Except in the 1500s, paganism was generally long gone- at that time, there was no point in placating it. The UK was under a lot of German and french influence, and less so nordic influence. Something as open and humanly universal as “pagans were bringing plants into the house” doesn’t necessarily mean Christmas trees are of pagan origin. Just that pagans brought plants into the house. (With that logic- is putting some flowers out on the table paganism?)
Your timeline at 4 is wrong - Christmas was celebrated as early as the second century. Hyppolitus mentioned it and it’s also mentioned in the Epistle of Theophilus.
Yes, Christmas being on Dec 25 was much earlier, I merely used it as an example of Christians co-opting pagan rituals/observances into Christian ones.
Christianity took much longer to reach the Germanic states, so I’m suggesting something similar happened w/ Christmas trees when Christianity spread there. AFAIK, Christmas trees were not a thing until well after the second century association of Dec 25 w/ Christmas, and the Paradise Tree was only really documented centuries after Christianity spread to Germanic states. So there’s a lot of room for things to have developed from old pagan traditions.
I’m sorry, but your first claim, that Christmas is a co-opting of a pagan holiday (Sol Invictus) is just plain wrong. It predates Sol Invictus. Emperor Aurelian established Sol Invictus as a holiday in 274 AD.
Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235 AD) claimed Jesus was born 8 days before the Kalends of January, which corresponds to Dec. 25. It is vastly more likely, and much more widely accepted at this point, that Dec. 25 was chosen because Africanus (author of Chronographiae, an early attempt at a Christian timeline) and other early Christians believed the Annunciation was March 25. They just added 9 months to that and bam, December 25.
If anything was intentional about the 25th in particular, it would’ve been due to contemporary Jewish beliefs that Prohpets died on the same day they are born or conceived. Believing that Jesus was conceived on the 25th of March, the parallel 25th of December would not only have been chronologically accurate, but spiritually significant.
These early Christians existed well before the establishment of Christianity as the Roman state religion. There was a substantial desire to distance themselves from Pagan practice at the time. Virtually all sources that it relates to Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, outside of a single margin note in the 12th century, are post-enlightenment.
Edit to address Easter eggs, in particular:
Undeniably the symbology of the egg as representing life and death predates Christianity. Frankly, it predates the Roman religion too. It’s more likely that eggs came from Persian cultural practices, spread to middle eastern churches, then gradually migrated west.
That’s just how culture works and I honestly don’t see what the point of bringing it up is. Only the most simple-minded evangelicals would be scared of what amounts to adiaphora.
Are we obliged to belive that every religious practice from every religion ought to have been instituted specifically by its God? Religion is for us, even most religious people will tell you that. Islamic prayer forms are derived from Coptic Christians, Jewish and Christian thought intermingled; Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist thought has at various points cross-pollinated in fascinating ways.
I truly believe more non-religious people should read David Bentley Hart’s Experience of God. I think, if you can put up with his snark and dense prose, it would help a lot to understand what it actually means to believe in a God, rather than bottom dollar examples like rural evangelicals and Islamic extremists.
As far as Christmas trees go, the fact that we do not see a single example of one until the 15th century, leaves me confident that their adoption wasn’t related to co-opting ppaganism. European Paganism was dead and buried by then. Any practices that remained would’ve been perceived as cultural. The Christmas Tree probably had more to do with wealthy Protestants trying to distinguish themselves from Catholic Christmas traditions more than anything else.
Heck, the Vatican refused to put up a tree until the 1980s. That rivalry runs deep.
Yeah, more or less. Spitballing, but it’s probably still more related to the Sun. The 25th would’ve been on of the first days studious Romans could tell the daytime was growing longer.
This whole period in Roman History is extremely cool. Maybe not to live in though lol.
My first rec would be Rod Bennett’s The Early Church in Her Own Words. It’s a good starting point that grounds you in what the early authors of Christianity were thinking and discussing.
Except in the 1500s, paganism was generally long gone- at that time, there was no point in placating it. The UK was under a lot of German and french influence, and less so nordic influence. Something as open and humanly universal as “pagans were bringing plants into the house” doesn’t necessarily mean Christmas trees are of pagan origin. Just that pagans brought plants into the house. (With that logic- is putting some flowers out on the table paganism?)
Your timeline at 4 is wrong - Christmas was celebrated as early as the second century. Hyppolitus mentioned it and it’s also mentioned in the Epistle of Theophilus.
Yes, Christmas being on Dec 25 was much earlier, I merely used it as an example of Christians co-opting pagan rituals/observances into Christian ones.
Christianity took much longer to reach the Germanic states, so I’m suggesting something similar happened w/ Christmas trees when Christianity spread there. AFAIK, Christmas trees were not a thing until well after the second century association of Dec 25 w/ Christmas, and the Paradise Tree was only really documented centuries after Christianity spread to Germanic states. So there’s a lot of room for things to have developed from old pagan traditions.
I’m sorry, but your first claim, that Christmas is a co-opting of a pagan holiday (Sol Invictus) is just plain wrong. It predates Sol Invictus. Emperor Aurelian established Sol Invictus as a holiday in 274 AD.
Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235 AD) claimed Jesus was born 8 days before the Kalends of January, which corresponds to Dec. 25. It is vastly more likely, and much more widely accepted at this point, that Dec. 25 was chosen because Africanus (author of Chronographiae, an early attempt at a Christian timeline) and other early Christians believed the Annunciation was March 25. They just added 9 months to that and bam, December 25.
If anything was intentional about the 25th in particular, it would’ve been due to contemporary Jewish beliefs that Prohpets died on the same day they are born or conceived. Believing that Jesus was conceived on the 25th of March, the parallel 25th of December would not only have been chronologically accurate, but spiritually significant.
These early Christians existed well before the establishment of Christianity as the Roman state religion. There was a substantial desire to distance themselves from Pagan practice at the time. Virtually all sources that it relates to Saturnalia and Sol Invictus, outside of a single margin note in the 12th century, are post-enlightenment.
Edit to address Easter eggs, in particular: Undeniably the symbology of the egg as representing life and death predates Christianity. Frankly, it predates the Roman religion too. It’s more likely that eggs came from Persian cultural practices, spread to middle eastern churches, then gradually migrated west.
That’s just how culture works and I honestly don’t see what the point of bringing it up is. Only the most simple-minded evangelicals would be scared of what amounts to adiaphora.
Are we obliged to belive that every religious practice from every religion ought to have been instituted specifically by its God? Religion is for us, even most religious people will tell you that. Islamic prayer forms are derived from Coptic Christians, Jewish and Christian thought intermingled; Hindu, Sikh, and Buddhist thought has at various points cross-pollinated in fascinating ways.
I truly believe more non-religious people should read David Bentley Hart’s Experience of God. I think, if you can put up with his snark and dense prose, it would help a lot to understand what it actually means to believe in a God, rather than bottom dollar examples like rural evangelicals and Islamic extremists.
As far as Christmas trees go, the fact that we do not see a single example of one until the 15th century, leaves me confident that their adoption wasn’t related to co-opting ppaganism. European Paganism was dead and buried by then. Any practices that remained would’ve been perceived as cultural. The Christmas Tree probably had more to do with wealthy Protestants trying to distinguish themselves from Catholic Christmas traditions more than anything else.
Heck, the Vatican refused to put up a tree until the 1980s. That rivalry runs deep.
Looks like this article summarizes that.
So I guess that implies that it was actually the other way around, that Sol Invictus’ birthday was selected to coincide w/ Jesus’ birthday.
Yeah, more or less. Spitballing, but it’s probably still more related to the Sun. The 25th would’ve been on of the first days studious Romans could tell the daytime was growing longer.
This whole period in Roman History is extremely cool. Maybe not to live in though lol.
I really need to pick up some books about early Christianity and its relationship to the Roman Empire. Certainly cool history.
My first rec would be Rod Bennett’s The Early Church in Her Own Words. It’s a good starting point that grounds you in what the early authors of Christianity were thinking and discussing.