraism was the Persian cult of the god Mithra, and was very popular among the soldiers of Rome for his emphasis on honor and courage. It recognized a celebration on December 25 when Mithra supposed born. As Mithraism sees it, Mithra was killed, buried in a rock tomb, and then resurrected three days later. Crazy, I know.
~ The Egyptian god, Osiris, was originally a deity of life and vegetables and had a birthdayon the 25. (Oh! Before I forget, remember when Riley hugs the “significant, bluish-green man with the weird goatee” in the first National Treasure? That was Osiris, as he was often portrayed with green skin when he was patron of the veggies. You can show off to your friends sometime using that random tidbit.) Later after he was killed, he replaced Anubis as lord of the underworld (sounds a lot better than “patron of vegetables”) (Anubis would become god of judgment). Osiris was killed once as well, but he got better. =)
~ Adonis, a youth in Greek myth who had the goddesses Persephone and Aprodite chasing after him (lucky guy!). He was killed by a wild boar when he went hunting, and the two smitten divinities rushed to Zeus, each begging him to restore Adonis to them. Zeus decreed that Adonis would spend winter months with Persephone and summer months with Aprodite. His story came to represent the natural cycle of life and death, another symbol borrowed by Christians. And yes… you guessed it… his birthday was the 25.
~ Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and drunken revelry (he hosted an interesting party known as Dionysia (or Dionysian Mysteries)). And, again, his birthday was the 25, as usual.
~ In the Nativity story, the baby Jesus is presented with gold, frankincense and myrrh by an unidentified number of Zoroastrian priests. (The Bible never actually states there were three. It’s presumed that there were three, because there were three gift present. And they definitely weren’t kings. They were magi.) The same gifts were given to the baby Krishna of Indian mythology when he was born.
All in all, it worked out pretty well to have December 25 as the birthday of Christ. It just made Christianizing a lot simpler, because imagine having to eliminate the Christmas from America’s calendar today. It would take an absurd amount of work, and neither we, nor the fourth century popes wanted to do that.
Happy holidays!!!!!!!!!! =)
We've had this adorable opossum visiting our snack feeders for the critters during the day. I walk right outside up next to him and take his picture and he doesn't mind. His name is Ziggy.
6 comments:
Add on about Mithraism from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm
"Mithra is called a mediator; and so is Christ; but Mithra originally only in a cosmogonic or astronomical sense; Christ, being God and man, is by nature the Mediator between God and man. And so in similar instances. Mithraism had a Eucharist, but the idea of a sacred banquet is as old as the human race and existed at all ages and amongst all peoples. Mithra saved the world by sacrificing a bull; Christ by sacrificing Himself. It is hardly possible to conceive a more radical difference than that between Mithra taurochtonos and Christ crucified. Christ was born of a Virgin; there is nothing to prove that the same was believed of Mithra born from the rock. Christ was born in a cave; and Mithraists worshipped in a cave, but Mithra was born under a tree near a river. Much as been made of the presence of adoring shepherds; but their existence on sculptures has not been proven, and considering that man had not yet appeared, it is an anachronism to suppose their presence. (3) Christ was an historical personage, recently born in a well known town of Judea, and crucified under a Roman governor, whose name figured in the ordinary official lists. Mithra was an abstraction, a personification not even of the sun but of the diffused daylight; his incarnation, if such it may be called, was supposed to have happened before the creation of the human race, before all history."
You forgot about the Norse? and the Winter Solstice?
So basically this date was chosen so the Christians had something to celebrate that was morally ok for them. To "stay out of trouble." Since most theologians figure Christ was ACTUALLY born on May 20. ( <= taken from Lee Strobel)
That was enlightening. I was just trying to focus on Mithraism's connections specifically to Christmas/Winter Solstice, but that was interesting for a full compare/contrast description.
For Genius (you can all thank him later):
From the Norse and Celts among the foremost ancient Europeans, Christianity borrowed the concept of mistletoe. It's ability to stay green all year through gave it a special place in their mythologies as a symbol of fertility and life. Mistletoe was associated with the Norse goddess Freya, patroness of love. They are the ones who started the tradition of kissing under mistletoe, which was then incorporated into Christmas.
The time around Winter Solstice was especially important generally throughout mythologies as the end of the coldest, darkest part of winter. The Romans began a celebration known as The Lengthening of Days, which was mostly recognized on the Kalends of January (the first of January), also the New Year.
The Babylonians also celebrated the New Year with a... how to word this... publicly explicit, ritual marriage, courtesy of the king and a priestess of choice representing the deities of Dumuzi and Innana respectively (Dumuzi was the hubby of Innana, a love goddess). The Christians also only found it fitting that the birth of Christ should mark an end to dark days. I can see the logic in that.
Similar ceremonies can be found among different religions, but I won't get into all those. The motif is simply that birth and rebirth, or even life in general, are celebrated specifically to coincide with the "rebirth" of days in the natural cycle of things. It's no accident that Christianity chose to follow the same logic.
(putting a link to this article on my site)
very interesting!
i'll have to thank the norse and the celts!
i love the mistletoe tradition
it's so.....me ;D
Genius: ¡Cool!
Shoetopia Citizen: Ha, ha... nice! It's definitely you! Did they have mistletoe in Alaska? At a party after one too many Dr. Peppers?
haha ive never been there
but it sounds like my kinda thing
;]
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