Okay, a lot of The Big Holidays have there special colors. Halloween, orange and black. Valentines, pink, red, and white, etc. Most of them are pretty easy to figure out why those particular colors have been popularized as that holidays colors. The only one I can’t figure out is Christmas. Why red and green. I guess that green might be because of the green trees, but why red. I tried searching the archives for this, but I didn’t find anything. Anyone want to offer and answer or a link?
Green is for the evergreen trees that were brought indoors to symbolize life even in the dead of winter. Ornaments were hung, for example red ones, that would suggest apples (or maybe they had some apples lying around), which would symbolize food; even though nothing (except the evergreens) was growing.
Because Candy Canes and Santa’s suit is red?
Or maybe because it looks good with the green.
Some of the evergreens (eg Holly) have red berries in midwinter.
Red is the color of the blood of the sacrifice? Remember that about .5% of the Christmas traditions we have actually come from Christianity. The rest come from the ancient pagan festivals of Europe…gift-giving from the Roman Saturnalia, the Christmas tree and Yule log from northern European paganism, etc.
Contrary to what the neo-pagan community would prefer to believe, there was a tradition of human sacrifice in the ancient pagan religions. A person was chosen as the Oak King or the Holly King (I can’t remember which one ruled the second half of the year and bought the farm on Yule), and was sacrificed at the Solstice, to assure that the sun would return.
Our traditions tend to be a bit bloodier than modern “the past is perfect” man would like to remember.
Red is for the blood of the patriots, spilled at Valley Forge at the first American Christmas. And green is the symbolic colour of Ireland, from whence originated Saint O’Nicholas who became Saint Nick who became, um, lesse, Old Nick, who became… or, no, wait, that’s not right.
Ah, got it, green is the colour of money, symbolizing the basic holiday greed. And red is the red ink that represents going into debt to PAY for all those presents.