The history of Christmas Blogmas#6

This year I asked myself: about the history of Christmas? I'm making a post about it today. 

On 25 December, Christmas is celebrated by Christians around the world, and celebrated by everyone else too, as the holiday has networked households around the world with its iconography and familiarity.

Christmas is a traditional feast in the Church calendar, celebrated in Catholic and Protestant countries on 25 December to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ, although the exact date of his birth is unknown. In most Orthodox Churches, the feast is celebrated from 6 to 7 January due to the use of the Julian calendar. Under the same name, Christmas is celebrated by South Slavic native believers as the winter solstice. The celebration has its roots in pre-Christian times, when many peoples worshipped the onset of the winter solstice, when the day begins to grow longer again, symbolising the triumph of good over evil. So the time when winter really comes to life in all its glory and the sun triumphs over the darkness has long been a time of celebration around the world.

The essence of the Christian Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. The Bible (the Gospel of Luke) tells us that Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem at a time when Mary was already heavily pregnant. They could not find a place to stay in Bethlehem, so they took refuge in a stable. There, Mary gave birth to Jesus and laid him in a manger because they had no other bed for him. Christians set up a nativity scene to commemorate this event. The custom of sending cards and decorating the Christmas tree dates back to the 19th century and has little to do with Christianity.

In more recent times, another form of Christmas celebration, unrelated to Christianity, is also gaining ground. As it is a new phenomenon, it does not yet have an official name. Let us call it American Christmas because it has come to us from America. The central figure of this form of Christmas celebration is Santa Claus, who brings presents. (Santa Claus does not exist in Christianity and got his visual image from a Coca-Cola advert). In practice, American Christmas is a very consumer-oriented holiday, associated with buying lots of presents, writing as many cards as possible, making the Christmas tree as big as possible and having lots of decorations.

That is partly why we celebrate it. I found this interesting to read. See you again tomorrow!