7 Christmas Traditions That Are Actually Pagan… And Coca-Cola

Christians love to take their traditions for granted.

“ Have faith and do not doubt “

A favorite quote among many that basically translates to “ what we say is how things are, do not think something else is true “. And this is exactly how things are with most Christmas traditions.

But, what does Coca-Cola have to do with this? You will see a little later.

Roughly Explaining Pagans

Let’s get this out of the way since the word pagan so often ends up being referred to as just not believing in God. In reality, pagan is a term that is made out of all people from Romans to the Scandinavian Norse.

When Christianity spread, it met several people, cultures, and religions. Everything the Christians met became “pagan”.

What is interesting is that Christians did aim to spread Christianity but they did like many pagan rituals and customs. Many ended up being picked up, or simply stolen from the Druids, Norse, Celtics, and Romans, among others. In this case, we are discussing traditions that celebrated the winter solstice, which lands in December.

For pagans, the winter solstice was very important. It was when they stopped farming and became more focused on celebrating various gods.

With this background in mind, here are some Christmas traditions that do not have Christian roots.

Santa Claus

This is where Coca-Cola steps in. What we know as Santa Claus was mostly invented in the thirties by Coca-Cola. However, gift-giving is much older. In fact, the idea that an old man is offering gifts, especially to children, is particularly old.

We have Father Christmas (St. Nicholas), the patron saint of children, prostitutes, and the poor. He lived in the fourth century, was a bishop, had a long cloak, and a big beard. And he gave gifts to the poor. However, St. Nicholas was not the first one.

The older pagan guy we should talk about is Odin. Yes, the Odin pagan deity worshipped by several Germanic pagan tribes. Traditionally, he was portrayed with a white, long beard. He was old and his horse had 8 legs (Sleipnir). With his horse, he was able to basically fly thanks to Sleipnir.

When winter came, children offered Sleipnir food (hay and carrots) and Odin would reward children with small gifts. Simply put, the Christmas stockings came from these booties offered to Odin’s horse.

The modern Santa Claus is a mix of Odin and St. Nicholas, with Coca-Cola laying down the final bricks.

Gift-Giving

Besides the small gifts offered by Odin and the generosity of St. Nicholas, we also have Saturnalia, which was celebrated by the Romans, a pagan holiday honoring Saturn, the agricultural god.

Saturnalia was very similar to how we celebrate Christmas today. It involved joy, gifts, drinking, and feasting. What is different in terms of gift-giving is that the Romans did not spend a lot on their gifts. They just exchanged some small ones with the purpose of bringing good luck, a good harvest in the next year. Also, the Romans would only give one gift to one person. Not more.

Christmas Carols

The carols we know are Christian. But the tradition of going from one door to the next comes from wassailing, a pagan tradition. Every year there were wassailers who would sing loudly in the villages to banish all evil spirits and usher in good health.

Wassailing groups also had a traditional drink. It was made out of sugar, spices, eggs, roasted apples, curdled cream, and mulled ale.

It took until the thirteenth century to start Christmas carols, with St. Francis being responsible as he took inspiration from wassailing.

Decorating The Christmas Tree

Another tradition that was borrowed (not to say stolen) from the Romans. They had a lot of fun during Saturnalia and so many interesting activities. One of them was to hang metal ornaments on the trees around their homes. The ornaments represented gods, usually Saturn and the personal patron saint of the family.

There were also Germanic tribes that decorated their trees. They used candles and fruits to honor Odin.

To keep things simple, Christians just merged all the tree decorating traditions and created what we see today, an extravagant decoration of the Christmas tree.

The Mistletoe Kiss

Mistletoe was heavily featured in the traditions of several pagans, including the Norse, Druids, Celts, and Romans. The plant was seen as sacred so it was used in many pagan rituals.

For Romans, mistletoe was used to honor Saturn. Fertility rituals were performed under mistletoe. Nowadays, people only kiss. Romans did a whole lot more, as they enjoyed doing.

For druids, mistletoe was a symbol of joy and peace. When wars broke, if enemies were meeting under the mistletoe, they would stop fighting for the day. Kissing was basically a truce.

Now, we just kiss.

Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly

Holly was sacred for pagans and, once again, connected to Saturn. As Saturnalia happened, the Romans exchanged holly wreaths to get good luck. The early Christians started to celebrate Christmas but they were persecuted. Since Christmas happened at the same time as Saturnalia, the Christians hid their customs. One way in which they did this was to hang the holly wreaths during Saturnalia. With this practice, it was easy for the Christians to recognize other Christians, all while also celebrating Christmas. As time passed, holly started to symbolize Christmas, not Saturnalia.

Originally published at https://acramblings.blogspot.com.