{"id":4911,"date":"2012-12-30T09:42:02","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T16:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4911"},"modified":"2012-12-30T13:41:34","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T20:41:34","slug":"revising-the-story-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4911","title":{"rendered":"Revising the Story of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is an article of faith (an appropriate word here) for contemporary Pagans that Christianity stole holidays left and right from our spiritual ancestors, particularly Christmas.<\/p>\n

Here Mollie Ziegler at Get Religion<\/em>, a blog about the critical examination of religion-writing in the (mostly) American media, gets into some of the nuances in the process of critiquing a typically breezy seasonal piece from the Washington Post<\/em>. <\/a><\/p>\n

Yeah, well, it\u2019s certainly true that when the calendar was standardized, there was a push for Dec. 25 as the date to mark Jesus\u2019 birth. But was this because it was a co-opting of Saturnalia? It\u2019s certainly a theory. But Dec. 25 was one of the many dates being used by Christians to mark Christ\u2019s birth and maybe not for the reasons you hear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some historians argue \u2014 read her piece for details \u2014 that Jesus’ birth was placed on December 25th centuries before “Christmas” was celebrated. In the early church, Easter was much more important.<\/p>\n

Now before somebody says “Yeah, and ‘Eostre’ was a Germanic goddess,” we are not talking about Germans but about the eastern Mediterranean region (and Rome) when we say “the early church.” The Germanic tribes were mostly unaware of Christianity until some converted in the fourth century<\/a>, right? And complete conversion took another six hundred years.<\/p>\n

It is the news media, not the Pagans, that keeps the “Christmas started out as a ‘pagan’ holiday” meme alive. Maybe that is more of a secularist position \u2014 taking organized religion down a notch \u2014 that provides a convenient bit of cover for the modern Pagans?<\/p>\n

And let’s not forget another group that contributed to the Christmas-is-pagan meme \u2014 the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Just today at the laundromat I saw a one of their Awake<\/em> booklets, which made that very same argument, one that they have been making for many decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is an article of faith (an appropriate word here) for contemporary Pagans that Christianity stole holidays left and right from our spiritual ancestors, particularly Christmas. Here Mollie Ziegler at Get Religion, a blog about the critical examination of religion-writing in the (mostly) American media, gets into some of the nuances in the process of […]<\/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":[1],"tags":[24,43],"class_list":["post-4911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christianity","tag-yule"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1hd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=93","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":0},"title":"Drat that Mary Magdalene","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More attempted damage control from the Christian right to the fuss raised by The Da Vinci Code, about which I blogged earlier on Dec. 9, 2003. Here, AP writer Richard N. Ostling writes a fairly snide review of Karen L. King's The Gospel of Mary Magdala: Jesus and the First\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6728,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6728","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":1},"title":"Get Your Jesuses Now . . .","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":". . . they will be back to the regular pricing during the pre-Christmas shopping season (Camino Real Mexican-import store, El Prado, New Mexico).","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"jesus sale","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/jesus-sale-300x253.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11097,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11097","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":2},"title":"This Is the Real “War on Christmas”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"From a hardcore Muslim Instagrammer: Shaykh Ibn Al Qayyim said \"Congratulating the non-muslims on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by ijm\u00e2 (consensus), as is congratulating them on their festivals and feasts by saying: 'a happy festival to you' or 'may you enjoy your festival,' and so\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/muslim-merry-christmas.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1098,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1098","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":3},"title":"Yes, Hypatia, There is a Santa Claus","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This fellow -- Santa Claus, Father Christmas -- has joined the lineup of graven images on our polytheistic\/animistic mantel. That's Hermes' foot at the far left, followed by an ossuary jar of sharp-shinned hawk bones, and Hekate on the right.We all know that Santa's name derives from the Dutch form\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13326,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13326","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":4},"title":"Look, the Son is Rising","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 9, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"It's that magical time of year, when Christianity does seem to resemble a solar cult, much to the satisfaction of all the internet scholars who say that Jesus is really just the same as Osiris, Adonis, Dumuzid, Mithras, Sol Invictus, Baldur, etc. But at the same time, if I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/jackson-hill-easter-.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/jackson-hill-easter-.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/jackson-hill-easter-.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/jackson-hill-easter-.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3622,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3622","url_meta":{"origin":4911,"position":5},"title":"Last Yuletide News Bits","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 This is your brain. This is your brain on Christmas. \u2022 \"How the Lawyers Stole Winter\"\u00a0 \u2014 are we raising kids who can't cope? No, it's not Yule-related, directly. Indirectly, yes, I would argue. You have to embrace all of the wheel. \u2022 No matter how \"imagistic\" it may\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"childhood\"","block_context":{"text":"childhood","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=childhood"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/SantaPickuptruck1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4911","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=4911"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4913,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4911\/revisions\/4913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}