Dear friends, at the risk of repeating ourselves, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year once again! Today, we will continue to enjoy the spirit of Christmas. The Ancestral Origins of Christmas Traditions have stemmed many a debate and today we will also enlarge upon the subject.
Christmas today is a mixture of religion and “pop culture” (due to Santa Claus and the month of presents, which generates unprecedented sales). But before Christmas was what it is today, the month of December was dedicated to other gods and other pagan traditions.
It was only after the year 429 AD that the 25th of December was adopted by the Roman Empire as an official holiday. Before that, the immense Roman Empire celebrated the Saturnalia between the 17th and 25th of December. This week of celebrations always culminated in terrible excesses, vividly depicted by the Greek poet Lucian, who talks of human sacrifices, alcohol abuse and licentious sexual behaviour and… consuming human-shaped biscuits (hence the apparently harmless gingerbread cookies so popular throughout Britain and Germany).
Caroling is widely regarded as a tradition full of harmony today, but those who wandered around the streets were not harmless children. To apace the debauchery of the celebrations that marked the passing from the clear season to the cold one, the Romans and the young Christian Church made a tacit “pact” with the Saturnalia and the January Kalendae (known as the New Year’s Eve today). So religious connotations were rendered to a pagan feast.
The custom of gift-giving also comes from the pagans – as an “updated” approach of the old offerings brought to the gods. Again, the Church wanted to Christianize the practice by associating it with Saint Nicholas. The same goes for the Christmas Tree, a tradition of the Saturnalia performed by the Asheira cult, who venerated nature and decorated trees cut from the forest in winter.