Did you know that Christmas is Pagan holiday?

[Subgurl]

Christmas incorporates many traditions from older pagan winter festivals, like the Roman Saturnaliaand Germanic Yule, to co-opt popular celebrations and make Christianity more appealing to converts, blending elements like gift-giving, feasting, evergreen decorations (trees, holly, mistletoe), and feasting with the Christian observance of Jesus' birth, strategically set near the winter solstice.

[Lliam]

It's true. The date was selected to accord with earlier, (pagan) solstice winter festivals that celebrated the return of the sun. Christians turned it into "the return of the Son of Man or the Savior".
Traditions of celebrating, feasting, gift giving, the Yule log, evergreen decorations (trees, holly, mistletoe) were retained and overlaid with Christian meaning. Christians co-opted them, as it were.

That time of year was celebrated for hundreds of years in different ways by people all over the world before Christianity.

Pagan winter solstice celebrations historically centered around Yule (Germanic/Norse), a midwinter festival for rebirth of the sun, and Saturnalia (Roman), a riotous feast for the god Saturn, while other traditions included Celtic Alban Arthan, Persian Shab-e Yalda, Chinese Dongzhi, Japanese Toji, Andean Inti Raymi, and Pueblo Soyal, all marking the shortest day and the return of light.

But, for Christians, "Christmas" is still a Christian holiday. It is only a pagan holiday for those who are not Christian, which I am not.

I still like Christmas and all the various traditions associated with it in the USA. But I also like ancient "pagan" traditions.

I love the sentiments of peace, love, good will to all men, generosity, charity, and kindness that are expressed in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

[purplepoppy]

Alban Arthan is a made up festival it was only created in the 1800s by the forger Morgannwg

[Lliam]

@purplepoppy. Interesting. How about Grianstad an Gheimhridh?
Do they celebrate it? Were there any traditional practices?

[purplepoppy]

That's an Irish thing but I'd assume it's celebrated there just as druids still celebrate winter solstice elsewhere. A few places had to cancel outdoor saturnalia events this year and move them indoors because of the weather.

[Lliam]

Thank you for the MHO, Subgurl. Happy solstice! :D

[Chazmatazz269]

Christmas is intrinsically Christian. There are rituals and traditions that crossed over from other belief systems, but there is some debate about how that came to pass. The incorporation of other cultural celebrations is suggested by some to have been a way for minority Christians to mask their celebrations in order to avoid religious persecution. The other prevailing theory is as you posted, but there simply isn’t enough evidence to confirm or deny either and declare an absolute fact. The truth is almost certainly some amalgamation of the two, based upon varying experiences throughout time and across cultures.

[Gwendoline]

Nonsense. Christians adapted Christianity to their cultural region. Virtually every culture has a feast day around December though these can be different historically due to the calender used and calender drift. Also when you say Pagans, which pagans do you mean because there were many groups.

One could argue that Christians abandoned the Jewish celebration Hanukah and instead started celebrating the birth of christ instead.

Also worth noting that Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas in January long after Yule or any other Pagan festival id over.

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

Yeah, the jehovah’s witnesses have been saying this for quite some time lol

[AviatorTom]

Christmas is NOT a pagan holiday. It's a Christian holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ. Since no one knows when Christ was born, the early Christian Church picked its date so that Christ's life could be celebrated for several weeks, ending with his Crucifixion and Resurrection, which was known to happen in the Spring. This caused his birthday celebration to fall around the Winter Solstice, which also happened to be around the same time as pagan celebrations. There is unsubstantiated rumor that was done to encourage people to switch to Christianity.

[Chazmatazz269]

www.christianity.com/.../when-was-jesus-born.html
The depth and breadth of research, both secular and theological, that has gone into discovering when Jesus of Nazareth was actually conceived and born goes well beyond “unsubstantiated rumors”. Since many Christmas traditions do in fact predate Christianity by hundreds to thousands of years, it’s an absolute fact that Christianity adopted them. There are two general theories that dominate that debate, and the use of existing traditions to ease the transition to Christianity from pagan belief systems is one of them. The absence of evidence enough to declare with certainty how and why cultural crossover occurs doesn’t reduce what we know to be true to “unsubstantiated rumors”. Ell oh ell!

[WindAtMyBack]

This gets brought up every single year. About Christmas and many other holidays.

The argument that it " incorporates many traditions" is a non-argument. You could claim this about pretty much everything. Just like pagan traditions incorporated many things from the past that were non-pagan.

By your own argument, if Christmas incorporates things that are non-pagan, that means it's a non-pagan holiday.

None of that matters.

[NathanDavis]

well yes... but most religions do that... deviate from dogma, in order to keep their spirit alive, sort of speak

[NathanDavis]

and welcome back, by the way (=

[FunkyMonkee]

It's, basically, Sun worship. The Sun is our god, it gives us life! In 3 days, the Sun will reach its lowest point in the sky, the death of the Sun. And then, in 3 more days, Dec. 25th, the Sun rises 1 degree in the sky to begin its ascent to its apex in our sky at the summer solstice!
Jesus, the SUN of god, dies on Dec. 22nd, reaching its lowest point in the sky and, three days later, on Dec. 25th, it rises from the dead, the 1 degree it begins its rise with, and we celebrate the "re-birth" of the SUN of god on the 25th of Dec. when it begins to rise again with that 1 degree!
Easter is just a celebration of spring and all things that "died" in the late fall are "coming back to life". The re-birth thanks to the rising of the Sun.

[Jersey2]

The sun reaches its lowest point at 3:03 pm today so the 22nd is wrong. This would be a better story if it were the 22nd and fell before Easter, but it doesn’t. They wouldn’t have gotten the day wrong.

[FunkyMonkee]

@Jersey2 22, 23, 24, and on the 25th, it rises one degree!! Where's the problem? Didn't I already SAY it was gonna be the 22nd? I just read it again and that's what I saw!
Religious people, especially those way back then, who weren't all that smart to begin with, are well known for making up stories about stuff that never happened or took place at a completely different date from when it actually happened.

[Anonymous]

No it's not, even as a non-religious person I know this as a fact.

Pagans don't celebrate the birthday of Jesus.

Christians copied the date for the holiday, placing it in the Winter, to replace pagan holidays related to Solstice (Jesus was actually born most likely in late February, or early March).

Sure, they also copied some pagan customs like decorating tree and gift giving, but that doesn't make it pagan.

They copied Santa Claus too, trying to merge St Nicholas with pagan mythical character known as the Grandfather Frost.

[Subgurl]

Jesus wasn’t born in the winter

[Opinion Owner]

I know, I explained that.

[strateguy632]

No because pagan has a different name, but we have Christmas for Christ like its name, as avia wrote here. Clever use of the deception envelope "did you know" so the answer "no" gets deflected- showing how pathetic anti christian are.

'Do you know' examples that atheists are a-theist and also a-moral

[Subgurl]

I’m not an atheist and I was raised Christian, as Protestants my families denomination recognized that “Christmas” was founded on pagan rituals and beliefs, along with Easter and Halloween rather than biblical practices and holidays.

[boundless]

When you lie, you look stupid. Do you like looking stupid? Because you look real stupid right now.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ca_Yx3aMCiEhttps://www.youtube.com/embed/DfcvJWPTY64

[boundless]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM41rmgiLuI

[Jersey2]

Yes we are aware and have been since elementary school (Catholic school).

Along with many other things like the Council of Nicaea which was also taught.

I am not sure why some think these things are a big revelation other than they just learned about them.

[slatyb]

People have been celebrating the winter solstice for millennia, just as they have celebrated spring and midsummer and the fall harvest. I love the Icelandic Christmas book flood (https://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Icelandic_Christmas_book_flood).

[ChicoFromThe305]

Yew but I don't celebrate the founding of the holiday, I don't even know what the pagan part of it is, I use Christmas to celebrate God so the paganism part has no meaning to me, which is what God cares about.

[RandomGirl42]

Yes, being a pagan who celebrates Yule, I did know this. 😊

[Curmudgeon]

AND it is *three days* after winter solstice in most of the populated world (Northern Hempsphere) (get it?)

But so what? it works.

[Snowman84]

Jesus was most likely not born on Christmas Day, the church wanted to stomp out pagan culture the the controlling greedy shit heads they were and still are.

[WhitneySnow]

It’s both. A lot of cultures celebrate Yuletide.

[Cute_User513]

I propose one massive year long celebration!

[Kaneki05]

Of course and it's brought up every year and Christians always pretend it's not. What's new?

[GeorgePulchri]

Yeah, certain parts of it. Easter is more so. But if you know the true meaning of Christmas and Easter now, you realize that other stuff is kinda irrelevant.

[TonyMetal___86]

Well we are happy to celebrate Christmas like that...

[Anonymous]

So, it's not a Roman pagan holiday Saturnalia is.😆

[elizamichale1]

I have heard so but not sure if its true