#christmas traditions

[mynameismysecret]

Scrolled down to see how long and did not expect pics. Said "Waaaawww" out loud btw (they're so pretty)

Ooh ok i knew about the lighting a candle each week i think from um. Well i did use to go to church when i was little. Like up to 13yo.

It's funny we actually had a Christmas festivity thing when i was in kindergarten and i played one of the candles. Yup. The second one, if you're curious.

The disney thing is so specific tho..??

And omg yeah some dads do that here too. I did witness it once (not my dad. We were guests) and i was big enough to know that's definitely not santa but i do wonder if the smaller kids were sold on it. I remember it wasn't the best costume.

Honestly i don't even know if we (Romania) have specific Christmas traditions that only happen here. We do have some New Years (/general holiday season) ones that are. Odd. Not in a bad way, just kinda weird. But fun. But weird :))

my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you'll post something casual like "anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic" and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like "funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA…….. no of COURSE we dont watch 'the grunch' or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype"

[thegimmicky]

Frozen market built with notjackhd

[keepxsolxinxsolxinvictus]

[kattahj]

I feel like the Gävle goat being eaten by birds is its most suitable fate yet, because it brings back two old traditions.

One is the yule goat as a gift giver. This was common in the 19th century, but then Jultomten/Santa took over.

Here's a picture from Elsa Beskow's old picture book "Petter och Lottas jul", with a family being visited by two separate yule goats bearing gifts.

The other pertinent tradition is the raising of a "julkärve", Christmas sheaf, for the birds to eat. This is still done, but not at all to the extent that it was in the mid 20th century.

In Alf Prøysens picture book "Den vesle bygda som glømte at det var jul" (The village that forgot that it was Christmas), it is a sheaf that makes a little girl remember that it's Christmas, and she then raises the sheaf in the flagpole to remind the rest of the village.

Hence, it is as though the Gävle goat has resumed its old position as gift giver, and has turned itself into a gift of a Christmas sheaf for the birds.

...Which also sounds uncomfortable like High Mass, when I think of it...

[atheostic]

"We should ban non-Christians from celebrating Christmas!"

Okay, stop shoving Christmas down our throats for two months of the year, then.

Stop playing Christmas music in stores.

Stop decorating schools and shops and doctor's offices and libraries with Christmas stuff.

Stop telling kids that Santa only gives presents to good kids (which means that non-Christian parents are roped into giving their kids at least one Christmas present so the kids don't think they're bad).

Stop asking people for donations over the holiday season.

Stop telling non-Christians "Merry Christmas".

Stop making blockbuster Christmas movies that go in large theatres.

Stop expecting people to decorate the outside of their houses for Christmas.

Stop having Christmas tree lighting ceremonies and Christmas trees in public places.

Stop having Santas in malls.

Stop having Christmas plays in schools.

Stop having Christmas plays in large theatres (e.g. the famous theatre in my area always has A Christmas Carol as one of their plays every year)

Do that and then MAYBE we'll consider stopping it.

2. Christmas is like, a solid 80% Pagan, my dude. So if you want to keep Christmas Christian you gotta drop several things:

Caroling (comes from the tradition of wassailing, which is Pagan)

Christmas trees and decorations (the Bible explicitly says that it's a Pagan tradition that Christians should not partake in)

Giving gifts on Christmas (it was taboo for several centuries in Christianity and likely slipped in due to Saturnalia traditions)

Celebrating on December 25th (Jesus' birthday wasn't decided upon until the 300s by a bunch of dudes in power, and historians say if he existed he'd be born in spring or summer, not winter)

Putting up wreaths (they're a Pagan symbol connected to the winter season)

Basically, all the fun stuff about Christmas is Pagan, not Christian in origin.

And that's not counting non-Biblical parts of Christian Christmas mythology like

How many Magi visited Jesus (the Bible never says how many)

What the Magi were called (the Bible never says their names)

Whether the Magi were kings (the Bible never makes such mention)

When the Magi visited Jesus (the Bible just says it was "before Jesus' second birthday")

What animals the Magi were riding (the Bible never specifies)

3. You can't force Christianity on people then act like a victim when people start celebrating Christian holidays.

=-=-=-=

@ray-moo

Ostara is where the name Easter comes from.

Easter was borrowed by Christians from the feast of Ostara, who was a fertility goddess, which is why bunnies and eggs are symbols for the holiday.

Also, worth mentioning that in Brazil Easter eggs are massive chocolate eggs, not dinky hardboiled eggs. They hang them from the ceiling during Easter season and you use a hook to get them down:

I hate to say it but I do fear we need to take Christmas away from non-Christians.

‘Secular Christmas’ babes that’s just capitalism…

[huariqueje]

Christmas Tree -   Lars Swane, 1986.

Danish, 1913 - 2002

Oil on canvas , 15 x 19 cm.

[useless-catalanfacts]

In Catalan culture, some holidays are personified in a character. In Gràcia (a neighbourhood of Barcelona), Christmas starts with the arrival of Esperit de Nadal (Christmas Spirit) with his companions senyor Caneló d'Escudella i Bontorró ("Sir Escudella Cannelloni and Good-nougat", a parody of an artistocratic name referencing the traditional Catalan Christmas foods). Esperit de Nadal is a capgròs (big head figure, read more about them in this previous post).

They arrive at Gràcia and dance on the streets greeting the children, and at the end of the parade they do a dance that ends with removing Esperit de Nadal's hat, revealing a tiny Nativity scene on its head.

Video by Cultura Popular Barcelona.

[onceuponatown]

The history of Christmas traditions kept evolving throughout the 19th century, when most of the familiar components of the modern Christmas including St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, and Christmas trees, became popular. The changes in how Christmas was celebrated were so profound that it's safe to say someone alive in 1800 would not even recognize the Christmas celebrations held in 1900.

Washington Irving and St. Nicholas

Early Dutch settlers of New York considered St. Nicholas to be their patron saint and practiced a yearly ritual of hanging stockings to receive presents on St. Nicholas Eve, in early December. Washington Irving, in his fanciful History of New York, mentioned that St. Nicholas had a wagon he could ride “over the tops of trees” when he brought “his yearly presents to children.”

The Dutch word “Sinterklaas” for St. Nicholas evolved into the English “Santa Claus,” thanks in part to a New York City printer, William Gilley, who published an anonymous poem referring to “Santeclaus” in a children’s book in 1821. The poem was also the first mention of a character based on St. Nicholas having a sleigh, in this case, pulled by a single reindeer.

Clement Clarke Moore and The Night Before Christmas

Perhaps the best-known poem in the English language is “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” or as it’s often called, “The Night Before Christmas.” Its author, Clement Clarke Moore, a professor who owned an estate on the west side of Manhattan, would have been quite familiar with the St. Nicholas traditions followed in early 19th century New York. The poem was first published, anonymously, in a newspaper in Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823.

Reading the poem today, one might assume that Moore simply portrayed the common traditions. Yet he actually did something quite radical by changing some of the traditions while also describing features that were entirely new.

For instance, the St. Nicholas gift giving would have taken place on December 5, the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Moore moved the events he describes to Christmas Eve. He also came up with the concept of “St. Nick” having eight reindeer, each of them with a distinctive name.

Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol

The other great work of Christmas literature from the 19th century is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. In writing the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, Dickens wanted to comment on greed in Victorian Britain. He also made Christmas a more prominent holiday and permanently associated himself with Christmas celebrations.

Dickens was inspired to write his classic story after speaking to working people in the industrial city of Manchester, England, in early October 1843. He wrote A Christmas Carol quickly, and when it appeared in bookstores the week before Christmas 1843 it began to sell very well.

The book crossed the Atlantic and began to sell in America in time for Christmas 1844, and became extremely popular. When Dickens made his second trip to America in 1867 crowds clamored to hear him read from A Christmas Carol. His tale of Scrooge and the true meaning of Christmas had become an American favorite. The story has never been out of print, and Scrooge is one of the best-known characters in literature.

Santa Claus Drawn by Thomas Nast

The famed American cartoonist Thomas Nast is generally credited as having invented the modern depiction of Santa Claus. Nast, who had worked as a magazine illustrator and created campaign posters for Abraham Lincoln in 1860, was hired by Harper’s Weekly in 1862. For the Christmas season, he was assigned to draw the magazine’s cover, and legend has it that Lincoln himself requested a depiction of Santa Claus visiting Union troops.

The resulting cover, from Harper’s Weekly dated January 3, 1863, was a hit. It shows Santa Claus on his sleigh, which has arrived at a U.S. Army camp festooned with a “Welcome Santa Claus” sign.

Santa’s suit features the stars and stripes of the American flag, and he’s distributing Christmas packages to the soldiers. One soldier is holding up a new pair of socks, which might be a boring present today, but would have been a highly prized item in the Army of the Potomac.

Beneath Nast's illustration was the caption, “Santa Claus In Camp.” Appearing not long after the carnage at Antietam and Fredericksburg, the magazine cover is an apparent attempt to boost morale in a dark time.

The Santa Claus illustrations proved so popular that Thomas Nast kept drawing them every year for decades. He is also credited with creating the notion that Santa lived at the North Pole and kept a workshop manned by elves. The figure of Santa Claus endured, with the version drawn by Nast becoming the accepted standard version of the character. By the early 20th century the Nast-inspired version of Santa became a very common figure in advertising.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria Made Christmas Trees Fashionable

The tradition of the Christmas tree came from Germany, and there are accounts of early 19th century Christmas trees in America, but the custom wasn’t widespread outside German communities.

The Christmas tree first gained popularity in British and American society thanks to the husband of Queen Victoria, the German-born Prince Albert. He installed a decorated Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1841, and woodcut illustrations of the Royal Family’s tree appeared in London magazines in 1848. Those illustrations, published in America a year later, created the fashionable impression of the Christmas tree in upper-class homes.

By the late 1850s reports of Christmas trees were appearing in American newspapers. And in the years following the Civil War ordinary American households celebrated the season by decorating a Christmas tree.

The first electric Christmas tree lights appeared in the 1880s, thanks to an associate of Thomas Edison, but were too costly for most households. Most people in the 1800s lit their Christmas trees with small candles.

The First White House Christmas Tree

The first Christmas tree in the White House was displayed in 1889, during the presidency of Benjamin Harrison. The Harrison family, including his young grandchildren, decorated the tree with toy soldiers and glass ornaments for their small family gathering.

There are some reports of president Franklin Pierce displaying a Christmas tree in the early 1850s. But the stories of a Pierce tree are vague and there doesn't seem to be contemporaneous mentions in newspapers of the time.

Benjamin Harrison's Christmas cheer was closely documented in newspaper accounts. An article on the front page of the New York Times on Christmas Day 1889 detailed the lavish presents he was going to give his grandchildren. And though Harrison was generally regarded as a fairly serious person, he vigorously embraced the Christmas spirit.

Not all subsequent presidents continued the tradition of having a Christmas tree in the White House. By the middle of the 20th century, White House Christmas trees became established. And over the years it has evolved into an elaborate and very public production.

The first National Christmas Tree was placed on The Ellipse, an area just south of the White House, in 1923, and the lighting of it was presided over by President Calvin Coolidge. The lighting of the National Christmas Tree has become quite a large annual event, typically presided over by the current president and members of the First Family.

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus

In 1897 an eight-year-old girl in New York City wrote to a newspaper, the New York Sun, asking if her friends, who doubted the existence of Santa Claus, were right. An editor at the newspaper, Francis Pharcellus Church, responded by publishing, on September 21, 1897, an unsigned editorial. The response to the little girl has become the most famous newspaper editorial ever printed.

The second paragraph is often quoted:

"Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS."

Church’s eloquent editorial asserting the existence of Santa Claus seemed a fitting conclusion to a century that began with modest observances of St. Nicholas and ended with the foundations of the modern Christmas season firmly intact.

By the end of the 19th century, the essential components of a modern Christmas, from Santa to the story of Scrooge to strings of electric lights were firmly established in America.

Source

[homemakinghippie]

Homemade Hot Cocoa

This is the recipe my great grandma made and taught my grandma, who taught my mom and me. Every time we visited my grandparents or great grandma this cocoa was made for breakfast.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of sugar

1/4 cup of cocoa powder

Dash of salt

1/3 cup hot water

4-6 cups milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon burned sugar flavoring (optional)

Marshmallows

Directions:

In a large pot combine sugar, cocoa powder, salt and hot water. Mix until a paste forms.

Heat on low heat until the paste becomes a syrup, stirring often.

Slowly stir in milk and flavorings and continue to heat until desired temperature. DO NOT SCALD.

Add marshmallows and serve.

Notes:

I don't buy burned sugar flavoring, instead I heat the cocoa and sugar until it's sticky before adding water. This will cause the sugar to crystalize a bit when you add the water (even if it's boiling). Just keep stirring. Once you have a good syrup, add the milk as directed and keep stirring in any bits that may have stuck to the bottom or sides.

Just the sugar, cocoa powder, salt, and water makes homemade chocolate syrup! You can scale up the recipe if you'd like to keep some homemade chocolate syrup around for chocolate milk, ice cream, coffee, whatever you use it for.

If you have leftover, this makes the BEST chocolate milk I've ever had.

Feel free to customize if you like caramel, or mint, or any other kind of cocoa.

[lokavisi]

As we approach Yule and the winter holidays, we see a LOT of false narratives around the origins of the ways in which they're celebrated. And not in the ways you think. This blog lays out sources intelligently and logically to illustrate the facts of our human history, not false sentiments of anti-Christianity/Pagan superiority.

I particularly appreciated this quote in their conclusion: "[I]t’s easy enough to show that the claims are wrong and then in turn that makes it look like Pagans and NeoPagans trade in propaganda, conspiracy theories, and uneducated claims - it makes all of us look bad. But to me, more importantly, when someone is starting out and wants to learn, misinformation builds walls, hurdles, and snares that they won’t know how to navigate at the start of their journey."

So before we go around teaching ourselves and others false information upon which to build our practices and worldviews, let's take the time to educate ourselves, yeah? I admit I have yet to get through *every* source listed in this blog as there are many (I am working on it, though!). I just believe this is vital information and have no desire to wait to share it.

Knowing what we celebrate, how we do it, and the why of it all is important, no matter the origins. Embracing our history and our modern practices need not be mutually exclusive. I hope this information strengthens and blesses your winter practices and celebrations this year. 🌟

[bebx]

this little deer has been my favorite Christmas ornament since I was a child and it’s now become a tradition that I take his picture and post him every Christmas. so here’s his 2023 Christmas photo ♡

[thedeluxedoll]

[underwhelmingalchemist]

Festive poll because I'm having trouble getting in the Christmas spirit

[huariqueje]

Christmas Market at Kornhamstorg - Hilding Linnqvist , 1930s

Swedish, 1891-1984

Oil on canvas, 74 x 100.5 cm.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Like many other countries with a Christian cultural background, in the Catalan Countries we also have the tradition of making a Nativity scene at home, with figurines representing the shepherds doing all kinds of rural work and the birth of Jesus.

The nativity scene is set up in early December without the figurine of Baby Jesus, who will be added at midnight of December 24th to December 25th. From Christmas Day until January 6th (Three Wise Men Day), the figurines that represent the Three Wise Men on their camels will be moved every day a few steps, getting closer to the cave where Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the donkey and the bull are. On January 6th, following the shooting star, the Three Wise Men arrive to bring the presents of gold, myrrh and incense for the Messiah. And, on that same day, the children of the house will receive their presents as well. Traditionally, the nativity scene is taken down on Candlemas day (2nd of February), but nowadays most families take it down sooner, after the Three Wise Men day has passed.

In Catalan nativity scenes there's one special character: the pooper.

Hidden somewhere in the nativity scene, there is a man pooping. Even though nativity scenes have been done in Catalonia since the late Middle Ages, the pooper was likely an addition in the 17th or 18th century. Besides the traditional figurine with the man dressed like a Catalan farmer, nowadays there are pooper figurines made representing all kinds of famous people: politicians, the Pope, football players, singers, actors, cartoon characters...

Photos sources: Casal del Barri Trinitat Nova, deNadal.cat, Escola Les Fonts, Aerobús.