Christmas Eras Tour - Part II

Welcome back! We are going on a tour of the seven eras of the history of Christmas.

As a reminder -
I have been reading "Stations of the Sun" by Ronald Hutton. One thing I noticed while reading is that Christmas went through stages. I see at least 7 eras in the past 2,000 years. Each one is marked by its own characteristics which were either greatly changed or outright abandoned in the following era. I thought it might be worthwhile to take us on a tour of those eras. Since this post pulls mainly from Hutton, and Hutton focuses mainly on England where Christmas is concerned, this post will, too.

To help me write this post, I started reading "A Tudor Christmas" by Alison Weir and Siobhan Clarke. They also arrange their book in eras. Differently than mine, of course, but not too much. I am not the only one who noticed the eras.

In the previous post in this series, we reviewed eras 1 (Development) and 2 (Infancy). In those eras, the very base traditions of the holiday, including the Twelve Days and Advent, were solidified. Today, we will tour era 3 - the Catholic years.

Procure for thine self a mulled cider and sittest thou back to enjoy. Wassail!

CATHOLIC (567 to 1517 AD)

The Catholic era is the time starting when the base Christmas traditions were settled, to the time of the Protestant Reformation. This is the "golden age" of Christmas. I am naming this era "Catholic" because during this period most European Christians were Catholic, and to distinguish it from the Protestant Reformation. During this era, Christmas was spread by evangelists throughout Europe and to other corners of the globe, many new traditions began which we have since forgotten, and even though it was religious at heart it began to take on a much more festive feel - sometimes to excess.

This is a large era - almost 1,000 years - so, I am just going to skim the edges with broad strokes. So much happened in this era which I cannot get into because of space and attention span, like the founding of Oxford University, the Black Plague, the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, the crusades, the split of the Unified Church into Catholic and Orthodox, the sale of indulgences, the Borgias, the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic invasions, and etc. How I wish we all had infinite time and resources to explore this era with!

Understand, in this era people were deeply concerned with heaven and hell, good deeds and sin, blessings and plagues, etc. In the previous era, it was the church that initiated Christmas customs. In this era, it is the people who initiate the customs, but the church who either prevents or allows them. And it all ticked along according to a series of feast days most people today have completely forgotten.

Ronald Hutton makes a brilliant observation about the customs of this (or any) era. To understand the customs, one needs to understand where social units were centered:

"It is apparent, also, that calendar customs were created around social units which altered significantly over time: in ancient Britain the household, clan, and kingdom, in the high Middle Ages the household and the manor, and in the late Middle Ages the household, the municipality, and the parish."
-Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun", p.426

I think this goes a long way to explain why certain customs exist at certain times and in certain places, in the ways they did, and why they increase and decrease when they do. I think I will revisit the rest of this statement in the next posts.

But for Christmas specifically, you must dispel the modern idea that Christmas is all about Christmas Day. In this era, it is all about the Twelve Days, of which Christmas Day is merely the beginning.

It wasn't twelve days of un-paused revelry. There were four larger days:

1) Christmas Day was the first day. This was a rather austere day starting with midnight mass, then morning mass, a special meal, games, and other entertainment.
2) The day after Christmas was St. Stephen's Day (aka. "the Feast of Stephen"). On this day, gifts were given to servants and charity was given to the poor. Servants who worked Christmas day were often given this day off. After the Reformation, St. Stephen's Day would become Boxing Day.
3) New Year, the original gift-giving day. A good day to meet with friends. This day became especially popular in Scotland, where they call it Hogmanay.
4) And lastly, Twelfth Day. This was the biggest day for feasting and frivolity, to mark the end of the holiday before returning to work.
There were several lesser days. On 28 December was the Feast of the Holy Innocents, where children were given special license to be children in honor of the little ones Herod murdered. On the 31st came the Feast of the Holy Family. This was a more family-centered day.
If you have in mind some picture of people starting on Christmas Day and not stopping for twelve days, that isn't accurate. It was more punctuated than that. Many people carried on with life on these lesser days.

Immediately after the Twelve Days comes Epiphany (aka. Theophany). Technically, the Christmas season did not officially end until Candlemas on February 2.

But before you deck a single hall, don your gay apparel, or bring out that figgy pudding, you had to fast for Advent. No Advent Calendars for you, with little chocolates (made mostly of wax) inside. Advent is usually forty days, or four Sundays. Depending on when and where you lived Advent could have been much longer, starting at Martinmas (November 11). Generally, there was a fast from meats and cheeses on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then in other times and places, from the 1100s through the 1300s, Advent was practically abolished. Regardless, Advent was not then what it is now, a time of decorating and shopping and cookies. It was a time of preparation for the soul.
Oh, and there were no Advent Wreaths with colored candles, either. That comes much later.

At midnight mass, churches would be well lit with candles. People would carry candles in with them so the church could gleam with light in the darkness. Churches would be decked to the nines with greenery, usually holly and ivy. The lights would glisten and sparkle on the shiny holly leaves. It must have been absolutely wondrous to behold.

Before Christmas could develop in Britain, the Celts had to be converted to Christianity, and many were. But then the Anglo-Saxons invaded. They, too, were converted. But then the Vikings arrived. They were converted, too. Your Christmas traditions at this time were basically going to mass and praying to live through the coming year.

Certain familiar traditions arrived or were attached to Christmas in this era. You might recognize caroling, decking everything you could with greenery swags and wreaths (of holly and ivy and bay and rosemary), festive parlor games, telling ghost stories, gambling, feasting, fruitcake, costumes, plum or fig puddings, Christmas goose, and nativity scenes. You might be less familiar with such as:

• Christmas Pie (aka Great Pie) - a large pie with spices, meats, and fruits.
• Bean Cake - a dessert with a bean baked inside where the finder is declared Lord of Misrule.
• Souling - going door-to-door for money, food, ale, or soul cakes.
• Mumming - costumed entertainment, often hired.
• Hognelling - going around collecting money for the church.
• Wassail - a large communal bowl filled with a spiced drink.
• Frumenty - basically oatmeal with various add-ins.
• Feast of Fools - where a person of low authority was given temporary leadership.
• The Boar's Head - a roast or stuffed boar's head as the centerpiece of the feast. 

Elaborately dressing up food like it was a living thing, especially a peacock, was also popular. Most of these traditions would carry through to era 6 (Industrial Revolution) before dying out.

One extraordinarily important event in this era is Charlemagne's reign in Europe (768-814 AD). He was crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III on Christmas day in 800, and his son crowned King of the Franks. This led to an increased respect for Christmas versus Easter and Pentecost. It later became somewhat of a fashion to be crowned on Christmas Day. Charlemagne was intent that Christianity would be the glue that bound his empire together. He became "the scourge of German paganism", attempting to wipe it out completely. He changed their entire method of reckoning time, renamed months, altered the beginning and ending points of months, and otherwise “Romanized” their reckoning of time. For all of the claims of Christmas being caused by pagan traditions, in reality, we keep seeing pagan traditions being altered to become more like Christmas.

After him, other kings, such as Haakon I of Norway (934-961), rearranged Scandinavian pagan holidays to make them more like Christian holidays in hopes of converting the pagans in time. For example, he moved Yule from January (midwinter night was at a moon phase in mid-January) into late December, to bring it in line with Christmas. He had to balance his desire to introduce Christianity to Norway with the political expediency necessary to unite the realm. He ultimately failed in this. You can read about Haakon in "The Saga of Haakon the Good", with additional details in Alexander Tille's "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year" pp. 200-204, and "From Jól to Yule" on Scandinavian Archaeology.

For all the thousands of websites that say Christmas comes from Yule, that simply is not true. Neither come from the other. But from this point on, Christmas started to pick up the nickname of Yule.

Christian mystery plays begin in the 900s. Mystery plays grow grander and more popular until the end of this era. The historical roots of the Christmas Tree tradition can arguably be found here. For more, read Martha's post "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props?". We will keep revisiting the Christmas Tree as we go along.

The name "Christmas" first appears around 1038, as "Christes Maesse". English speakers would usually take a word then add "mass" at the end (e.g., Hallowmas, Martinmas, Christmas, Candlemas, etc). Prior to this, it was usually referred to as the Nativity. I find it interesting that Christmas was called Yule by some people before it was called Christmas.

The Yule Log allegedly gets its first mention in Germany in 1184. (Hutton, p. 39). We will see this again in the 1620s.
---Boring Yet Important Details behind this mention of Yule Log in 1184---
This mention is not certain by any means. Hutton gets this claim from Alexander Tille's book "The History of the Christmas Festival" from 1889. I was able to find the English version, "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year". The mention is on pp. 92-93. Tille says it is only an allusion, not a direct mention. So, the reference is in doubt. On p. 80, Tille comments on the many claims of pagan solstice origin of Christmas traditions. Tille says they are, "...nothing but unhistorical speculations, and would have been better omitted". On p. 93, Tille says the claims of pagan origins from one popular author are, "...generalizations, according to which a pre-Christian winter-solstice fire would have to be supposed as a general custom, are void of any historical foundation, and merely represent fantastic speculations." That's the exact same thing I keep seeing!

Whether the log truly came from Yule or was just called after Yule cannot be known, as Christmas was being called Yule by some for over 100 years by this point. With the terms Christmas and Yule being practically interchangeable, and things being altered by Charlemagne et al, it is difficult to know what was from the ancient Germanic winter holiday and what was a novelty from Christmas. There are arguments to be made for either side. The problem is, we have absolutely no direct evidence either way, so any modern claims of ancient paganism do seem to be but "fantastic speculation". We also have to take into account what is missing - such as, there is no mention at all in England until the 1620s. Why would this be, if the tradition was so old? Saxons were German and came to England well before the 1620s, and so did the Norse. So, we should see something. We do not. This debate cannot be settled.

---End of Boring Yet Important Details---

Around the mid-1300s is when decent records of folk customs start to appear in Britain, according to Hutton (p. 412). Before this, it seems few common folk wrote things down. To say "the oldest written record happens in..." is a difficult thing, because that does not tell anything about how a custom started, only that it was happening at a certain time. Without records of how they began, customs seem to just appear out of thin air. Consequently, we have many historians drawing various and conflicting conclusions about how a custom started.

Carols appear around 1300. Hutton says the oldest carol in Britain is the Cursor Mundi. If you try to read it, you will be puzzled why that is a carol. We imagine people singing on a street corner or house-to-house, but Hutton says carols were, "a distinctive type of lyric, made to accompany a ring dance of women and men holding hands," (p. 13). So, it was a style of rhyme. And Hutton believes they originated with the Franciscans. Originally, carols weren't specifically about Christmas. Christmas-specific carols appear in the 1400s in England.
If we expand beyond carols and look at Christmas songs and hymns, we can go much farther back, even to the early 300s. Read more in the article "Oldest Christmas Songs in the World" on oldest.org.

Mumming

In the article "Samhain Was Not On October 31", I highlighted souling and mumming, mentioning they were also practiced at Christmas time. Forsooth! 'Tis true! We see records from the 1100s or 1200s, but they get popular in general around the 1300s, when the church realized they could be used to generate charity.

You can see how many of the things people recognize as Halloween traditions today, like wearing costumes and going door-to-door, were done at Halloween sure enough, but were also done at other times throughout the year. Christmas was also a great time to tell ghost stories! Hence, Dickens' three ghosts of Christmas. Only very recently, within the past 100 years, did these things coalesce around Halloween only. This is precisely as we shall see how many practices later coalesced around Christmas Day.
In the 1500s, the masque tradition (a sort of an elaborate play) grew out of the mumming tradition, according to Hutton (p. 11). We will certainly mention the masque in the next era!

Lords, Kings, and anyone of means were expected to be charitable. Part of this charity was opening their homes to guests and holding Christmas feasts in their homes for their subjects and tenants. Depending on the situation, the meal might be provided, or else the guests might be expected to contribute something to the meal. These meals made it possible for the poor to enjoy a Christmas feast they could not hope to provide on their own.

This feasting was sometimes done in wonderous excess. Ronald Hutton, in his book "Stations of the Sun", tells us King Richard II held a banquet for, "10,000 guests and consumed 200 oxen and 200 tubs of wine." (p. 10) And some items listed from King Henry V included boar, dates with mottled cream, carp, prawns, turbot [a large flat fish], tench [a large freshwater game fish], perch, sturgeon, whelks [sea snails], roast porpoise [not dolphin], crayfish, roasted eels and lampreys, and marzipan. (pp. 10-11) There are other grand examples besides just these. You won't find the like of those feasts today - not even at Golden Corral.

One noteworthy issue in this era arose in the 1300s which is represented in the person of a Catholic priest named John Wycliffe. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction began to boil up in response to the perceived abuses of power in the church. My post focuses on Christmas, so I won't go into Wycliffe or the Reformation so much, but this needed to be mentioned because it will affect Christmas later.

During the 1400s in Germany, the first iteration of that tradition of all Christmas traditions appears when the actors guilds set up Paradise Trees outdoors. You've probably been wondering when this would appear. Here it is! This from Martha's post "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props":

"The first record we have dates to 1419, when the Fraternity of Baker's Apprentices set up a tree decorated with apples, wafers, gingerbread and tinsel in the local hospital at Freiburg (Brunner, p. 4). Another document claims the first Christmas tree came two decades later – in 1441, when the Black Heads (foreign traders guild) set up a tree in front of the town hall for a dance in Talinn, Estonia. The Black Heads also erected a tree in front of the Riga, Latvia town hall in 1510, where children decorated it with woolen thread, straw and apples."

Any claims of ancient Christmas Trees being mentioned in Jeremiah 10, or being sacred to Oden, or some adoption of generic pagan tree worship are completely false. Many of these claims are invented whole cloth, while the rest rely on surface similarities such as, "greenery was used in pagan rituals for centuries." For as much as I distrust the German History of Religions School and its authors, even Alexander Tille admits this is a false conclusion, in his book "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year" 1889 p. 80. Christmas trees are a Christian invention, derived from Christian traditions, and wouldn't become truly popular until the 1800s.

It was some undetermined point in this era, before the 1500s, when the legend of St. Nicholas began to gain new details. He was said to have cast out demons. Later, he was said to have contained a demon in a cage. This blended with the German folk tradition of wild things in the mountains and eventually led to the dark companions of St. Nicholas, such as Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht, Zwart Piet, and Belsnickel. The first written mention of a Krampus was in the 1500s. This was not a Christmas Krampus, however, but a Feast of St. Nicholas Krampus. This is why "Krampus Night" is December 5, the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas. The Christmas-specific Krampus would not come until the 1700s, after the Reformation.

Hopefully you see a theme of things happening according to the Catholic calendar of feast days in this era, but later those things are moved to other days, such as Christmas Day or Halloween.
Hopefully you also see a theme of things happening later than you were told. For example, people speculate dressing up in costume comes from the Krampus legend. But the first records of Krampus come much later than the first records of mumming. So....
Mind your sources.

One other incredibly noteworthy event that happened towards the end of this era is, a Spanish King funded an Italian man's sea voyage to India. Yes, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue to the New World in this era. The world would never be the same. Hard to believe this happened when Martin Luther was a little boy and before King Henry VIII was even born.

I am putting the end of this era in 1517 AD, due to it being the year Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church. I had thought about placing this later, but figured I might as well include the whole Reformation.

As you can see, what we recognize as Christmas today is not like Christmas during this era. Hopefully, you also see the Catholic era is different from the Infancy era before it. Sure, some things are the same now, like having a good meal or going to midnight Mass, but for the most part Christmas as it was in the Catholic era is gone. Despite all its fun and frivolity, it was a deeply religious time. There was an innocence to it that has been lost in the next few eras. I wonder if it might even be good to recapture some of that lost spirit of Christmas.

The next step in history is the attempt to stamp out Christmas, along with anything else that reminded Protestants of the Catholic Church.

See you then!

 

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Christmas Eras Tour - Part I

I have another history of Christmas post for you today.

I have been reading "Stations of the Sun" by Ronald Hutton. Sometimes painful to follow, the book is densely packed with information. Definitely not an easy reader you'll find in your special little one's Scholastic Book Club fundraiser catalog. I cannot say I agree with 100% of it, but I definitely agree with enough of it to keep reading it and to use it as a source. Today, I want to lighten up his material a little for you. Hopefully make it more accessible with a highlights reel.

One thing I noticed while reading is that Christmas went through stages. I see at least 7 eras in the past 2,000 years. (Everyone from an Armstrongist background knows that a good list has 7 items.) I thought it might be worthwhile to take us on a tour of those eras. Since this post pulls mainly from Hutton, and Hutton focuses mainly on England where Christmas is concerned, this post will, too.

Two things - these names and these dates are all my own observations, and they are rough descriptions.

1. Development - before there was a holiday, as the church was building towards it.
2. Infancy - the church decides what a Christmas is.
3. Catholic - twelve days of Christmas before the Reformation.
4. Oppression - Protestants try to banish Christmas but fail.
5. Restoration - Christmas barely survives as Protestants grow nostalgic.
6. Industrial Revolution - a near death experience and a resurgence.
7. Modern - Christmas becomes what we see today.

Some of my choices may seem rather arbitrary. I believe these are distinct eras. Each one is marked by its own characteristics which were either greatly changed or outright abandoned in the following era.
I am particularly interested in showing how our modern Christmas is mostly a product of the three eras before it (ie. 7 is caused by 4, 5, & 6), and how some people who make accusations against Christmas as we see it today are really projecting recent issues back into the distant past, anachronistically.

Sadly, I believe we can say Christmas is somewhat of a mirror on Christianity in general.

Ready?

DEVELOPMENT (0 to 313 AD)

The Development era is the time from the beginning of the first century, to the Edict of Milan, which allowed the church to rapidly mature. In this period, Christian scholars were investigating the details surrounding the nature of Christ, and Christmas, including its December 25 date, grew out of that. Consensus grew organically, but slowly, hampered by decentralization and persecution.

Much of the history of Christmas material on As Bereans Did is about this period due to there being so many misconceptions about this period.

The claim that Christmas is not among the earliest feasts of the Church is true. It wasn't. Then again, the only ones that were among the earliest feasts are Easter and Pentecost. Those two feasts had their own issues. There were at least two views on the memorial of the death and resurrection (see our articles on the Quartodecimans), and there was more than one way to calculate the timing of Easter Sunday. Since calculating Easter Sunday was not uniform, the timing for Pentecost was also not uniform. Jewish converts continued to observe all their own customs, but even they were not unified in opinion on most things. They started with the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene timings, which did not agree, and eventually the Rabbinical tradition grew out of the Pharisaical (see our article "FirstFruits and the Beauty of God's Timing").

The idea that the first century was somehow uniform and perfect but was later corrupted is simply not at all correct. Quite the opposite. It was chaotic and only later was standardized. They didn't even have a standard Bible. In the first century, a very few things were solidly agreed upon outside of certain core truths. Orthodoxy was in big concepts like faith, sin, righteousness, and the Gospel - what we might see as core-Christianity. This is the root reason why there was no Christmas early on. It was the "wild west" of Christianity. They only dealt with things as they arose. The theological debate Christmas was meant to solve - the very real human nature of Jesus - did not arise right away. So, Christmas didn't arise right away. The same could be said about most things, that they weren't there from the start. That isn't an "issue". It is simply a reality of a church in its infancy. I often hear people talking about getting back to the "first century church", but if they truly understood the first century church I think they would not like it.

Jesus did not answer most questions, but He answered the most important questions of salvation. He left the church to wrestle to understand Him better. One of the things wrestled with is the nature of our Lord and therefore the nature of God. What now of the Shema? How can a man also be God? Was He always God, or did He become one later? The church being so decentralized led to many opinions. Gnosticism began to spread.
Clement of Alexandria, in his work "Stromata", book 1, said the Basilideans, a Gnostic sect in Alexandria, initiated a feast of the baptism because they believed Jesus became enlightened by the highest God at His baptism. Their timing was early January, somewhere from the 9th to the 15th. Days honoring the nativity and early events of Christ's life appear to have started in response, as a way to emphasize the literal humanity and fully divine nature of Jesus. Multiple dates for the nativity were proposed, with May and mid-winter being the most popular.

From the middle of the second century, the mood in Egypt was on dates like April and May for the birth.
Remember this the next time you try to google the historical origins of almost any Christian tradition and see the ubiquitous, "may have started in pagan celebrations of solstice and light". Hard to get a celebration of solstice and light in May. Also remember Egypt has no winter, nor does their calendar system depend on the solstice.
In the late-second century, Christian scholars started moving toward the mid-winter period. In about 198, Clement of Alexandria (Egypt again) calculated Jesus' birth to late November. In 200-211 AD, Hippolytus (of Rome) calculated Jesus' death to March 25th and then added 9 months. March 25th + 9 months = December 25th.
At this time in pagan Rome, there was no known festival on December 25. There would not be a "birthday of the sun" for decades to come. Remember this the next time you read, "December 25 coincides with the birthday of the sun." Hard to coincide with a day that doesn't exist. The only holiday of significance to Christians in that range was Hannukah.
The March 25th date stuck and is still accepted to this day as the Feast of the Annunciation. The Christmas date also stuck, but it took a century more to really catch on.

The 200s were a time of feast or famine for Christians. In various places and times, they were tolerated, but in others persecuted. In February 303, Diocletian began the Great Persecution. Thousands of Christians died. It was their blood that watered the growth of the church. In February 313 AD, Constantine the Great and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, making Christianity legal in the Empire. Here, Christianity is merely legalized; it is not made the official religion of the empire until much later. That was enough to allow the church to begin to unify, standardize, and flourish.

I am putting the end of this era at 313 AD due to the Edict of Milan, because it was one of the most important events in Christian history.

The next step in the history of Christmas is its development as an official church feast day, and the solidifying of its base traditions such as Advent.

INFANCY (313 to 567 AD)

The Infancy era is the time starting at the Edict of Milan, to the time when the feast had matured across Christendom and its base liturgical traditions were solidified - which I am putting at the Second Council of Tours in 567 AD. In this era comes the Chronography of 354. During this era we see the first Christmas sermons and music, a competition between Epiphany and Christmas, settling of the twelve days of Christmas, the start of Advent, and making Christmas a government holiday.

Great strides were made in this century. Christianity, which had been scattered and dissociated, was now able to be out in the open, collective, and unified. Many efforts to standardize doctrines and practices began in this century.

Speaking of standardization, there is a great deal of confusion surrounding Constantine the Great's role in Christian orthodoxy. He is attributed far more credit than he deserves for most things. He has become the whipping boy for any anti-Catholic fundamentalist. Most of those claims are falsified outright or the facts twisted beyond recognition. There simply is no information about Constantine and Christmas, so I will make this mention of him then continue.

The Chronography of 354 was written for the year 354, but was likely written in the year 336, by one Filocalus, a Christian. I go into detail on this in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25". The Chronography consisted of 16 parts, one of which was the Commemoration of the Martyrs. The most notable event in the Commemoration for December 25 is the phrase, "...birthday of Christ in Bethlehem Judea." You can't get more blatant than that. This is the first unmistakable and uncontested mention of Jesus being born on December 25. This tells us that by 336 AD, the December 25 date was widely accepted.

If we can speculate any pagan connection at all, it would not be a coopt, as if to say Christmas finds its origins in pagan days, but as a competitive replacement, as if to say Christmas opposed and outlasted pagan days. Christmas outshone the sun, so to speak. As for other issues, such as how Saturnalia, Natalis Invicti, or Julian the Apostate fit in, see the article in the link above.

The first Christmas hymn was likely written in the early 300s, according to St. Jerome, by St. Hilary of Poitier. It is called "Iesous Refulsit Omnium" (Jesus Outshined All).

This overall mood of Christmas in this era is simple and deeply religious, and focused on the Nativity. In fact its first name was "Natalis" or "Deis Natalis", which is nativity/birth in Latin (the word Christmas would not be invented until much later). That is why you get names like Natale in Italy and Noel in France.

It was also at this time, in the early 300s, when Epiphany (aka. Theophany) began to become popular. Finding the origin of Epiphany is difficult, but there are hints that it started in the late 200s or early 300s and grew to be quite popular in the east by the mid-300s. Some claim it is a descendant of that Basilidian baptism feast mentioned earlier, but evidence for that is practically non-existent.

Christmas survived an attempt by Emperor Julian "the Apostate" to restore the Roman Empire back to paganism. Julian wrote his infamous "Ode to King Helios", in 362 AD. It can be reasonably speculated that Julian attempted to coopt Christmas as a pagan day. Much of the debate about Christmas and Sol Invictus hinges on this poetic work from Julian. We talk more about that in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25".

Gregory "the Theologian" Nazianzus, one of the greatest names of the early church (and beyond), in his 38th Oration - from a series of 45 sermons given throughout the year of 379-380 AD - speaks passionately and stirringly about the Nativity. I do recommend you read it sometime. We can know this is about Christmas since he spoke several orations on the church feasts. The 39th Oration was on Epiphany. Therefore, Epiphany and Christmas were distinct in his mind, and this one may be understood as Christmas. But it seems he did not deliver it on Christmas Day.

The year 380 AD was without a doubt the most important year in this era. One of the most significant developments in history was the decision by Emperor Theodosius I to issue the Edict of Thessalonica, making Christianity the official religion of Rome. This was done on February 27, 380 AD -- 67 years to the month after the Edict of Milan. Christianity became the only legal religion in the empire, and efforts to suppress paganism in the Empire while standardizing existing Christian traditions went into high gear. The church was certainly maturing now.

A potentially significant but easily overlooked development also occurred in 380. A synod was held in Spain, which is generally called the "Council of Saragossa". The point of the Synod was to address a specific issue which it deemed a heresy. Several acts were decreed by the Council. In the 4th Act (the exact text of which is lost but many references exist which give us good insight into what it said) there is an order about a preparation period and mandatory church attendance before the Nativity, from December 17th to January 6th (Epiphany). We can see at least two things here.

1) There was a period of preparation before the Christmas. This preparation eventually became Advent. So, the beginning of Advent is in the 4th century. This also shows the beginnings of the Twelve Days of Christmas, between Christmas and Epiphany. (The Twelfth Day is the day before Epiphany. Epiphany itself is not one of the Twelve Days of Christmas.)
2) The December 17th date, you should recognize already, is the date of Saturnalia. It does not seem the church was trying to adopt Saturnalia, rather to suppress it. Addressing heresy was the point of the Council, after all, and it was the mood of the Empire. Starting this period of preparation on Saturnalia is significant in that it shows the church was actively combatting any remains of Roman excess. It would be unsuccessful, however. 

We talk more about what happened to Saturnalia in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25". Look in the section on Bruma / Brumalia.
Both points here are useful in showing significant steps in the maturity of the season were present at this time.

The first recorded sermon delivered on Christmas Day comes to us from John Chrysostom, given in Antioch in 386, which was his first year in the ministry. It is a lovely message. I highly recommend you take the time to read it when you can. Here is an even more complete version form The Tertullian Project, but I find the formatting uncomfortable to the eye. One thing in particular to note about this sermon, Chrysostom employs apologetics. He is the first person known to mention the Course of Abijah in relation to the timing of Christmas. He uses it to defend the date, of course.

In 389, Emperor Theodosius I issued a decree that courts must be closed on Sundays and all major Christian holidays, including Christmas (Codex Theodosianus 2.8.18).

The churches of the east preferred Epiphany over Christmas. Epiphany took longer to catch on in the west while Christmas took longer to catch on in the east. In the early 400s, Christmas was solidified in almost all areas. The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Christmas lists Armenia as the lone holdout. Eventually it was settled that Christmas would be held in honor of the birth and Epiphany in honor of early events of Jesus' life such as His presentation at the temple, the visit of the Magi, and His baptism.

During this period, many pagans converted to Christianity, whether they were in heart or not. They brought many of their old traditions with them. The church worked to gradually eliminate such practices. One such tradition that is significant to Christmas which the church was never able to fully eliminate was (no, not Saturnalia) the New Year.
Arguably the most significant non-Christian tradition to survive was New Year on the kalends of January (ie. January 1st). It was so popular, it continued even when start of the new year was moved to March 25 in 527 AD (the start of the year was moved back to January 1 in the Gregorian Calendar in 1582), and it was unofficially treated as one of the Twelve Days of Christmas for centuries to come. There are two sources for the Christmas gift-giving tradition: St. Nicholas' Day and New Year. It was customary to send little gifts to family and friends on New Year in Rome. Gift giving on New Year would not move to Christmas until the 1800s.
If you suddenly have issues with gift giving, please read Martha's excellent post "Established and Imposed". Gift-giving is quite biblical. We reject "once pagan, always pagan" here at As Bereans Did.

During the 400s, Advent spread and became a period of fasting before Christmas just as Lent is before Easter. Fasting, which was originally reserved for the ordained, expanded to lay members. In later years, it was considered bad form to decorate during Advent.
Also, in 430, Pope Sixtus III is believed to have celebrated the first midnight mass in Rome at the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

By the 500s, various governments outside Rome began treating Christmas as a national holiday, taking after the Roman government. For example, in the Breviary of Alaric in 506 AD (that's Alaric II the Visigoth, grandson of the Alaric that sacked Rome). It likely took this from the the Codex Theodosianus in 438 AD.

I am putting the end of this era in 567 AD, due to the Council of Tours. The time between Christmas and Epiphany has come to be known as the Twelve Days of Christmas. The Twelve Days of Christmas were officially recognized in the Second Council of Tours in 567. (This was repeated in the Council of Oxford in 1222 and at the Council of Lyon in 1244.) Cannons XI and XVII, proclaimed the importance of the fasts of Advent and the days between Christmas and Epiphany. You can read more in Roger Pearse's article "When to take down the Christmas decorations? A canon of the 2nd Council of Tours (567)". At this point, the season as we know it is completely in place and mature enough to move forward.

The next step in history is the widening and deepening of Christmas during in the many years up to the Reformation.

See you next time for Part II.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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Misinformed On Mistletoe

[Note: this article was terribly long when I first published it, so I've condensed it.]

If you just google mistletoe without digging through old history books, you would seriously get the impression the entire history of mistletoe can be summed up as nothing else but, "The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas."

That is not even remotely the story about mistletoe.

Gonna be frank with you. I don't care much at all for the mistletoe tradition. My family did not pass the tradition to me. I am not particularly in need of an excuse to kiss fair maidens. I don't find cheap, plastic mistletoe to be all that attractive. I much prefer nutcrackers.

Then why write about it? Two reasons. First, I had meant to write something else but was side-quested by all the information on mistletoe. It was quite the adventure. There is more to it than I imagined. Second, because I was told something and now I want to know if it was true. Let me give you but two examples of the claims I grew up hearing.

"The traditional Christmas tree, the Yule log, the holly wreaths, and kissing under the mistletoe - all were borrowed from heathenism and used in a pagan religious orgy dedicated to the sun-god."
-Rod Meredith, "The Ten Commandments", 1972, p. 41

"Now where did we get this mistletoe custom? Among the ancient pagans the mistletoe was used at this festival of the winter solstice because it was considered sacred to the sun, because of its supposed miraculous healing power. The pagan custom of kissing under the mistletoe was an early step in the night of revelry and drunken debauchery - celebrating the death of the "old sun" and the birth of the new at the winter solstice."
-Herbert Armstrong, "The Plain Truth About Christmas", 1970, p. 15

Not very flattering! But are they correct? Let's find the answer to that.

Today, we are going to see the distant history of mistletoe, where it came from, and its surprising uses. Also, I will give some speculation on how it came to us. I present this post to you, dear reader, because mistletoe turns out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

Discussions about mistletoe tend to come around to Druids. So, might as well start there.

DRUIDS GALORE

You've heard about how the Druids held mistletoe in a particularly high regard. That's what the Romans said, anyway. That's what most everyone says. You can't have a good discussion about Druids without Pliny the Elder. He says quite a bit about mistletoe and Druids in his work "Natural History". For example:

"Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant by the Gauls. The druids - for that is the name they give to their magicians - held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the oak."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

The Druids wrote nothing down, so we have to rely on the good word of others for details about them. So far as we know, Pliny wrote accurately. Pliny keeps proving himself in other quotes. I vote we trust him.

But Pliny did not say it was only the Druids who used mistletoe.

He spends four chapters on mistletoe and its particular details, but only one paragraph concerns the Celts. The way he makes it sound, most cultures in the west were incredibly well familiar with it and its uses.

It gets stranger. Pliny did not say all Druids used mistletoe.

Pliny only mentions the Druids in France (Gaul) loved it. It says nothing about Celts in general, who lived from Britain to Turkey. We have to be careful when we say things like "the Celts" or "the Druids" because those are more concepts than definite groups. Celts were divided up into tribes who fought each other all the time. It is merely an assumption that all Druids everywhere had the same practices. Why would we assume that? The Galatians, to whom Paul wrote his famous epistle, were every bit as Celt as the French. Were their cultures identical? No. As a matter of blatant fact, historians have known for some time that Celtic cultures and practices most definitely were not the same. And they differed over relatively small geographic areas.

Let's explore claims of pagan origin even further by looking at the solstice.

THE SOLSTICE

I get tired of careless claims on the internet like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because Druids collected it at the solstice." No. That isn't true. This shows people have not thought this through.

But not all claims are careless internet commentors. Alison Wier, author of "A Tudor Christmas" (a book I own and appreciate quite a bit) says the same:

"The ancient Romans observed that the Druids of the British Isles used mistletoe in winter solstice ceremonies and in healing."
-Alison Wier, "A Tudor Christmas", 2018, p. 20

She continues on to talk about Pliny. Let's go back to quote directly from Pliny about Druids:

"The mistletoe, however, is but rarely found upon the oak; and when found, is gathered with rites replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, the day which is the beginning of their months and years, as also of their time cycles, which, with them, are only thirty years. This day they select because the moon, though not yet in the middle of her course, has already considerable power and influence..."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

So, it was not the Druids in Britain but the druids in Gaul (France), and it was not the winter solstice but their new year. Was their new year at the winter solstice? Best data says no.

In our recent post "Samhain Was Not On October 31", we looked at the only known Druidic calendar. If you want more details, you may read that article.

At Halloween, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and Samhain was the Druidic new year. At Christmas, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and the winter solstice was the Druidic new year. Well, it can't be both. (And Ronald Hutton advocates for the mid-winter.)

There is no evidence at all the Druids had solstice or equinox celebrations. This is a misunderstanding arising from two thousand years of various traditions getting jumbled and confused together. They were a lunar society. Their calendar shows it and Pliny attests to it. 

"But Stonehenge measured the sun!" Not Druidic. All of the henge artifacts and burial mounds predate the Druids, in some cases by over a thousand years. (Yes. They're that old!) The same goes for other henges in other areas, such as Goseck in Germany. They far predate the civilizations we recognize and the times we are interested in here.

I want to point out that all of these things I have said about the Druids and the solstice also pertain to the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. All had lunar calendars. None have known, verified solstice celebrations. Even Yule was not a solstice celebration until it was reinvented in the 20th century. We can be fairly sure they had mid-winter festivals, but not solstice festivals specifically.

Then there are the ubiquitous claims like, "Such and such originated in pagan celebrations of light at the solstice." Most everything is explained in this way. These very generic claims about "mistletoe comes from widespread solstice traditions" are not fact-based, make definite claims of speculation like "they could have taken from the Celts", confuses midwinter festivals with solstice festivals, draw conclusions based on broad generalizations like "greenery was used in many cultures", and are generally built on conditions as we see them today being anachronistically projected backwards in time.

See how this works? One person connects two dots that don't connect, and someone else repeats it, and it gets repeated over and over until you simply cannot get a straight answer anymore.

Here's a straight answer -
Mistletoe goes with the Druid new year, but their new year does not go with the solstice. Do you understand what that means? We have two options: Druids used mistletoe in October/November, or in mid-January, and neither one lends itself well to our records or traditions.
In short, people are just as wrong about Druids and Christmas as they are about Druids and Halloween.

NORSE

Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the Norse.

If you do a simple google search, you will find careless claims, like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because of Yule." And just like with the Druids, that is not exactly based on reality.

Understand the Norse (and the Germans) were not the Celts/Druids. Completely different culture.
In one of the Prose Eddas, Gylfaginning, is the death of Baldur, a son of Odin. In most but not all versions of the story of the death of Baldur, he was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe. This is why mistletoe had a foreboding, deathly reputation among the medieval Norse.

Does that sound like Christmas to you? It sure doesn't to me.

The timing of Baldur's death is also important.
Baldur is associated with mid-summer to late fall. His death would initiate Ragnarök, which is associated with winter. Therefore, the Scandinavian pagan traditions of death by mistletoe had nothing to do with Christmastime (nor Yule).

You will not get this from a mere google search. I can't tell you how many times I've read about Frigg, the goddess of love, wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. Did you notice none of those claims come with sources cited, besides, "legends say...". That is because they are all baseless. You will get many tales of Norse using mistletoe at Yule, and mentions of love and happiness. But that is not how things were in the past. All of those pretty paintings of Vikings sitting outside in the snow having a mead under some mistletoe are beautiful, but rather inaccurate.

If you look around Scandinavian cultures today, the meaning of mistletoe is not deathly at all. Quite the opposite. It represents love and happiness.
How?
Not wanting to take weeks to research the evolution of Scandinavian cultures over the past 1,000 years, I just asked ChatGPT. I asked, "If mistletoe was used as a kenning for death in the Prose Edda, how did it become a symbol of happiness in modern Scandinavian culture?" It explained how their culture developed, then it said:

"From England, mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread to other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence."

Isn't that odd, now? It wasn't the Norse who brought mistletoe to the Christians, because to them it was deadly and ominous, but the Christians who changed mistletoe from death to life for the Norse. And it wasn't ancient but quite recent. From this change come the legends of Frigg wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. They are not ancient legends.

Once again, just as with other studies we have done here at ABD, we see people taking things the way they are today and projecting that backwards in time, anachronistically, and reinventing the past.

Pagan ritual is only one part of the story. Mistletoe's pragmatic uses were far more popular and widespread.

MEDICINE AND BOTANY

Where we have a centuries-long gap in information about pagan uses, we have multiple sources for mistletoe's practical uses. Mistletoe is mentioned in older works for its medicinal value or else for sheer botanical interest.

Going back to Pliny, he says:

"The hyphear [mistletoe that grows on a larch] is the best for fattening cattle with; it begins, however, by purging off all defects, after which it fattens all such animals as have been able to withstand the purging. It is generally said, however, that those animals which have any radical malady in the intestines cannot withstand its drastic effects. This method of treatment is generally adopted in the summer for a period of forty days."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 93.

The way Pliny talks about mistletoe, it is clear there was an incredible amount of knowledge already existing, which he was just gathering up. He finished writing "Natural History" in 77 AD. More than 2,000 years ago, they had it figured out to the point where they knew which mistletoe was better when it grew on which trees. Farmers used it on their cattle. Healers used it on people. This amazes me!
Other ancient authors wrote about mistletoe. Some of the more notable include Virgil in his "The Georgics" book 1, Galen in his "On The Power of Simple Drugs", and Ovid.

That knowledge remained. Several more recent authors have written about it, too.

In 1485, Jacob Meydenbach of Mainz, Germany wrote the "Gart der Gesundheit" (Garden of Good Health), which was greatly expanded and translated to Latin in 1491 under the title "Hortus Sanitatis" (Garden of Health). In it, he provides a drawn illustration of mistletoe, and describes its medicinal uses, including epilepsies, digestive issues, hemorrhaging, and as a general tonic. This is the oldest reference I could find on the practical uses of mistletoe, outside of Pliny. Clearly, it draws from widely-known uses and perhaps even earlier written works.
It is particularly remarkable for being the first known work where art was used to depict the natural world outside of a religious context. The first illustrated encyclopedia. It was widely popular and translated into several different languages in the following years, including English.

One other notable author is William Coles. In 1657, William Coles wrote "The Art of Sampling". He mentions various health benefits of mistletoe for man and beast, and quotes Sir Francis Bacon. Plus, he mentions the berries. I tried to find when mistletoe berries out. Apparently, it depends on the tree it grows on, but mistletoe produces berries from October to January, and those berries can linger until May. Yeah. That puts it in the range of Christmas.
Coles also wrote this: 

"I think the thing itself is better known, than the manner of its growing, because it is carried many miles to set up in homes about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a glistening berry."
(p. 41.)

And there you have the first mention of mistletoe at Christmas time that I was able to locate. He is not the first to mention mistletoe, but he is the first to mention its use at Christmas time. Centuries later than one would expect from a pagan coopt.

It is important to note that Coles did not say it was used for Christmas, only that it was collected at Christmas time. It berries out at that time, so naturally it would be collected at that time. But being collected at that time is different than being collected for that time. It is reasonable to conclude it was being hung to dry and sold at market.

And did you know mistletoe and its derivatives is used in modern medicine? It's true! It is used in both cancer and immuno-therapies, and is being considered for other uses.

Since the majority of the info we have is about medicine, why do so many people claim mistletoe was almost exclusively used by Druids for rituals? Bad info. Most people giggle because you kiss under mistletoe, and they really don't care about the stuff otherwise. It's the ones who obsess over "once pagan, always pagan" who seem to be confused about it. They see paganism in everything, and only want what affirms them. There is so much more to it than this.

FERTILITY

Kissing under the mistletoe is its most popular use. How many times have you heard mistletoe was an aphrodisiac? More than once, I'd wager. Recall how Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong blamed mistletoe on pagan rituals. If you read this blog at all, you will not be one bit surprised when I tell you everything they said there is false.

We do have a reference from Pliny that puts together Druids, mistletoe, and fertility. How dirty-minded were they? Let's take a peek.

"It is the belief with them that the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

They did believe it was a fertility drug ...for cattle.
But only if the animals could survive the process. Doesn't sound so debauched to me.

Other than that, the only other mention Pliny makes of kissing in that entire book is that Nero would kiss his favorite tree. That does sound a little debauched. Not at all in regards to anything we're talking about here, though.

Regarding kissing, there is no known record of kissing under mistletoe until the later-1700s. That means it developed in the late-1600s or early-1700s at the earliest. The first place mistletoe is found in a romantic context is in a song from a musical comedy called "Two to One", which was published in 1784.

When at Christmas in the hall
The men and maids are hopping
Cry, "What good luck has sent ye?"
And kiss beneath the mistletoe.

From that point on, it is found more and more often in a romantic context. And we see it spreading to other European cultures. What might have caused it? Look at the timing. It was immediately after the Puritan era.

It wasn't just a kiss under the mistletoe, per se, it was a young man got one free kiss from the maiden of his choice per berry on the mistletoe sprig. When the berries ran out, he got no more freebies.

No, not in heathen orgies. Not in drunken debauchery. Not an unbroken continuation of ancient fertility rites. That is entirely fabricated nonsense. "God's own truth," they called that. But false. Somewhat of a letdown there. We were promised things much more juicy than cow medicine and 18th century prudishness.

In short, the Druids are not the source of the kissing tradition. Nor was it some other unnamed group of ancient heathens caught up in unbridled passion. It was just the relatively modern Europeans.

The explanation for the kissing having been located, we have yet to see why mistletoe was a Christmas decoration in the first place.

MISTLETOE FOR CHRISTMAS

So, why do we have mistletoe at Christmas? Unfortunately, no one living knows for certain. The earliest records I have been able to find seem to say it was more of a medicinal thing, and never a part of corporate church celebration, except by accident, until the late 1600s. This tends to lead away from a pagan coopt. But the strongest evidence we have points to our Christmas traditions rising out of the English Puritan suppression of Catholic symbolism.

Going back to "Stations of the Sun", I will summarize what Hutton says in chapters 2 and 3.
The Scottish and then the English heavily suppressed Christmas from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s. The popular choice in greenery changed as Protestants rejected many symbols from Catholicism, including holly and ivy. Much to their chagrin, suppressing the religious inflated the secular use of greenery. Rather than removing greenery altogether, it was only removed from churches, not the public square. Without the religious symbolism behind it, the greenery options expanded. Anything green at that time was used. Hence mistletoe at Christmas. This is the time period when we start seeing mistletoe used specifically as a Christmas decoration. Mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread into other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence.

That sounds quite reasonable, but it could all be undone if there were some earlier reference. I searched long and wide for earlier references than Coles, but came up empty. Finally, I asked ChatGPT if it could find an earlier reference to mistletoe used at Christmastime, but it was unable.

The most reasonable conclusion is - there is nothing older to find, because it wasn't being used as a Christmas tradition.

This gap of mistletoe as a Christmas decoration is across the board. We have no mention of it in any culture - as a Christmas time tradition, specifically - until it appears in England in the late-1600s.
Add to this the fact that we see it first in England and then spreading out into other areas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mistletoe as we know it today appears in all areas in the same time period.

What else can we say? Mistletoe either was not being used at Christmas at all until the late 1600s, or it was so rural and so unimportant that no one mentioned it. All of the evidence we have, or the lack thereof, lends support to Ronald Hutton's explanation. Nothing so far lends credence to the claim it came directly to Christmas from ancient paganism, especially the Druids. Pagan coopt is the weakest of all explanations by far. 

Perhaps that 1500-year gap is as it should be. Perhaps we have not lost information after all. Perhaps it is illusory, built from an insistence on some ancient pagan origin. It is quite reasonable to conclude we are searching for evidence of a pagan origin that never really happened. If mistletoe as a Christmas tradition really did start after the Reformation, then a 1,500-year gap should be there.

What the world needs is the discovery of some new literary source that fills in the missing pieces ...if there are missing pieces to begin with. In the meantime, all one can do is speculate based on the solid information we have in hand rather than insisting on theories we have no evidence for.

CONCLUSION

"The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas." False.
"Well, then it was because of the Norse and Yule." No.
"Well, then it was because of some unnamed culture's winter solstice rituals." Incorrect.

Do you recall those two quotes from the start of this post, the ones from Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong? Read them again quickly and see how they are just nonsensical. Once again, we see people passing off false history as "God's truth". That should come as absolutely no surprise to the readers here. The thing is, there is a lot of bad info out there. That's why we needed this post.
Mistletoe did turn out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

The history of mistletoe is a long, complex, and winding road. We may never get all the answers we seek. But we did get a few.
Today, we learned:

• Mistletoe was used medicinally and ritually throughout most of the western world since forever ago. It was also used to trap birds. Everyone seemed to use it.
• Pliny said mistletoe was used as an animal medicine especially in summer. Mistletoe is not just a winter thing.
• The first mention of mistletoe being collected at Christmas time was from 1657.
• Mistletoe was not popular in churches at all. English churches preferred holly and ivy.
• If mistletoe was not used in churches, that speaks against it being coopted from pagans by the church.
• We do not know exactly when mistletoe became associated with Christmas, but it appears to be during the Reformation, in the late-1600s.
• Mistletoe does not start appearing as a Christmas tradition in other nations outside the British Isles until the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Kissing under mistletoe did not start until the 1700s. The first mention was from 1784.
• Mistletoe was not an aphrodisiac ...except for animals.
• If the mistletoe tradition involved a continuation of a pagan practice, the Druids aren't the best candidate.
• Druids in France loved mistletoe, only when it grew on oak trees. We don't know much about Druids in other areas.
• French Druids most important use of mistletoe was at their new year, which was likely in fall, not at the winter solstice. And they were moon-based, not solar-based. Some say Druids had no solstice celebrations at all. Claims of Druids and solstice are likely to be false. Mistletoe was not particularly a winter tradition for them.
• Norse mistletoe was foreboding and deathly, and associated with Autumn. It changed after they imported the Christmas mistletoe tradition from the English.
• The Anglo-Saxons had no known mistletoe traditions.
• And there is quite a bit of misinformation floating around, started after the Reformation.

There sure is a lot more to mistletoe than I thought there was! Life is a funny thing. I sat down to write a very small and simple post about Christmas greenery, so light and easy to read with pictures from Pompeii, when all of this information about mistletoe starts pouring out of the internet at me. Oh, not easily, mind you. I had to dig, dig, dig for it. Next thing you know, I'm reading many esoteric histories, chasing down recursive series of sources cited one after the other, and even talking to software. At one point, I had five books open at the same time. I have nine tabs open in my other browser right now. But there is some good information out there if you have the determination to get it.

In the end, I think the simplest explanation for mistletoe is the best. People decorate all year around. Flowers in the spring and summer, produce in the fall, greenery in the winter. What truly seems to matter about mistletoe is that it is not only a useful plant, but is green and has pretty berries when it needs to. Everything boils down to that.

 

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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X-Mas Exasperations

I have a rant for you today! ♫It's my blog and I can cry if I want to...♪

For years, I have been writing posts that try to get to the historical origins of dates and traditions of the holidays. I happen to be writing a new one these past couple of weeks. Those posts usually come across in favor of holidays. That's just how the chips fall naturally. Look. I read history and I tell you what history says. Simple. Some people say holidays are pagan, we investigate and usually find that's not true, and we write about it. That makes us look like we are 100% pro-holiday. But we aren't 100%.

One of the things that makes As Bereans Did so effective at digging for truth is our insistence on facing our own biases (which everyone has) for the goal of staying neutral. Whether we love something or hate it, doesn't matter much. We want the truth. Regardless. The truth can take care of itself. To do this, one must consider both sides. Hence, you will see us saying people like Herbert Armstrong were right sometimes, or that we don't like certain Halloween traditions. That approach has an unfortunate side-effect of making one a Moderate. Nobody loves a moderate. Everyone adores a zealot (who agrees with them). Who would you rather have on your side - a zealot who will say anything no matter how ridiculous so long as it supports you, or a moderate who says, "Well... they have a point." ?? Thought so.

Today, I am going to play devil's advocate and purposefully rant about the negative side of modern Christmas in the United States of America and vent about some things I don't like. Today, I complain about modern Christmas in America. Pardonne moi, I mean X-Mas - because some people want "Christmas' to be an offensive word even as they celebrate it. For just one example, Neiman Marcus recently changed the name of their seasonal catalog, which had been called "Christmas Book" for 100 years, to "Holiday Book". I saw a door mat at Costco the other day that said something like "Happy Celebration". They couldn't even say holiday.

Oh, where to begin? There is so much to dislike!
Christmas is a wonderful time of year. But let's face it, "wonderful" in this world does not mean perfect.

SECULARLISM

I think the top complaint I personally have about Christmas in America is that it has been taken over by secularism. Everything else in my post seems to extend from this.

Author and researcher Ronald Hutton, in his book "Stations of the Sun", makes a strong case that the secularism in Christmas can be laid at the feet of two things. First, Protestants in England and Scotland. By trying to ban it in the 1600s to spite the Catholics, the Puritans only succeeded in stripping it of its religious nature. They inadvertently caused the rise of secular traditions. Second, the Industrial Revolution shoulders blame. The world is a very different place because of it.
I envy those nations who were never robbed of the special sacred nature of their day.

Martha wrote my personal favorite series in all of the ABD catalog, the "Falsely Accused?" series. So very well researched and written. She investigated the history of Christmas Trees. In one post, "Falsely Accused? Nazi Propaganda Lives On...", she demonstrated the Nazis played a big part in secularizing modern Christmas. It worked!
Thanks a lot, Adolf. You were just a peach. (He said, sarcastically.)

Christmas in the old days was twelve days long - the Twelve Days of Christmas. It wasn't the month-long behemoth we see now. In the past, people went to church on Christmas day, did a parade through town, maybe they would catch an instructional play put on by the church, they had a nice meal at home with family and friends or went to a lavish dinner at a Lord or King's estate, they would play some games and tell some stories - tales from the past and spooky ghost stories were very popular, maybe you would go caroling or souling to raise some money for the church or a charity, and that was about how it went. Gift-giving was not central. Gifts were the realm of St. Nicholas' Day or New Year's. I read a version of "Old Christmas" from Washington Irving every year because I like to think about how Christmas used to be celebrated in some places back before there was a Coca Cola or a Nazi propaganda machine. It was quite different from today. Basically, a more religious version of Thanksgiving.

Without Jesus at the center of Christmas, the celebration has no context. What is the context, then? It's not on the solstice. There is no natural purpose for it. It just becomes a winter festival, giving people something to drink about. Most claims of paganism are either completely false or they arose after December 25 was chosen by Christians. The day just becomes a day of nothing in particular, with traditions from the 1900s made ever bigger. Secular America took Christmas and said, "We can't find any good reason for this day, but we like the pretty lights and trees and songs, so we want to keep it around. But what do we do and why?? Hey! Let's make the day ABOUT the lights and trees and songs!"
So, you have a feast for the emotions and the senses, complete with Darth Vader ornaments, ugly sweaters, 25-foot-tall inflatable Santas, $10,000 synchronized LED light displays, and $60,000 luxury automobiles wrapped up in large red bows. Santa has completely replaced Jesus. The tree goes up a month before Christmas rather than on Christmas Eve. The twelve days of Christmas are gone. Only history nerds have ever heard of Twelfth Day. The tree and the ornaments simply exist for their own decorative sake rather than as symbols with specific religious meanings. And then tales of ancient pagan origins get tossed in there to explain it all apart from the Nativity, even though they are not accurate.

I am just expressing the sad fact that, in a post-Christian world, Christmas isn't even considered a Christian holiday by most of the people who celebrate it. Because many people who go about with Merry Christmas on their lips - excuse me, Happy Holidays, because how dare we speak Merry Christmas - would hardly even qualify as barely-churched. Harry Potter celebrates Christmas for crying out loud.

Some Christians say we should abandon the day because it has become too secular. Great idea. How'd that work out the first time with the Puritans? That's the main reason we're in this mess in the first place. And what does that mean, anyway? "Too secular." Is there some kind of a scale I am unaware of? Why should we abandon our day because secular people like it, too? Rome used to be "too secular". If we abandoned everything that is "too secular", we might as well go back into the catacombs. What's your alternative? Winter Family Fun Night? Right! As if whatever alternative you come up with is not also going to eventually be coopted by secularism. Then you're right back where you started.
I say we make a stand. I say we reclaim Christmas! Secularism may be my biggest complaint, but that doesn't mean I'm going to surrender to it. Quite the opposite!

All you have to do to get started is to make sure your Christmas is about Jesus. That's what I'm doing. You don't have to throw out your decorations or become a curmudgeon. Just focus it on Jesus. Next year, add in more charity. It's that simple!

Yeah, yeah. I know some people will mock the idea of "put Christ back in Christmas". "Christ never was in Christmas," they say. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Look here! This is the As Bereans Did blog. We've already done the homework. We are on year 14 of doing the homework. We have investigated pagan origins more times than we can count, and we feel completely justified in absolutely rejecting that as complete nonsense. Go sell "once pagan, always pagan" somewhere else. You want to insist Christians coopted Christmas? That's not a winning message. All that says to me is we did it once and we can do it again.

CONSUMERISM & EXCESS

I like Christmas gifts, but not the way we do it these days. As I said earlier, Christmas was not originally the big gift-giving holiday. True story! Thank the Protestant Reformation for that.
Thank you, Martin Luther. Thank you, King Henry VIII. You're both just a peach. (He said, sarcastically.)
*deep sigh*

All those overblown tales you hear about Christmas in the distant past being a wild and debauched day are not at all representative of the majority. Stories like that tend to rely on abandoned claims from the 1800s. You might find a group of people in some place at some time doing some questionable things. I'm not here to rant about the medieval French, though. The typical Christmas day was not like that on the whole.
Not any more!

I think this complaint about Christmas is less about Christmas, per se, and more about a certain disappointment with the world in general. It's the same complaint I could make about nearly anything. There is too much! And it's too commercial! I like modern medicine, but not drug commercials and suspicions that pills are more about keeping people manageably sick than truly healing them. I like grocery stores, but not highly processed foods and seed oils and et cetera that are cheap but terrible for you. I like the convenience of driving, but not used car sales people, cars that are designed to break, gambling on the right insurance coverage that might never pay out when you need it most, overcrowded highways, political manipulation of gas prices and road taxes, and a hundred other things. Do you see my point? Greed distorts everything it touches, not just Christmas.
But is has touched Christmas.

I got a comment recently correlating Christmas decorations and Herbert Armstrong's purchase of the Czar's golden flatware (and Steuben crystal, and $2,500 bottles of Remy Martin Lousi XIII cognac, and private jets, and mansions, and...). I disagree with the comment. It goes too far. But! It's not like that comment is entirely off the mark. The heart of that comment is about exploitation, and I think we all agree we are against exploitation (at least in theory). Christmas has become a festival of consumption. I am not an anti-Capitalist by any means, but some of those criticisms cannot be entirely dismissed. People seem to go bananas for spending all of their money on junk. Junk primarily made in Chinese sweat shops. Junk that does not honor Jesus. Junk that does nothing to aid in our Gospel message. Junk that brings no glory to God at all. How did that monologue go in the Jim Carey version of "How The Grinch Stole Christmas"?

"That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? That’s what it’s always been about. Gifts, gifts… gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts, gifts! You wanna know what happens to your gifts? They all come to me. In your garbage. You see what I’m saying? In your garbage! I could hang myself with all the bad Christmas neckties I found at the dump. And the avarice. The avarice never ends! ‘I want golf clubs. I want diamonds. I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored, and sell it to make glue!’"

I mean, he's not entirely wrong.

The car commercials, where the one comes home with an $80,000 Lexus in a bow, only to find the other got them a $90,000 truck in a bow. Or the jewelry commercials, where the man is encouraged to buy a $10,000+ engagement ring for the woman of his dreams. Who are these people anyway? Those commercials make me cringe. Can't afford a new 1,000 horsepower European hyper-car? We can accommodate you! Black Friday starts in early November now. There's pre-Black Friday, Black Friday, after-Black Friday, Cyber Monday, door busters, extended hours, and deep discounts on Chinese junk of every shape and hue.
Have you listened to the lyrics of "Up On The Housetop" lately? Little Will gets, "a hammer and lots of tacks, also a ball and a whip that cracks." Kids these days would burn down the house if that's what they got.

Let Neiman Marcus change the name of their catalog. I prefer it! Christmas isn't about what's in that book anyway.

I gotta hand it to ol' Herbert Armstrong; sometimes he had clever lines. (He was a detergent salesman after all.) One of his better lines was, "The way of give vs. the way of get." The secular, consumerist Christmas is fairly well in the "way of get" category. The people who say "Christmas is pagan" may be factually incorrect, so far as its origins go, but the people who say "Christmas is consumerist" are not.

I wish I had an "all you have to do" simple answer for this problem. What do you do about consumerism? Set a spending limit. Set expectations up front that you're not going to do Christmas that way anymore. Buy less junk. Give less gifts, and give more to charity. Notice that I didn't say, "Give no gifts." I just said give less gifts ...to people who already have, and give more to people who do not. Charity. It's the Christian way.

I want everyone who reads this blog to give me a Christmas gift this year. And the gift I want is for you to give is something to the poor. Donate, volunteer, whatever you can do. You give to me by giving to them. That's what I want for Christmas. It's the same thing Jesus asked for this year!

BUSY-NESS

The secularism leads to the consumerism, and the consumerism leads to the busy, busy, busy-ism. All the crowds, the traffic, the noise, the events, the family get togethers, the friends' get togethers, the work get togethers, this, that, and the other thing. GAH!

It's bad enough to have to fight through the crowds at every store to pick up a gift, but much more often than not I am only trying to do my regular, day-to-day shopping, and to fight the crowds just to get a gallon of milk and some bread adds insult to injury. This isn't a hurricane, people! I just want some milk and bread and I'm gone! ... GAH!

The streets are bumper-to-bumper from November to February. If people aren't shopping for gifts, they're returning gifts. Streets wouldn't be so very crowded and drivers so very angry if not for that one person who is moving at a crawl because they're so terrified of the traffic. If you are so terrified, then you are the very danger you fear! Perhaps car pool? GAH!

I do not want to see my co-workers any more often then I absolutely must, but I do want to see my family and friends. I do! No, I really do. Kinda. Just not at this time of year. Let's have some get togethers at other times. It's cold, the kids are cranky, I am cranky, the sun has been down since 4 PM, and I just want to sleep. GAH! 

In the words of Sweet Brown, "Aint nobody got time for that!"

Talking about this is giving me anxiety. Want to fix this? See the previous two sections. Moving on.

BAD MUSIC

Two words: Mariah Carey.

I even like Mariah's songs. (I said what I said.) But I'm so sick of them!

Have you ever noticed how music celebrities all seem to need to have a Christmas album? It's the same few songs that you've heard a billion times, but in their voice. That's what we needed! *ugh* I like Amy Grant and all, but her extremely popular album has no soul to my ears. Some celebrities even have multiple versions of the same songs. They're not even necessarily better versions.  Looking at you, Johnny Mathis. And please do not even get me started on the Beetles members! How is it the Eurythmics of all bands makes a vastly superior song than former members of the Beetles? Give me an Andrea Bocelli, or Nat King Cole, or Michael Bublé any day over a soulless cash grab. I am sick of Frank Sinatra's Christmas songs, too, but at least he pained over every last detail.

The songs play on constant repeat starting in November and going un-paused through to January. Over and over and over and over. No, I don't want Parson Brown to marry me off. No, I don't want it to snow me in. No, I absolutely do not want to do the jingle bell rock. No, I don't ever want another blue Christmas. And no, I absolutely, positively do not ever, ever want to hear "Last Christmas" ever again in all my natural-born life. The song is about an epically bad judge of character getting into serial relationships with abusers. How is that even a Christmas song? Hans Gruber falling off the Nakatomi Tower has more to do with Christmas than that. Given those options, I would much prefer to listen to "Natty Christmas" by Jacob Miller & Ray I, featuring their transcendent "All I Want for Ismas". Lol

And don't get me started on the televised parades. Less balloons, more stars, and all of them lip-synching. Your lips are half a second off on that line, celebrity - and it's your own song! You know why that microphone is so far away from your mouth? It's because you know it doesn't matter where it is! Milli Vanilli were ruined for less.

These new Christmas songs are all about romance, it seems to me. Once again, a tradition trying to find context. I guess with snow happening less and less in many places and half the world having Christmas in summer anyway, a secular Christmas song has to be about something. Is it strange that my favorite Christmas song lately is "Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses? Lol

What ever happened to hymns and carols? You know, the really old songs that glorified Jesus and told the story of the nativity of our Lord and Savior? Why are those songs a hundred years old or more? Bach, we need you! Make new ones! Yes, I do want a silent night. Yes, I do wish joy to the world. Yes, I do want ye merry gentlemen to remember Christ our Savior. Yes, I do want the herald angels to sing. Read these lyrics from "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day" (I like the Sinatra version best):

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along th' unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head

"There is no peace on earth," I said,

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail

With peace on earth, good will to men."

THAT is a Christmas song!

I wish Christian artists would make more original, faith-based Christmas music. Good stuff, though. Not that over-produced, formulaic stuff I usually hear on K-Love.

How do we fix this one? I don't think it really needs to be fixed. People like what they like. If people like romantic Christmas songs, so be it. To each their own. I just wish there was more in the way of hymns and carols is all. Perhaps let the artists know with your dollars that you prefer a more traditional Christmas song.

SANTA

Oh, here's one that's a touchy subject for many. Jolly old Saint Coca Cola advertisement.

I did in fact study the history of Santa Claus. I put some of the things I found into the Christmas FAQ. Look in the section on Other Traditions. Did you know Santa is not pagan in origin? It's true!

The tradition started harmlessly enough. Saint Nicholas was a real saint, and for very good reasons was arguably the most popular saint of all. There were some big changes after the Protestant Reformation. The original gift-giving day was the Feast of St. Nicholas on December 6, but Reformers couldn't have us honoring saints, so they moved it to Christmas and then created gift-givers like Father Christmas, and Christkindl, and the Weihnachtsmann. (Thanks again, Martin and Henry. Just peaches, you two.) And then things went sideways. The Dutch who still liked Saint Nicholas, transformed him into a magical, flying character to entertain the children. Then into a tiny character, because he needed to fit down stove pipes. And then he was a political instrument. He was relocated from New Jerusalem to the North Pole, to spite the Confederacy. And then, right when he was about to be abandoned, along comes a Coca Cola commercial. Now, he's just completely off the rails.
I imagine the real Saint Nicholas would not be on good terms with Santa Claus. Nicholas is the guy who allegedly punched Arius in the face at the Council of Nicaea, after all. Can you imagine Saint Nicholas punching Santa Claus? I find a small amount of comfort in that thought.

Secular Christmas is more about Santa than the Savior. That's a shame. Some people balked in 1965 when Linus recited some Bible verses in the animated special "A Charlie Brown Christmas". But no one has an issue with secular Santa. Most of the Christmas movies and shows these days are about Santa. It is far easier to find decorations of Santa or Santa themes than Jesus or Nativity themes. There are more popular "modern" songs about Santa than religious themes. Is Mariah Cary dressed like Mary Theotokos? No. She's dressed like Santa. People say Santa is the reason for the season. Santa Claus has in effect replaced Jesus in secular Christmas. This saddens me.

At the risk of giving aid and comfort to the Armstrongist propaganda machine - Santa Claus has gotten painfully close to becoming an idol for some people in our modern, secular Christmas.

I am not saying Santa crosses the line for all people in all instances. I enjoy some of the Santa movies and shows. I own the Lionel Polar Express train. The trick is to keep Santa in his place. Santa is nothing more than a character, like Mickey Mouse or Totoro or Captain Kirk (or Big Beak  Lol). Imaginary characters are not in and of themselves wrong. Santa Claus is not in and of itself wrong. A healthy imagination is a good thing. Let things be fantastical and magical and wonderful and playful in your life. Just keep it in perspective.

My suggestion to fix this one? Minimize Santa. I am not advocating ditching Santa, per se. I am advocating returning Santa to the status of a friendly character. He's a fictional character. Leave it at that. Personally, I much prefer those fuzzy gnome things with the massive beards. They're adorable!

I do like this Santa, though:

CONCLUSION

Alright. I think that's just about enough complaining for one day.

Christmas. It has issues. 

The issues, it seems to me, are really complaints about the world. If Christmas had never existed, all of these things would still exist in another context. I think they are fixable over time. No, I do not agree we should ditch Christmas, nor do I agree that any of these issues make it pagan. Not at all. If problems make things pagan, I refer you to the problems in your own life, and I refer you to the issues in your own church. I say it often and I will say it again - the definition of "pagan" used in groups like Armstrongism is expansive, unworkable, shifting, and self-serving. It accuses everyone on earth, including themselves, and you could argue it even accuses Jesus Christ. It's so expansive that it defeats itself. That's why it needs to shift, you see, so the accusers can excuse themselves. I disagree!

Christmas is a wonderful time of year all the same. Not in every way. Not for everyone. But what in this world is? I hope you find some way to make this year better than last, and next year better than this.

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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