#Pagan origins of Christmas

[onenakedfarmer]

[coinandcandle]

My twin put a lil star made of sticks and twin on our dad's Christmas tree and he got pissed saying "I put up with a lot of shit, but that's sacrilegious" because it was something they made during a pagan event...

Ok...enjoy your tree...and mistletoe...amongst other things that were married into your religion via religious and cultural exchange with pagans...

[thecyancat]

Winter Star

Frost-bitten hands reach up to the bright winter star

Hold your loved ones close these festival nights

The warmth of joy fights the cold both near and far

Fire crackles in the hearth within bricks the color of feldspar

A soft glow illuminating smiles so bright

Frost-bitten hands reach up to the bright winter star

Have some spiced cider and some cookies from a jar

Powdered sugar-white

The warmth of joy fights the cold both near and far

Cheeks rosy-red like cinnabar

Warming up by firelight

Frost-bitten hands reach up to the bright winter star

Marking off days on a new calendar

Anticipating a new year with delight

The warmth of joy fights the cold both near and far

Bid this year’s final days au revoir

Set the final candle alight

Frost-bitten hands reach up to the bright winter star

The warmth of joy fights the cold both near and far

winter banner by @dollywons

[Read my other poems, if you wish]

[pudding-parade]

[angeloftheodd]

Real footage of Krampus indulging my obsession with him. 😈🖤

I’m totally reading “Hymn to Krampus” tonight to honor Krampus. 🤘 Be good or be the birch rod’s bitch! ⛓️‍💥

Full disclosure: I’m clearly getting birch rod beatings this year because I’m having my period today. 🩸👿 I feel so crappy, I couldn’t even do what I planned/wanted to do and am stuck at home today. 😿 Nonetheless, I’m doing my best to relax and make the most of the holiday anyway. ⛄️

Let’s see if I’ll be a good girl next year. 😇😹

Merry Christmas! 🎄❤️

[avianhasnodignity]

i have come up with a replacement for christmas but idk what to call it. the only aspect of christmas i want to retain is the gift trading

basically it's just a winter celebration. you get together with your loved ones (not just your family!) and trade gifts with one another and sit around with hot chocolate and other wintery dishes and drinks and stuff and you just chill in the living room spending time together and watching snow fall and sitting by the fireplace and shit. no trees, maybe some pale white or blue lights, no fucking santa, just winter and love

[magicalmoss]

The Spirit of Present with its legendary beast, The Ashwick

The Spirit only lives one day on winter solstice, riding from house to house atop the ever-changing Ashwick bringing feast, drink, and good cheer to all

[starsinoursystem]

Please reblog and tag with your answer and what country you live in/grew up in! Would be greatly appreciated :)

Also I know I could have included more holidays but this is something I just thought of off the top of my head while writing about Halloween and Día de los Muertos and I feel like the origins of Halloween are forgotten by a lot of people, so I wanted to make a poll about it.

Tho I do feel like Tumblr is exactly the crowd that would know, I'm a curious person lol-

[potatoes-tomatoes]

this a bit late but I saw ur tags on that sp easter episode gifset "not my ass pulling a stan at the tender age of six" - I'm so curious what ur easter questioning origins were 👀

i was (…am?) a lil insane growing up, like ok, I have memories of telling everyone in my kindergarten class that santa wasn’t real and wouldn’t care if they cried, bc they HAD to know the truth like, how could santa deliver those gifts in one night? why does he only give gifts to kids in america/ with enough wealth? You can still love the specials, and the holiday, the characters of the santa mythos, but believing a lie told by adults just didn’t sit right with me. also bc my parents told me he wasn’t real lol. (listen. my mom grew up very very poor. My grandma told my tias and tio that Santa wasn’t real, and only existed for the gringos with money jfkfkfjf) so. yeah my religiously zealous ass is the preface for even more religiously zealous stuff

so I grew up as a conservative christian girl that read the bible like a storybook every night, but I also have memories of questioning everything, it drove everyone crazy. I would hound my pastors after service with new questions someone my age wouldn’t usually have? I knew they thought it was kinda annoying if not mildly cute but I needed answers for every goddamn thing. Easter traditions bein one of them 😅 Now, I was raised very traditionally, as in, we examined good friday and went to a long Easter service and then, that’s it. Eggs, Rabbits were worldly, and had nothing to do with Christ, and tbh the most my fam enjoyed was the after church carne asada and the trip to walmart the coming monday to get discounted candy to munch on thru summer lolol. But I asked my classmates and teachers at school like at what point did easter become abt eggs? so if you’re not christian then, what exactly are you celebrating? You’re just doing elaborate stuff to eat candy. what’s the true purpose of the bunny? where did this originate? and everyone was like, just paint ur damn plastic egg for class Cel, you’re 6. 😂😅

Well that’s done and over with and I’m completely sane now. Also I did not paint and properly prep my first easter egg and participate in an egg hunt until last year with some friends and it was cute lol.

[dogstardigitalindex]

Title: Did Christmas Copy the Sun God's Birthday? Channel: ReligionForBreakfast (Dr. Andrew Henry) Length: 51:10

Brief summary of the Sol Invictus origin theory for the date of Christmas, followed by an overview of Sol Invictus and the way he is depicted in art. Our information on Sol is lacking, but what we have suggests that he was a fairly minor deity for much of history. December 25th was not a long standing nor an especially important official feast day of Sol Invictus.

The earliest possible date for a Sol Invictus festival in December is 274 AD, and the earliest definite date is 354 AD. Evidence for Christians trying to calculate the date of Jesus' birth and deciding upon December 25th predates evidence for widespread celebration of Sol Invictus. The 25th was when Rome celebrated the Solstice, and while the importance of that date likely influenced the calculations for Christmas, it is more a matter of the objective symbolism of a solstice and not a direct attempt to coopt a pagan celebration.

[onenakedfarmer]

[renfaires]

So many filtered posts today (and this weekend). Why are so many heathens posting about Easter? Oh wait…

[efraim7praise]

Is Christ The Reason For The Christmas Season?

“Jesus is the reason for the season!” Continue reading Is Christ The Reason For The Christmas Season?

[hazeltheheretic]

🎄 Ever wondered why Christmas feels more festive than faithful? Turns out, most of our favorite holiday traditions—Yule logs, mistletoe, and even Santa—are Pagan! 😱

In my latest video, I explore how Christians stole Christmas, rebranded it, and made it their own. From the hilarious history to the absurdity of the War on Christmas, it’s a wild ride through holiday history. 🎅✨

[greaseonmymouth]

I have seen this idea of Santa’s reindeer = odin’s eight legged horse before, but what really makes me laugh is that…if that were even remotely the case, then the Santa Claus lore in the Nordic countries would have some kind of consistent myth across the region that you could refer back to and, use as argument in support of this theory, and, uh, they don’t.

The whole Santa Claus and his eight named reindeer thing is as far as I’m concerned an American invention.

Since we're getting into "did you know that Santa's eight tiny reindeer are a reference to the eight legs of Odin's steed?" season once again, remember: while there are some elements of Christmas (or Hallowe'en, or Easter, or...) observations that are probably pre-Christian in origin, before one believes any of that this-is-really-100%-just-a-Pagan-holiday-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off stuff, one must consider all of the following possibilities:

Our earliest known records of the cited pre-Christian practices were written down by some random Christian monk centuries after the fact, and we genuinely have no idea how accurate this account is, to what extent the apparent similarities with Christian practice are due to the author deliberately or unwittingly putting a Christian spin on it, or indeed, whether they were just making shit up.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Christian writers who were bent for prefiguration theology (i.e., the idea that the Bible echoes backwards in time and pre-Christian religious practices were unwittingly imitating future Christian practices).

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by Protestant writers who believe that all Pagan deities are Satan in disguise, so they think that if they can prove that Catholic practices are secretly Pagan in origin, that proves that Catholics are secretly Satanists.

The similarities between the two sets of practices have been exaggerated or misrepresented by overzealous mythographers trying to prove that all mythology and religion throughout all of human history is secretly a single unified monomyth; if it's pre-Victorian, expect shades of prefiguration theology, while if it's post-Victorian, expect a lot of stuff about the Collective Unconscious.

A bunch of 19th Century proto-Fascists were trying to construct a pre-Jewish cultural identity (and considered Christianity to be tainted by association), but didn't want to give up any of the fun rituals, so they made some shit up about how it was still okay to do Christmas because something something Odin, or whatever.

A bunch of early 20th Century Pagan reconstructionists filled in the gaps in their understanding of pre-Christian ritual with culturally Christian assumptions, then turned around and pointed at their own accidentally Christianised reconstructions as evidence that Christian practices are derived from them.

A bunch of late 20th Century self-help manual authors tried to break into the occult bookstore market by uncritically repeating any or all of the above.

Someone on the Internet just made it up.

[quietgayguy]

Interesting 🤔