{"id":46068,"date":"2018-12-21T03:00:39","date_gmt":"2018-12-21T08:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46068"},"modified":"2018-12-04T12:33:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T17:33:10","slug":"why-do-we-celebrate-christmas-in-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/12\/21\/why-do-we-celebrate-christmas-in-december\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do we celebrate Christmas in December?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The obvious answer is quite wrong: December 25th isn’t<\/em> actually the birth date of Jesus … we don’t know when he was born (rather like the Queen’s Official Birthday<\/a>, it’s been set to a particular date rather than tracking the actual natal day of the current monarch). So why did we end up with a fixed date in December? Tim Worstall<\/a> explains:<\/p>\n

… if you\u2019re sitting in the middle of a culture that has a religious holiday that sends all children into a frenzy, you\u2019re not part of that dominant religion, then you\u2019d better come up with something quick. Don\u2019t and you\u2019ll find your hold on the minds \u2013 thus future religion of \u2013 the children loosening. Thus Hanukkah\u2019s elevation in the holiday, if not liturgical, calendar. Thus, also, obviously the invention of Kwanzaa by those who would very much prefer not to be part of that dominant culture but were rather geographically stuck with it.<\/p>\n

But then that\u2019s why Jesus wasn\u2019t born at Christmas too. We have absolutely no evidence at all that he turned up even one winter night let alone on Dec 25. What the Catholic Church in Europe did have \u2013 and at the relevant time there really only was the Catholic Church \u2013 was this inconvenient fact of a massive winter feast, what we might call Yuletide. This was very definitely pre-Christian and was sorta determined by climate.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re in Europe, you\u2019re doing subsistence or at least peasant farming, this means you\u2019ve not got enough fodder to keep all the animals going until the spring. Thus you slaughter near all \u2013 pigs not so much as they eat scraps, can forage for themselves etc \u2013 except your breeding stock. This gives you lots and lots of fresh meat and few good methods of meat preservation. This is also the last fresh meat you\u2019re going to get until those spring lambs are ready in, say, April. So, you gorge on all that fresh meat.<\/p>\n

Also, it\u2019s cold outside, the days are short, why the heck not stay in by the fire while you burp through it all? Hey, bring the family \u2019round! And Pops, didn\u2019t you get that beer going earlier in the year? OK, no hops, so ale. But mead maybe. Wine in many areas would be just about drinkable by now from that autumn crop.<\/p>\n

This had been going on perhaps 6,000 years by the time those Christians turned up. The Church really needed to impose its views and authority on all of this, seriously, we can\u2019t have the peasants continuing to celebrate the Old Gods, can we? Thus the invention of Christmas, a time for celebration, that called for lots of feasting of a happy event just about the time when everyone would be feasting anyway.<\/p>\n

This is also the explanation for Halloween, All Hallows Eve. Or, All Souls Day followed By All Saints Day to replace the Celtic Samhaim. Hell, the oiks are going to be celebrating anyway, better make it a Church celebration.<\/p>\n

Thus Hanukkah, thus Kwanzaa and thus whatever the next religion will come up with assuming that it\u2019s one that initially grows in a European influenced culture. Even, perhaps any Northern Hemisphere, or northerly part of it, influenced one. Islam\u2019s going to have a problem as it uses the lunar calendar and so no fixed feast will work, it\u2019ll precess though the calendar and miss the yearly meeting with midwinter.<\/p>\n

Hanukkah\u2019s a big thing for the same reason Jesus wasn\u2019t born at Christmas. At which point you\u2019re expecting me to say Happy Holidays, aren\u2019t you? Bah, Humbug!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The obvious answer is quite wrong: December 25th isn’t actually the birth date of Jesus … we don’t know when he was born (rather like the Queen’s Official Birthday, it’s been set to a particular date rather than tracking the actual natal day of the current monarch). So why did we end up with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,74,7,11],"tags":[360,345,262,855],"class_list":["post-46068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-food","category-history","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-christmas","tag-culture","tag-polytheism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bZ2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46069,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46068\/revisions\/46069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}