{"id":1277,"date":"2009-12-27T03:11:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T03:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2009-12-27T03:11:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-27T03:11:00","slug":"what-you-know-about-christmas-might-be-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1277","title":{"rendered":"What You Know about Christmas Might Be Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea that Christmas celebrations are largely lifted from earlier Paganisms is pretty well embedded in the culture, even among people who don’t have a dog in that fight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So let Biblical Archaeology Review<\/i> stir things up a little with the idea that the Dec. 25 (or Jan. 6 for the Orthodox) date was not <\/i>necessarily chosen to ride piggyback on Sol Invictus or Mithras<\/a> but is based on Jewish tradition instead<\/a>, one carried on by early Christians:<\/p>\n

Around 200 C.E. Tertullian of Carthage<\/a> reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation\u2014the commemoration of Jesus\u2019 conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year. Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25.<\/i><\/p>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Finally, Hank Stuever is the author of Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present<\/a><\/i>. You can read an excerpt here in the Washington Post<\/i> “Style” section<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I know that I am in the same country as those “gated-community supermoms who [have]  volleyball schedules, tutor times and carpool arrangements abuzz in the BlackBerry that is [their] brain,” because I have sat in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and watched them clatter by.<\/p>\n

This fact struck me though: Amid all the crafts-making and bazaar-holding and home-decorating, they don’t know how to sew?<\/p>\n

“It’s the sparkle, spirit, and style of American Girls, yesterday and today!” intones a recorded narration as the lights go down. A Junior League member and a teenage beauty pageant winner emcee. While each young model, carrying a doll, takes her little turn on the catwalk, we learn her American Girl back story. Here’s Josefina, who lived on a ranch in northern New Mexico in the 1820s. She had to sew her own clothes.<\/p>\n

“Who here knows how to sew their own clothes?” the emcee asks. “Raise your hands.”<\/p>\n

In a room of several hundred families, nobody raises a hand.<\/p>\n

“Moms? Anyone here ever sew? Anyone have a sewing machine?”<\/p>\n

No hands.<\/p>\n

“Well then, you can just imagine how hard life was.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Weird, eh? Even I<\/i> have an old sewing machine for repair jobs. It makes life easier, just as my chainsaw and power screwdriver do.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: <\/b>If you have read this far and are not still muttering about Druids, take Stuever’s Christmas-shopping survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea that Christmas celebrations are largely lifted from earlier Paganisms is pretty well embedded in the culture, even among people who don’t have a dog in that fight. So let Biblical Archaeology Review stir things up a little with the idea that the Dec. 25 (or Jan. 6 for the Orthodox) date was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[10,43],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-american-religion","tag-yule"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-kB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1137,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1137","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":0},"title":"Polytheism and the Empowered Individual","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting article from a Hindu writer on polytheism, monotheism, and contemporary politics in India: \"The March to Monotheism.\"This paragraph caught my eye:If the upside of monotheism is universalism and egalitarianism, the downside is that it admits of no rival. There can be no middle ground, no compromise. Reality is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"polytheism\"","block_context":{"text":"polytheism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=polytheism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12059","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":1},"title":"Christmas, When the Veil is Thin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In December (yeah, this is late) I was tapped by a public library in Oregon to give an hour's Zoom lecture on the \"Pagan origins of Christmas.\" I did it, but that format is still pretty weird. How many people are watching? Three? Thirty? Three hundred? And are they awake?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Christmas-eve-lantern-1-238x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":576,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=576","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":2},"title":"I still call them \"Christmas\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 14, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"I still call them \"Christmas cards\"When I was new to the Pagan movement, I was militant about saying \"Yule\" instead of \"Christmas.\" I managed to train one of my sisters to employ the same usage when speaking to me; the other one never really noticed.This year, we are enjoying this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1264,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1264","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":3},"title":"Pagan Thoughts at the Parade of Lights","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last fall I looked for Pagan virtues in a small-town \"Pioneer Day\" parade.Similar thoughts ran through my mind last night watching an even smaller town's \"Parade of Lights.\"The procession was about one block long: two pieces of fire apparatus, the local mountain search-and-rescue group (yellow jackets, hard hats, head lamps),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=339","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":4},"title":"Midnight (imagistic) Mass A few\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Midnight (imagistic) Mass A few nights ago, M. and I were sharing reminiscences of Christmases long past, including the experience of Christmas Eve Midnight Mass. It wasn't the content of the service that mattered, but the experience: the waiting all evening, driving to the church through quiet streets, the explosion\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6209,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6209","url_meta":{"origin":1277,"position":5},"title":"Trees, Animism, and Yuletide","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I wanted to use the photo of the dumped Christmas tree with two different posts. Then I decided to combine them, so keep reading. 1. \"Trees\" is the theme of this month's Animist Blog Carnival, hosted by Australian blogger Jay at naturebum. Tree totems, forest fires, Indo-European cosmology, and more!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animism\"","block_context":{"text":"animism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animism"},"img":{"alt_text":"Christmas tree discarded on public land in southern Colorado. (Photo: Royal Gorge Field Office, Bureau of Land Management)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/discardedXmastree1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/discardedXmastree1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/discardedXmastree1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}