Christmas Traditions and Where They Began

http://www.socyberty.com/Holidays/Christmas-Traditions-and-Where-They-Began.63403 ^ | Dec. 02 07 | lanne

[lanne1]

Brightly wrapped packages, eggnog, turkey with all the trimmings, and gathering with family and friends. We all do things during the holiday season that we have come to look at as our own traditions. But how did some Christmas traditions come to be?

http://www.socyberty.com/Holidays/Christmas-Traditions-and-Where-They-Began.63403

[EggsAckley]

Welcome to FreeRepublic. I make it a point not to click on links provided by n00bies. Maybe you could just tell us what it says.

[DouglasKC]

Don't forget the The History of Christmas from the History Channel.

[rabscuttle385]

The link is okay. I checked first.

[EggsAckley]

Thanks. There used to frequently bogus threads from n00bs that could lead to unpleasant places.

Just gunshy.

[ZULU]

Be wary of the History Channel. Some of the material presented is anti-Christian, anti-western and revisionist.
I am not referring to this PARTICULAR episode however, having never seen. Those comments are based on other episodes I have seen on that channel.

[rabscuttle385]

There used to frequently bogus threads from n00bs that could lead to unpleasant places.

Unpleasant places...like DU?

[bannie]

It was either the History Channel or PBS which produced a DVD which made claims that Shakespeare was homosexual.

hrumph!

[varon]

Riga, Latvia was the home of the first Christmas tree

First Christmas Tree

[Drumbo]

"Latvia was the home of the first Christmas tree..."

Hardly. . . The Catholic Encyclopedia says: "Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church . . . the first evidence of the feast is from Egypt."

Around 3000 B.C. the king of Egypt was Osiris. When he died, his wife, Isis, told how the god king lived on as a spirit being. She claimed that an evergreen tree sprang from a dead tree stump, overnight, and she told how each year on the anniversary of his birth (December 25!), Osiris would visit the evergreen tree which symbolized eternal life, and he would leave gifts. Here are the origins of the Christmas tree and the date that eventually became known as Christmas 3000 years later! 1510 was over 4,000 years after the Osiris tradition was established.

Jeremiah 10
2 Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.

3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe.

4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

[varon]

Around 3000 B.C. the king of Egypt was Osiris. When he died, his wife, Isis, told how the god king lived on as a spirit being. She claimed that an evergreen tree sprang from a dead tree stump, overnight, and she told how each year on the anniversary of his birth (December 25!), Osiris would visit the evergreen tree which symbolized eternal life, and he would leave gifts.

Give me a frickin break. All these years, I and millions of others have been lead to believe that the Christmas tree was part of the celebration of Christ's birth. If that is an accepted truth, then how in the h*ll could an "evergreen" 3000 years before that incident be a part of that celebration?

If using the act of placing gifts by/under the evergreen elevates it to the status of a Christmas tree, then Osiris is a Johnny Come Lately because I'm sure that thousands of years before that, some Neanderthal threw a bone with meat on it under a tree as a "gift" for his mate and by your definition, voila, the Christmas tree and gift giving tradition was started.

[Larry Lucido]

Riga, Latvia was the home of the first Christmas tree

Another coup by those Latvian Orthodox. Crafty bunch, there are!

[bannie]

I had no idea, Drumbo.

[ZULU]

There are people out there who will tell you that Christ was not born on Christmas. Mid December was the feast of Sol Invictis, the Unconquerable Sun, that it was a Pagan Germanic Feast Day - Yule. They will tell you that Easter is actually the Feast Day of a Germanic Fertility Goddess called Oestre, that Easter Eggs are a pagan symobol, that
Christ didn’t rise on a Sunday as he died on a Friday and it was predicted He would be in the Grave for Three Days and Three Nights.

All these people are probably right.

So what?

The Early Christian Church probably didn’t know the exact date of Christ’s Birth, or the exact date of His Crucifixtion.

They were faced with dealing with popularized pagan cults and cult days. They decided to “pre-empt” them by Christianizing them and turning Pagan Holidays into Christian Holy Days. Sounds pretty smart to me.

And if Chist didn’t rise from the dead on a Sunday, the only thing that is REALLY important is that He rose from the Dead and will come again.

If He wasn’t born on Christmas Day, the important thing is He WAS born and we have a day to honor His Birth.

And if the pagans worshipped trees, so what? They worshipped animals too, but that doesn’t keep us from having pets and we don’t worship Christmas Trees.

All of a sudden everybody is out the throw a wet blanket on Christian celebrations. Screw them. Buy the Tree, set up a Creche, go to Church, and remember what you are REALLY celebrating and everything will turn out o.k.

Merry Christmas!!!

[DouglasKC]

What's Behind the Magnetic Pull of the Christmas Season?

[Drumbo]

"Give me a frickin break. All these years, I and millions of others have been lead to believe that the Christmas tree was part of the celebration of Christ's birth. If that is an accepted truth, then how in the h*ll could an "evergreen" 3000 years before that incident be a part of that celebration?

If using the act of placing gifts by/under the evergreen elevates it to the status of a Christmas tree, then Osiris is a Johnny Come Lately because I'm sure that thousands of years before that, some Neanderthal threw a bone with meat on it under a tree as a "gift" for his mate and by your definition, voila, the Christmas tree and gift giving tradition was started. "

Frikin break given (from me at least). I had no intention of offending, but only to illustrate that stating as fact that Latvia was the origin of the tree tradition is historically challenged and well documented (including scriptural). The article you linked to says as much about it's pagan origins in recorded history.

Osiris was hardly a Johnny-Come-Lately, since that tradition was very likely what the prophet Jeremiah was condemning around 600 years before Christ's birth (and at least some 2500 years after the origin of the Osiris myth. Osiris-worship continued up until the 6th century AD in some parts of Egypt giving the "Johnny-Come-Lately" god a run of well-over over 3,500 years).

Latvia was neither the first to adopt and embrace pagan symbols as Christian, nor the last. Non sequiturs about cavemen not-withstanding, it is a safe bet that the Christmas Tree tradition (under some other name since "Christmas" didn't originate until around the 9th Century) is a lot older than 1510.