Continuous Paganism in Europe?

Factual Questions
1

Is there a good example of a survival of pagan practices / religion in Europe? And I don’t mean a revival of ancient beliefs. (I think Wicca would be an example of this; please correct me if I’m wrong.) I am referring to a group of people who refrained from adopting any form of Christianity, instead opting to retain their original folk religion.

I am just not thinking of any right now, but I’m sure that once someone mentions a good example, I will say to myself, “Of course! Why couldn’t I remember that one?”…

2

The Jews?

3

There are uncountable examples of folk legends that still carry forward into the present and/or Christian syncretism that has carried forward.

For example, the Christmas Ham is an old pre-Christian thing deriving from Norse paganism. Many visualizations of Jesus depict him as a sun god, more or less.

I don’t know about unreconstructed pagans just doing their pagan thing in Europe; I’d imagine that it would have to be on the far fringes, where Christianity never really took hold, because there wasn’t much tolerance for paganism past a certain point.

4

Most Romani are Christian these days, but some are Muslim and a tiny minority have Hindu beliefs.

If you allow for Turkey being part of Europe, Yazidis. I think they’re mostly in Anatolia. And of course Muslims and Jews, but not sure if we want to include those.

Other new religions which don’t count for the OP include the various Scandinavian or German heathen movements and Dievturība in Latvia.

5

Judaism by definition is not pagan, nor is it native to Europe. I’m at a bit of a loss how this could be considered an answer to the OP.

6

AFAIK, there are no unbroken historys of Western European pagan faiths or religions. They are either recent or old.

And, I’d be careful about saying much of anything is Pre-Christian. We have few records of what the Norse religion was like before Christianity was founded. In fact, it looks like most of the things dudes claim Christianity stole from Mitraism was the other way around, since Christianity is older than Roman Mitraism . Hard to tell, tho.

Of course Christianity has always been happy to steal folk customs, like the Yule tree, etc.

7

Wicca is hardly an ancient tradition. It began development in 1921 at the earliest, with the first published works about the religion coming out in the 40s and 50s. It borrows ideas from a lot of older belief systems but that is the case with pretty much any religion. It’s not a “revival” of anything, rather it’s a synthesis.

The Norse religion as a whole didn’t survive the Christian conversion of Europe but many of its terms and concepts continue today. Midsummer is a festival that never stopped being celebrated and goes back to ancient times. The week days of Tuesday through Friday are named after Norse deities. And so on. Christmas, though a major (biggest?) Christian holiday, is just the old festival of Jul/Yule

8

No. Altho certainly Christianity took some of the customs, we know little about the Germanic Yule customs before the 8th century when Bede wrote about them.

In fact the most we know about ancient Norse Yule is from King Hakon changing it to be more like Christmas, rather than the other way around.

9

Some of the tribal peoples in northern Sweden practiced shamanism until the 18th century. Even then, I don’t believe any of it’s still done as a religion. No pagan religious practice or belief survived in any part of Europe as far as I can tell. Even semi-religions like Wicca or Norse paganism are more or less entirely modern inventions with no connection to past practices. In part, this is because those practices weren’t written down and varied from place to place anyway. Paganism was always a highly localized phenomenon, with very little crossover even between temples within the same pantheon. A Roman temple to Jupiter would have little to do with temple to Mars, or even a shrine to Jupiter in the next town.

10

[quote=]
Secret paganism?

Thus the battle against Christianity continued well after the official Christianization of Lithuania. Within their homes and deep in the forests the old worship continued well into the 17th and even 18th centuries. The oppressive system and vehement, albeit passive resistance, left a deep mark on the national mentality of Lithuanians. It is characterized by deep mistrust in officials and dualistic behaviour – one official, one real. There are numerous records witnessing that the Church understood this attitude and was bemoaning the situation.

Johannes Poliander, a priest from Konigsberg, writes the following in 1535: “At first many of them (Prussians) reluctantly gave in to the Pope, and today they accept the evangel, yet they continue to keep their old wicked customs in secret”. Jacob Lawinski, a jesuit from Lithuania, describes local people in 1583: “Those people were always drawn to religion. But bad faith and fallacies have spoilt them so much that they differed little from pagans”.

In Latvia in 1636, an evangelical Lutheran priest, criticizes too moderate, in his view, attempts to draw people away from their wicked habits:

“People were and remain idolaters, because Jesuits did little else but forced people to listen to their masses and to cry out for the saints … hardheaded idolaters were tricking them because, when before their eyes, they played sincere Catholics, would listen to their sermons with great piety, and would kneel down with sheer humility. But once the priest would go, they would return to full paganism. Priests did not understand anything, and people would laugh at them.”
Even in 1775 G.Ostermeier in his “Critical Observations on the History of the Ancient Prussian Religion” writes of Lithuanians: “This is the most superstitious nation among all Christians. They are so persistent that no measures bring desired fruits”.

Thus the old pagan tradition was carried almost to this day. Jonas Trinkunas in his book The Path of the Ancient Religion of Lithuanians mentions that the last adherent of the ancient religion died as recently as 1908. Up to this day neighbouring nations would call Lithuanians pagan, because of the remaining traces of ancient customs in daily life. But meaning it is of course a gross exaggeration. However, the contemporary mentality retains the strong impression that the heydays of this country were in the pagan past.
[/quote]

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/christianization-lithuania.html

I have seen elderly Lithuanian and Latvian pagans in documentaries, and they are passing it down to their children and grandchildren. It never really died.

11

Christmas is at most only the second-biggest Christian holiday, and probably third (after Easter and possibly Pentecost).

12

It’s a valid answer to people who mistakenly think pagan = not Christian.

13

Would animistic traditions count?

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/europes-wild-men/shea-text

14

There is evidence that Morris dancing and the may pole are remnants of paganism that were deemed acceptable by the Christian church and so survived. Morris dancing is traditionally performed on May 1st, and various implements used in the dance sometimes mimic movements when ploughing or performing other agricultural actions. According to the Golden Bough, this is a sympathetic magic ritual, mimicking the harvest actions in dance would help to bring a good harvest later in the year. The bells they wear while dancing are supposed to be awaking the plants from winter sleep.

Similarly dancing around a May pole, the original meaning has been lost but it’s still performed, I would guess continuously in some parts of europe. The may pole can either be seen as a symbol of the world tree, or a phallus, but again it’s connected to fertility and bringing back life after the winter.

15

The OP specifies “people who refrained from adopting any form of Christianity, instead opting to retain their original folk religion”.

There are plenty of examples of pagan customs continuing along with Christianity, either being embraced and co-opted, or continuing as folk practices although discouraged or denounced by ecclesiastical authorities. But in those cases what we have there is paganism-with-Christianity, not paganism-instead-of-Christianity, which is what the OP wants.

The answer, I think, is that there are no examples of continuous paganism-instead-of-Christianity in Europe down to the present day. The Slavs were substantially Christianised by the twelfth century. The last holdout for the Norse religion was Iceland, but Iceland was fully Christianised by the end of the fourteenth century. The Sami religion remained the dominant religion in Lappland until the early eighteenth century, and I think that was the last of the European pagan traditions to be extingushed/absorbed into Christianity.

16

his definition:

The OP didn’t say it had to originate in Europe, and it was certainly practiced there.

17

Then it’s not a valid answer. The OP didn’t give any indication that he was making that mistake; the mistake was made by the person who gave that answer as the very first response to the question.

18

Well, yes, but he also says he’s asking about “pagan practices”, and Judaism (and Islam) are not normally considered pagan.

19

That’s not his definition, that’s a qualification to the rest of the post. You need to consider the post as a whole. He used the word “pagan” in both the title and the first sentence. Pagan by definition is polytheistic, and excludes Judaism.

He said examples that were “continuous” and a “survival.” That implies indigenous.

Sorry, Czarcasm, you seemed to have posted reflexively without giving the question a moment’s thought. Arguing the point isn’t going to make your post any more correct.

20

Going by the actual definition, I will admit that Judaism doesn’t count. One small correction, however-Pagan by definition is not polytheistic, although most are. There are monotheistic Pagans that believe in a single supreme being.