| Description: |
An enormous number of customs, with either secular, religious, or national aspects, surround Christmas, and vary from country to country. Most of the familiar traditional practices and symbols of Christmas, such as the Christmas tree, the Christmas ham, the Yule Log, holly, mistletoe, and the giving of presents, were adapted or appropriated by Christian missionaries from the earlier Germanic pagan midwinter holiday of Yule. This celebration of the winter solstice was widespread and popular in northern Europe long before the arrival of Christianity, and the word for Christmas in the Scandinavian languages is still today the pagan jul (=yule). The Christmas tree is believed to have first been used in Germany.
Rather than attempting to suppress every tradition owned by pagans, Pope Gregory I allowed Christian missionaries to allow the innocuous ones as a means to make things already familiar ready aids to reeducation through such props for illustrating new understandings of things long before them but ignorantly perceived, giving a rich Christian significance to things that, for lack of such Understanding, stood to bear the reflection of heathen culture.[2] The give and take between religious and governmental authorities and celebrators of Christmas continued through the years. Places where conservative Christian theocracies flourished, as in Cromwellian England and in the early New England colonies, were among those where celebrations were suppressed.[3] After the Russian Revolution, Christmas celebrations were banned in the Soviet Union for the next 75 years. A few newer religions, notably the Jehovah's Witnesses, some Puritan groups, and some ultraconservative fundamentalist denominations, view Christmas as a pagan holiday not sanctioned by the Bible, and do not celebrate it (although they are coming at it from a view detached from the historic Church). |
