#Pagan origins of Christmas

[onenakedfarmer]

[pudding-parade]

[tibby]

truly exhausted of “”feminist”” films that don’t even really say anything revolutionary or even explore basic issues in depth and instead rely on 2013 tumblr esque dialogue to make a movie that feels hollow and removed from any subtlety or nuance because it’s too busy throwing basic statements at you like a hand grenade and almost play into these ideas of strawmen and make characters feel less like people and more like caricatures. but then because the film is so heavily based on this idea of being “”feminist”” any criticism is written off as just “hating women” because apparently film criticism dies whenever the movie is supposedly some feminist piece of art. a movie being by women and about women doesn’t inherently make it good and if all you’re doing is providing a more sanitised version of a movie that was made ten, twenty, fifty years ago then your stories are not only bland but also unoriginal.

[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-

[taltostrinkets]

SHOP UPDATE ❄️December 2022❄️

This is the last shop update for the year! It's technically not a Halloween update... I was away for the Halloween season (for a wonderful reason cause I could finally visit my family for the first time in years 😊) but I managed to finish a few projects, which I hope you guys will enjoy. 🎃

If you are looking for a gift for the winter season, especially jewelry, come check this out! Though Cyber Monday is over, the sale is still ongoing until the end of the week. Don't be shy to order, even if it's custom made, I will be working on the orders every waking moment and as soon as the resin dries, your order will ship.

The star of the update is a project that I have been working on for a very long time - Chameleon pigment jewelry!!! 😱 What makes these special is that they look like a different color depending on what angle you are looking at them. They are also metallic, and have a sparkly or satin sheen. There are 17(!) color variations, which are named after mythological elements, most commonly trickster figures or objects associated with them.

At the moment, they are available in two shapes - the Snearrings, and a set of witchcraft themed charms that I decided to collectively call "Alchemist" (because of the special metal effect. you know.) Potion, crystal, and so on.

Let me tell you, I have been struggling with these photos, because since I came home it's been so dark where I live that it's literally too dark to take pictures even during the daytime. 😬 But anyway.

There are two glow in the dark additions to the shop. One of them is the same "Alchemist" shape that I use for the chameleon pigments as well. At your behest I can paint the line art for you in black and white to make it more prominent. I personally think the black one is the most successful and easy to see, but I thought the white one looked really good with certain color combos so I left that in as an option.

The second set are these tarot themed charms, which I made into pendants because I find them a bit too unwieldy and heavy as earrings, but if you think I'm baby and you'd like to prove me wrong, then you can always contact me for a custom order. (Conversely, the snearrings and alchemist charms are all listed as earrings, but if you'd like a pendant shaped like that, all you have to do is let me know!)

The tarot pendants are a little bit pricier, because I both hand-paint and dome them, taking some extra work and materials.

I made two high effort, unique pairs of earrings - as it should be obvious - with a vampire theme in mind. The first, left one, is called "Cupid's Casualty" because of the heart and arrow themes, but it has a classic, vanilla, Catholic aesthetic energy that vampire media usually does. The other one "Bloodstained Glory" is more like an American Southern Gothic one, pairing the sexy dress with the cowboy hat/boots and rock'n'roll vibes. 🩸

Lastly, this is technically not a new product, but I thought I would mention that a friend of mine inspired me to look into earring options for people who don't have pierced ears, and I'm happy to say that I found some! Basically any drop earring in my shop can be transformed into a clip-on earring, which I will gladly exchange for you at no extra cost. The clips that I ordered look like this:

That will be it for this update!!! Have a very happy winter season and holidays! 💙🎄🎁🕎❄️☃️💝🍪💙

[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.

[emmi-kat]

I feel like the Santa Lie is likely responsible for a lot of people losing their religion.

I mean, you tell a child that an omniscient bearded being is watching over every aspect of their life to judge whether their actions are good or bad and whether they will be rewarded or punished when the time comes only to reveal that it was a fairytale that you had made them believe all along for funsies, do you really expect them to continue believing in the bigger omniscient bearded being watching over every aspect of their life to judge whether their actions are good or bad and whether they will be rewarded or punished when the time comes?

"Fooled me once, ma! I'm not falling for that one again!"

[retrorevelations]

Here's a piece I did about my love of Santa and Christmas, and more specifically about the last stop-motion special Rankin/Bass ever made, their wonderful 1985 adaptation of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. The BEST Santa origin story! https://retrorevelations.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-life-and-adventures-of-santa-claus.html

[onenakedfarmer]

[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.

[renfaires]

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

[quietgayguy]

Interesting 🤔

[kelheor-art]

Happy Holidays from Three in a Tree! 🎁

[maypoleman1]

19th December

Poor Owd Hoss

Source: Calendar Customs website

During this week the pubs of Richmond in North Yorkshire are targeted by the Richmond Poor Horse Players, a group of greenery-clad mummers who parade the Poor Owd Hoss through the hostelries, singing a dirge about the life, death and resurrection of the animal. The Hoss itself is a mummer in a hobby horse topped with a genuine horse’s skull and the words of the song are acted out by the players. As a fertility symbol, the Hoss allegedly guarantees early pregnancy to any young women who touches his head. The pagan references of the play are clear - the Hoss being a horse-worship totem, whose death and resurrection so close to the winter solstice speaks to the old yearning for spring at the darkest time of the year.

Although symbolising powerful winter magic, the romance of this Christmas visitation is lost on some pub goers in Richmond. Locals have been known to cause themselves serious damage when they take a drunken swing at the disguised rock-solid skull of the beast.