History teacher Roger Thompson retired from teaching, but history is engrained in his soul. His knowledge of the past is encyclopedic.
Friday afternoon he shared some of that knowledge as guest speaker at the monthly Friends of Eufaula Memorial Library.
The room was filled with fans, many of them former students.
His topic was fitting: a history of Christmas.
Most Christians agree that the true meaning of Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Christ, even though the Bible doesn’t give a day in which he was born.
Thompson said he could have been born on the Fourth of July.
The December 25 date was decided by a Roman emperor who had converted to Christianity.
While that date is universally accepted, until the past 100 years there was very little celebration.
“There are 2.3 billion Christians in the world, and 12% of them don’t celebrate to this day, in the 21st century. They don’t celebrate Christmas on the 25th, because they say it’s Pagan,” Thompson said.
Today, things have changed.
To show the impact of Christmas today, Thompson put it into an economic context.
“Americans will spend upwards of $6 billion on Christmas trees this year, and they will spend $184 billion on gifts and 54% of the American people will include their dogs and cats on their gift list, and only 19% will include their in-laws,” he said.
“On Black Friday alone last year, America spent $10 billion in one day, and on the following Monday, the closed out Black Friday weekend, America spent $15.8 million every 60 seconds on that day. Presumably on Christmas gifts.”
Christmas falls in the Winter Solstice, which plays an important role in its history.
There were celebrations during the Winter Solstice, for the Sun and other gods, thousands of years before the birth of Christ.
“The origins of Christmas and how it’s celebrated today are traditions that go back at least 4,000 years. Many of the customs and traditions associated with Christmas in the 21st century have their origins in pagan cults, which predated or developed alongside Christianity,” he said.
“Almost every culture in pre-Christian Europe held religious ceremonies at about the time of the winter solstice, which is December 21st, which is, of course, the shortest day and the longest night in the northern hemisphere on December 21st.”
He noted that 10,000 years ago or more pre-Christian cults figured out that the sun was essential “It made the crops grow to ensure that everyone had a full stomach, and of course, after they figured out that was the survival of the entire human race. “They deduced they depended on the sun. And of course, we know that to this very day.”
In cultures all over the world, the sun became one of the earliest, if not the earliest deity, worshiped by human beings.
As the days grew shorter during the Winter Solstice, ancient people feared that the sun was dying, and they were concerned that God might go away and never return.
“So to resurrect the god and to make sure that he would return full force in the spring, just in time for planting, all sorts of festivals were born at about the time of the Winter Solstice.
They could slide three or are we on the skin? We’ve just been sliding along here. Okay, good. I’ anymore. I’m going to go back. If you want to look Good. Winter solstice. Especially in northern Europe and Scandinavia, Germany, where the winter was long, especially long, and especially a bit cold, and the days were the shortest.
“Early Scandinavians celebrated a ceremony or an event called The Night of the Wild Ride, or the Night of the Wild Hunt, or some of them called it all Hallows Eve,’ Thompson said.
“Tthey believed that on that night, like I say, the end of October 31st, November 1st, November 2nd, they’d believe that the Norris God of wisdom and poetry and healing and death and war, Odin, would lead the souls of the dead across the sky on his eight legged horse.
“Odin was a one-eyed god who wore a blue cloak. He was known as the gallows god because he had hanged on a tree. He hanged himself on a tree for nine days for the salvation of the human race. And by the way, during those nine days while he was hanging there, he was stabbed in the side with a spear, and of course, after he died, he was resurrected.”
The night of the wild ride was the time of great fear, because it was believed on that night that Odin decided who would live or die in the next year.
“And on that night, they believed that Odin rewarded those who had lived as he goes across the sky, taking over the souls of the dead, howling and shrieking, that he would reward those who had lived righteous lives with gifts, and he would punish those who had not lived righteous lives.” Scandinavians celebrated a festival called Yule Tide, Y. That’s old Norse for Oath. And they celebrated that from about December 21st to January 1st.
“You’ve heard of the 12 days of Christmas. Maybe that’s the origin of the 12 days of Christmas. “ During the celebration for a Yule, they would burn a gigantic Yule log burn a Yule log for three days, and they would sit around and sing and dance while the Yule log was burning for three days, and the sparks ascended into the sky.
“They counted those because they believed that each one of those sparks represented a new cow or a new pig that Odin would bless them with in the next year.”
By December, when they celebrated Yule, the wine was fermented. The meat was secured, and so what it amounted to was days of 12 days, 10 or 12 days of feasting and drinking and dancing, and gift giving.
“Sounds like modern Christmas,” he said.
They left food out as they ate, which may have been the beginning of milk and cookies for Santa.
They decorated their houses with mistletoe and branches from evergreen trees in the forest.
“The evergreen became a symbol of hope. And as I said a while ago, we’re going to spend $6 billion on Christmas trees this year in this country.”
At the same time this was going on in the north of Europe, in Mediterranean Europe, Rome, the southern part of Europe, the Winter Solstice included at the Festival of Saturn, which was the festival honoring the God of Agriculture in Rome, Saturn.
“You know, all these festivals are based on eating. You know, these gods, which makes me think, could you imagine Christmas Day without a big Christmas dinner.”
“By 100 AD., the Roman Empire had reached what is today the border of Iraq and Iran, and the Roman soldiers out of the far eastern part of the empire encountered a 4,000 year old religion. The religion of the sun god, Mithra. And of course, this was an allmale religion, and that appealed to these soldiers. It’s sort of fostered a band of brothers fraternity mentality.
“And the festival of Mithra was celebrated again at the Winter Solstice. In fact, he was believed to have been born from a rock. Some people said that he was born of a woman, a virgin, okay, of a virgin. Which, by the way, was common of all these ancient religions. In fact, in ancient cults, if you weren’t born of a virgin, you could not be a Roman, Greek or Norse gods. You weren’t really taken seriously as a god at all, unless you’ve been born of a virgin, which is the centerpiece of modern Christianity, the virgin birth of Jesus.”
Roman soldiers brought this cult of Mithra back to Rome, and it became a very popular religion “All of this paralleled the rise of Christianity people say Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He did not make it an official state of religion. This guy, Theodosius, did. If you want the Roman emperor, who probably saved Christianity, the emperor, Theodosius proclaimed Christianity to be the official religion of the Roman Empire.
In 350 AD, Pope Julius I declared December 25th, the birthday of Jesus to replace this very popular religion throughout the empire of the Cult of Mitha.
“the way that he arrived at that was that the church taught that the archangel, Gabriel, appeared to marry during Passover.
“The day that the angel performed the marriage, she would be the mother of Jesus. If you count nine months, where are you? Your birthday is on December 25th.” And so, you know, the church used this, I think, to strike a blow at the birth of the festival of Saturnalia, and the birth of the birth of Mitha.
“That became the big holiday. And not only Roman Catholics, in 1517, when Martin Luther led his reformation that split the Christian religion in two, and the Catholic and Protestant, Protestants, such as Luther and John Calvin also looked askance at the celebration of Christmas.”
Protestants began to say about Christmas, “you know, that’s a Catholic thing. Catholics admitted that. And we’re trying to get away from these Catholics.”
“In 1620 a group of Puritans sailed to America on the Mayflower because they didn’t like that new liberal king, King James I, who had come up with that wacky new Bible, the King James version.” when they sailed to American 1620, with their Geneva, 19 James, their Geneva vol, they didn’t celebrate Christmas when they got here either.
John Winthrop, founder of Boston, outlawed celebrating Christmas until 1680.
“To this very day, there are Christian denominations that do not celebrate Christmas. They consider it rooted in paganism, and our Christmas traditions are. In addition to American Christians, by the way, who do not celebrate Christmas, 250 million Eastern Orthodox Christians. Those are Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Russia, and the Ukraine. They don’t celebrate Christmas on December 25th. They say it’s pagan.
“They wait until January the 6th, and there are 22 million Coptic Christians there in Egypt. That’s probably the oldest Christian Congregation on Earth today. Over 22 million and they do not celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th They wait until the 7th of January.”
The 4th century also witnessed the beginning of the creation of the centerpiece of Christian mythology, Santa Claus.
A Roman Catholic bishop named Nicolaus became the symbol of gift giving, helping the needy.
“He dedicated his life to the poor. For his work among the poor, he was canonized, made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church, and he became Saint Nicholas. He is to this day, a patron saint of Russia, thieves, boys, and girls.”
“From this, St. Nick, versions of St. Nick, began to appear all over Europe. In England, he became Father Christmas.”
Father Christmas had a long white beard. He was old, he was decrepit. He carried a big stick. He visited the earth once a year. He gave gifts to children who had been good, and he used that stick to beat the children who had been bad.
“The legend of St. Nick was first brought to America by Dutch settlers, who founded New Amsterdam, which later became New York City. They brought with them their version of St. Nicholas from which we take our Santa Claus.”
The modern version of St. Nick was born from the pen of an Episcopalian minister in 1822, who wrote a poem and title on account of a visit from St. Nicholas, which all of us know better by the first line of the poem “T’was the night before Christmas.”
Now, Santa wasn’t an old man with a long, white beard stooped over walking. Now he was a fat, laughing, jolly elf. when he laughed according to this plug, his belly would shape like a hole full of jelly. Now he brought gifts, not punishment. He lived at the North Pole, he rode in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.
“Christmas had experienced a shaky start, and had often been banned in early America, by the 1840s was a fairly minor holiday on the order of Arbor Day. It wasn’t a holiday. It was a regular workday. Schools were still in session. Businesses were open. Congress was in session.
“But in 1843, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. It had begun in England in 1790, and while it produced many inventions that made life easier for millions, millions of workers were crushed by the dark side of the Industrial Revolution, sort of reminds you of the things we hear about AI. It’ll be a lot of good, but beware, oh, well, same thing with the Industrial Revolution.”
Entire families half starved, dressed in rags, worked and dirty, unsafe factories, sweat shops, 12 hours a day, six days a week.
“It’s true. They worked six days a week, and they still didn’t have enough to eat.
“Two great books, in my opinion, came out at this time – one is a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and the other is the Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx.
“Both of these books, by the way, are protests against the excesses of the Industrial Revolution.”
