Here’s a British ad i found - by the way, about the Nativity scene… nor just skeptic/freethought, but Christians might also wonder did they have to to put all those pearl necklaces on that young girl?
Maybe they were trying to make the costume look homemade?
I think most angels in Christian mythology might take exception to the idea that they wear pearls given that pearls are what the gates of heaven are made of.
on a lighter note, if the little boy in the scarf had been the nativity angel, i doubt that would have put him in those pearls
Ads should include whatever elements the marketers think will allow them to sell more product. In some markets, Christian imagery might help in that goal, and in others, it might hinder it.
If I tried hard enough, I could work up some offense at the angel’s announcement of “I bring great news! A greater variety of gluten-free products—oh, and also, the birth of Christ.”
When my sister’s kids were younger, they had an Advent Calendar, in which every day, they got a new piece of a manger scene - cows, sheep, Mary, Joseph, some Wise Men, and so on, and then, on Christmas Eve, the Main Character showed up. Santa Claus.
Even as an avowed atheist, that had me scratching my head.
It’s never been fully Christianized, it’s always had pagan elements (OK… what do a decorated tree and a Yule log have to do with Josh the Anointed? And what’s Yule to a Christian?) starting from its placement in mid-winter, as opposed to a time when the flocks would be in the fields.
Most of Christmas is part of the culture of Christendom, as opposed to the religion of Christianity. It’s something people in culturally Christian lands, which may or may not be religiously Christian to any noticeable extent anymore, participate in for the same reason they eat certain things and talk certain ways. Christianity, in its evangelical zeal, tried to universalize itself and succeeded pretty well, but it also transplanted a number of those cultural notions which have nothing to do with the official dogma and only make sense in the context of a Northern European Christianity overlaid poorly on pre-existing Germanic Paganism. If you’re truly a Bible-Believing Christian, as the Puritans were, Christmas has got to go.
In the early centuries of Christianity, it was an official policy when converting pagan tribes to ‘Christianise’ local festivals and deities.
Typically, in the tribal cultures in northern Europe, the chief would be converted to Christianity by missionaries, and he would then decree that the whole tribe must be baptised, and that they were all now Christians.
Christianity was only skin deep, and the only way to make it stick was to incorporate local cultural elements. Local gods were identified with Christian saints, local festivals and cultural elements were given a Christian twist. The attitude of the Vatican was that these details didn’t matter, just so long as they were worshiping Jesus rather than Woden or some other god.
I don’t recall tinsel haloes anywhere in the Bible.
What exactly is your point? Anybody offended by the ad you linked is taking offense on purpose, and if you took the school nativity out of the ad, they’d find some other reason to be offended.
The decorated fir tree is a relatively modern German tradition, based on the story of Saint Boniface’s felling of the Thunder Oak at Geismar, where human sacrifices were made to Thor. St. Boniface pointed to the humble fir tree as representing the triumph of the meek over the mighty, like Christ, and it’s roughly triangular shape as symbolic of the Trinity.
The decoration of the tree is popularly associated with Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation.
The Yule Log isn’t really an essential part of the Christmas celebration. (I’ve never personally seen one.) Most people burn wood during the winter to stay warm.
Well, no.
The idea that flocks were not in the fields in winter began in 1853 with a Scottish Presbyterian named Alexander Hislop, who wrote a turgid anti-Catholic tract called The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife. Hislop was not widely traveled and presumably thought because it was too cold for sheep to be out in winter in the Scottish highlands, it would have been too cold in Bethlehem, which is nonsense. I live on the same latitude line, at about the same altitude, and in a similar climate as Bethlehem, and I assure you the Navajo sheepherders here did and do keep their sheep out in the winter. In a mediterranean-type climate, it is actually unhealthy to pen sheep in the winter - they tend to get diseases in their extremities.
I have actually been to Bethlehem at Christmastime, and have seen the Bedouin shepherds in the area. They continue to have the sheep out in winter, mostly in their shirtsleeves. It’s not really that cold there. I wore at most a light jacket at night. If it gets really cold. shepherds also have copious access to the best insulating material known to man: WOOL. Wool continues to insulate you even when it is soaking wet. It keeps the sheep pretty warm, as well.
We have textual Christian traditions describing Christmas in late December as early as 200 A.D., predating any Roman celebrations such as Sol Invictus (whose pre-Christian origins, assuming it was a religious festival as opposed to a secular military one, is doubtful). The textual evidence within the Gospel, based on the date of Zecheriahs priestly line’s sacrifices in the temple, tied to the date of conception for Mary, would also support a late December birthdate for Jesus.
The Puritans, in their zeal to brand themselves as an alternative to the Catholic Church, were pretty selective in what aspects of Christian behavior were believed to be “pagan”.
Giving gifts? Pretty sure the Wise Men did that.
Celebrating the Nativity of Jesus? Likewise, Mary, Joseph, the Angels, the shepherds, and the Wise Men all did that.
Use of iconography to represent Christmas? Stars, angels - in the Bible.
The rest of the secular traditions are mostly fairly recent, like kissing under the mistletoe, which is of Victorian rather than pagan origin. Mistletoe to the classical pagans had a connotation of death (due to the death of Baldur by a mistletoe dart) and because it is poisonous. It may have had a use as an aphrodisiac, as Pliny the Elder claimed, but it would likely have killed anyone foolish enough to try his preparation.
The view you describe is a survival (one could say, urban legend) of the Victorian thesis that Christian holidays were all survivals of pre-existing pagan ones. It was popular with Sir Edmund Frazer and Jakob Grimm in that era, but is largely discounted by modern anthropologists, historians, and folklorists. It survives, however, in Sunday supplements and Internet message boards. Many of the earlier claims continue to be cited, for their own reasons, by a mixture of atheists, neo-pagans and New Agers, and anti-Catholic members of some Protestant sects.
The most commonly cited evidential claim originates from the medieval historian, The Venerable Bede, who claimed a letter was sent from Pope Gregory to the Abbot Mellitus to “ease” the transition of converts into the British church by christening older pagan temples and practices. No actual original or copy of this letter exists in the Vatican archives, and the Bede was pretty lax in his scholarship at times (as in creating a pagan goddess “Eostre” that no other source seems to have ever heard of before…)
But the Bede did NOT claim, as GreenWyvern said, that evangelizers should ensure that “Local gods were identified with Christian saints, local festivals and cultural elements.”
If the Bede was accurate, Pope Gregory said to cleanse and reuse any well-built temples if he could, though he should destroy any idols that were within, and to replace the sacrifice of animals with festivals and large feasts, NOT on the pagan feast days, but on the feats day that the temple was converted to the use of Christians, and on the feast days (i.e., the date of martyrdom) of the saint to whom it was rededicated. It might make it easier to convert the pagans, or it could be that they simply wanted the more symbolically valuable real estate where temples are often located - good views, high ground, near waterfalls, etc. (From science’s POV, this was a good thing, as we can examine pre-Christian sites that would have long ago collapsed, BTW.)
Whether the Church should use remnants of paganism to satisfy the temporal needs of (often poor) churches and evangelizers was a common problem even to Paul, who had to adjudicate whether Christians could eat the animal sacrifices that were left behind in pagan temples. (He said it was okay, generally, but could cause others to sin who didn’t understand the situation well. A man’s got to eat, and it didn’t require worship of the idol to whom it was sacrificed.)
While the Church did take over old pagan temples, this was clearly set out as a conquest, rather than an assimilation. In the same way my Jewish neighbor as a kid used to show off the Luger he took off a dead Nazi. It’s a way of saying “We won!”
It’s important to remember that the early Christians, to include St. Paul and the other early Church fathers, did not believe the pagan deities did not exist - quite the contrary. Paul and the other fathers believed that the pagan “gods” were literally demons - fallen and unclean spirits who assumed the form of bright and shining beings to trick and ensnare men. The forms of classical pagan worship, which included human sacrifice, infanticide, ritual castration, and sexual perversion, only confirmed this view in the eyes of the Church.
This was part and parcel of the earlier Jewish belief that the pagan gods, who were intimately tied into the political preservation of the Roman state and who were held each to have control over particular nation-states, were demonic in nature: “The gods of the nations are demons” - Psalm 95:5
As most of the early ECFs had been raised in the Jewish tradition, which held that adulteration of the sacred is never permitted, and that one does not allow daemonic influences into their faith, they were quite bold in their expressions that one should never include pagan elements into Christian practice. As these men and women had in some cases been tortured and imprisoned, and had seen their friends killed, by members of the pagan religion, it is not hard to understand that they would not allow any elements of what they saw as a demonic religion into their orthodox practice, any more than a modern Jew would allow the display of a swastika in his or her temple. The revulsion was that explicit.
Pope Gregory, later in the Church’s history, held this same view, in the Bede’s quoted letter:
*"To his most beloved son, the Abbot Mellitus; Gregory, the servant of the servants of God. We have been much concerned, since the departure of our congregation that is with you, because we have received no account of the success of your journey. When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine, our brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined upon, viz., that the temples of the idols in that nation ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples, let altars be erected, and relics placed.
For if those temples are well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils to the service of the true God; that the nation, seeing that their temples are not destroyed, may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God, may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils, some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, as that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples, and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting, and no more offer beasts to the Devil, but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the Giver of all things for their sustenance; to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God.
For there is no doubt that it is impossible to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds; because he who endeavours to ascend to the highest place, rises by degrees or steps, and not by leaps. Thus the Lord made Himself known to the people of Israel in Egypt; and yet He allowed them the use of the sacrifices which they were wont to offer to the Devil, in his own worship; so as to command them in his sacrifice to kill beasts, to the end that, changing their hearts, they might lay aside one part of the sacrifice, whilst they retained another; that whilst they offered the same beasts which they were wont to offer, they should offer them to God, and not to idols; and thus they would no longer be the same sacrifices. This it behooves your affection to communicate to our aforesaid brother, that he, being there present, may consider how he is to order all things. God preserve you in safety, most beloved son."*
The Pope showed a shrews knowledge of human nature - razing old temples where they had worshipped all their lives would have seemed more like an act of conquest than conversion; it’s easier to convert little by little, showing them similarities between their old faith and the new one (where they existed); and to often cash-strapped evangelicals, they could repurpose the old building rather than raise funds and manpower to erect a new one. The Church held frugalism to be a virtue.
We can see elements of this same, common-sense approach to evangelism in how the Jesuits worked among the Lakota Sioux - finding elements of similarity in two faiths, which is why Black Elk chose to convert and remain a Catholic (and catechist) all his life.
St. Justin Martyr in the 2nd century AD would point out some rather strained similarities between the pagan gods and Jesus in his attempt to restrain Roman persecution, but this was clearly for the tactical and political purpose of protecting the Christian church. As he also wrote,
[W]e do not reverence the same gods as you do, nor offer to the dead libations and the savour of fat, and crowns for their statues, and sacrifices. For you very well know that the same animals are with some esteemed gods, with others wild beasts, and with others sacrificial victims. And, secondly, because we— who, out of every race of men, used to worship Bacchus the son of Semele, and Apollo the son of Latona…or some one or other of those who are called gods— have now, through Jesus Christ, learned to despise these, though we be threatened with death for it, and have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impossible God; of whom we are persuaded that never was he goaded by lust of Antiope, or such other women, or of Ganymede, nor was rescued by that hundred-handed giant whose aid was obtained through Thetis, nor was anxious on this account that her son Achilles should destroy many of the Greeks because of his concubine Briseis. Those who believe these things we pity, and those who invented them we know to be devils.
The early Church fathers did differ on the use of secular traditions in observing the Christmas season, although they agreed it should be celebrated. Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, in his sermon “On the Theophany” (c. 379) indicated that proper practice for celebrating Advent, which was practiced with the fasting and denial similar to Lent, should differ from pagan Saturnalia practices:
*V. And how shall this be? Let us not adorn our porches, nor arrange dances, nor decorate the streets; let us not feast the eye, nor enchant the ear with music, nor enervate the nostrils with perfume, nor prostitute the taste, nor indulge the touch, those roads that are so prone to evil and entrances for sin; let us not be effeminate in clothing soft and flowing, whose beauty consists in its uselessness, nor with the glittering of gems or the sheen of gold or the tricks of colour, belying the beauty of nature, and invented to do despite unto the image of God; Not in rioting and drunkenness, with which are mingled, I know well, chambering and wantonness, since the lessons which evil teachers give are evil; or rather the harvests of worthless seeds are worthless. Let us not set up high beds of leaves, making tabernacles for the belly of what belongs to debauchery. Let us not appraise the bouquet of wines, the kickshaws of cooks, the great expense of ointments. Let not sea and land bring us as a gift their precious dung, for it is thus that I have learned to estimate luxury; and let us not strive to outdo each other in intemperance (for to my mind every superfluity is intemperance, and all which is beyond absolute need)—and this while others are hungry and in want, who are made of the same clay and in the same manner.
VI. Let us leave all these to the Greeks and to the pomps and festivals of the Greeks, who call by the name of gods beings who rejoice in the reek of sacrifices, and who consistently worship with their belly; evil inventors and worshippers of evil demons. But we, the Object of whose adoration is the Word, if we must in some way have luxury, let us seek it in word, and in the Divine Law, and in histories; especially such as are the origin of this Feast; that our luxury may be akin to and not far removed from Him Who has called us together.*
While St. Gregory felt that acts of penance, and especially, charity to the poor were better ways to observe Advent (which was celebrated more like Lent in the early Church), the actual Feast of the Nativity (December 25) was an actual Feast, as the name implies - periods of penance are followed by periods of feasting and celebration, as to all things there is a season.
Another ECF view held that the “taking over” of pagan traditions sanctifies them and makes them right in the eyes of Christian denominations. The most widely recognized Christian symbol, used even by the Puritans, was itself pagan - The Cross, a pagan form of state execution, rendered Christian by its use by Jesus in the Salvation of all mankind. (I think the Mormons, who consider themselves Christian but who are not recognized as such by most other Christian denominations, do not widely use the crucifix as a symbol, possibly because they consider it pagan.)
That having been said, there were many elements of everyday life under the pagans that continued to be used after Christianity became the dominant religion in formerly pagan lands. Unless they were specifically tied to the actual “worship” of pagan gods, they were generally allowed to continue. Even those staunchly anti-pagan Puritans continued to use the pagan names of the week (Woden’sDay, Thor’sDay, Freya’sDay, etc.) as well as the pagan names of the months (August for the god-emperor Augustus, October for the god-emperor Octavius, January for the god Janus, etc.), because it’s just too damn hard to change everything.
“Bible-believing” Christians still do this today. The Bible does not authorize the use of wedding bands or wedding veils in church marriage services, nor the bride wearing white, nor does the Bible give warrant for the bride taking the husband’s surname. All those customs are actually pagan in origin, but Christian denominations continue to use them.
The early Church Father Tertullian (d. circa 220 A.D.) addressed these qualms in his On Idolatry
Touching the ceremonies, however, of private and social solemnities–as those of the white toga, of espousals, of nuptials, of name-givings–I should think no danger need be guarded against from the breath of the idolatry which is mixed up with them. For the causes are to be considered to which the ceremony is due. Those above-named I take to be clean in themselves, because neither manly garb, nor the marital ring or union, descends from honours done to any idol. [My emphasis] In short, I find no dress cursed by God, except a woman’s dress on a man: for “cursed,” saith He, “is every man who clothes himself in woman’s attire.” The toga, however, is a dress of manly name as well as of manly use. God no more prohibits nuptials to be celebrated than a name to be given.
Tertullian made the reasonable assertion that the survival of customs from pagan times are not themselves necessarily pagan - inasmuch as they do not require you to worship a pagan god, sacrifice a child, or have sex with a temple prostitute or otherwise compromise your Christian beliefs and doctrines, it’s not really an issue for Christians, and on a case-by-case basis, it’s probably fine.
What we do not find in the Patristic writings is any textual evidence of a plan to usurp Saturnalia, Sol Invictus (for which we have no pre-Christian evidence, as it is most likely a neo-Platonist invention), the Solstice, or any other pagan holiday, for the reasons I have stated.
In fact, the widespread adoption of December 25 as the official day to observe the Feast of the Nativity was less likely an attempt to co-opt pagan converts than as part of an infra-Christian, post-Nicaean debate between the orthodox and the Gnostics, as the orthodox wanted to emphasize the corporeality of Christ’s physical existence against the Gnostic beliefs, and celebrating His birth (as opposed to His Resurrection, which had been celebrated since the beginning of Christianity) to a woman in squalid circumstances was a way to emphasize that. December 25 was finally recognized as having the most likely claim, based on the textual inferences within Luke as well as existing Jewish beliefs on the births and deaths of great men. As this was an intra-faith conflict rather than an inter-faith conflict, if December 25 was still seen as a date important to pagans at that time, it would have been far more dangerous for the orthodox to assert its significance.
Why? Presumably these weren’t chipped off the gates of heaven. If every precious metal or stone connected to God was off limits, everyone would be stuck wearing plastic.
Behold! A figure in white wreathed in fire and with with sixteen wings was before me and its Swatch was pink like unto cake frosting…
Speaking as a practicing Catholic… It wouldn’t be easy to create a TV commercial involving Mary or baby Jesus that wasn’t offensive or just plain stuoid.
Better to stick with Santa, elves, reindeer and snowmen.
Quite aside from the location, location, location, you’ve also got a well-built building, large enough to gather the entire community inside, maybe with a raised area at one end for a speaker to address everyone from and to be seen going through various rituals. And if you happen to have need for a building that meets that description, well there you go, save yourself the trouble of building a new one.
I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to reply to this in detail - though there are replies to this modern Christian revisionism - but here is one quick point.
**There is indeed textual evidence for the deliberate identification of the the festival of Sol Invictus with Christmas.
** St John Chrysostom (“del Solst. Et Æquin.” II, p. 118, ed. 1588), in the 4th century, says:
*“On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies, the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this the Birthday of the Invincible One; but who is so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disk, but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness.” *
Chrysostom makes it clear that Christmas was deliberately fixed on the same day as Natalis Solis Invicti. The reason he gives for this, and his talk about Christ being ‘invincible’ and the ‘Sun of righteousness’ sound like prevarication to me. ‘Christ is the Sun of righteousness and Invincible, so anyway it’s perfectly fine if this day is called the Birthday of the Invincible Sun’… um, really?
It seems that some Christians are prepared to go to great lengths to dissociate Christ and Sol Invictus. However, there is solid evidence that early Christians conflated sun worship with Christianity:
Tertullian (Apol., 16; cf. Ad. Nat., I, 13; Orig. c. Cels., VIII, 67, etc) had to assert that Sol was not the Christians’ God.
Augustine (Tract xxxiv, in Joan. In P.L., XXXV, 1652) denounces the heretical identification of Christ with Sol.
Pope Leo I (Serm. xxxvii in nat. dom., VII, 4; xxii, II, 6 in P.L., LIV, 218 and 198) bitterly reproves solar survivals — “Christians, on the very doorstep of the Apostles’ basilica, turn to adore the rising sun.”
[Credit for references to the Catholic Encyclopedia]
They were trying to make the costume look special, as she plays the angel who makes the big announcement. Notice the other angels are in all-white costumes (sans gold) with no beads. (They’re much too large to be even pretend pearls.)
The Bible mentions pearls in other passages–pearls before swine, the pearl of great price, so its not as if pearls are restricted to heaven’s gates. If wearing pearls is is offensive to Christians, all the women of bygone eras who wore pearl earrings, broaches, or necklaces to church sure didn’t know about it.
I can’t see a Nativity scene on TV without thinking of the movie Love, Actually, and the kid who plays First
Lobster in the Nativity play. In school plays, authenticity is optional.
