I used to believe that every living being was the extension of some vast being that existed in more dimensions than us. I believed I was just one tiny red star in a great complex constellation, a cell in the heel of a giant rat.
I came down app. 6 hours later.
USD:
Christian ceremonial practices, and some fragments of its theology as well, are incorporations and borrowings from the religions extant in the areas where it came to hold sway. Christmas and its trees, Easter and its bunnies, have little to do with Judaism; and while the theology underlying them is quintessentially Christian, the placement of them in the calendar and the celebrations themselves are the stuff from which modern Wicca was distilled and conjured. The Christian faces worn by these holidays were grafted onto processes and traditions that were present before Christianity reigned.
Easter has a great deal to do with Judaism; why do you think it’s called the Paschal Sacrifice? I agree that trees and bunnies have nothing to do with Judaism, but they don’t have a lot to do with Christianity either. They are relatively late, secular additions to the holidays. You’ll find Easter bunnies on cards, but they don’t feature a lot either in religious teaching or religious ceremonies.
I entirely accept that Christianity did incorporate and build on pagan beliefs and rituals; my point was that this is only a relatively small part of the overall makeup of Christianity, and the bulk of Christian belief, doctrine, tradition and practice is not pagan in origin.
We were talking, mainly, about the Catholic church’s trappings.
Of course the religion is based primarily on Judaism.
But Judaism too has borrowed quite a bit from other religions or was influenced by them.
Btw, what do you mean with trees and bunnies being later secular additions?
As I understand it, Christmas trees are pretty well confined to Germany and the Nordic countries (and therefore to Lutheranism rather than Catholicism) until the 19th Century and, even there, they are a winter festival kind of thing, associated with Christmas because of the coincidence of timing, but not especially religious. They become popular in Britain in the 19th Century (brought, so the tradition has it, by Prince Albert), and from there they migrate to the United States. I don’t know when, if at all, they have become popular with African, Asian or South American Christians, but my guess is that, if they have, they have been spread by commercial and cultural forces, rather than by religion, and those are the associations which they will have. They have more to do with the holiday than with the specifically religious festival, and they don’t feature in religious teaching or ceremonies at all. And they are used by people who are not at all religious, or who are antipathetic to religion.
Even more so with the Easter bunny. This orginates in pre-Christian England (and possibly other European countries) and it retains a popular association with a springtime festival. But it would be very had to say that it had been adopted or incorporated by Christianity. It does not feature at all in religious teaching, ritual or ceremonies. Its spread outside England is wholly secular. I live in Ireland, where the Easter bunny was
unknown until introduced by the Hallmark Card Company ten or fifteen years ago, and nobody thinks of it as a remotely religious symbol or artefact, any more than a chocolate egg has religious significance. Rather it is a commercial artefact grafted on to the margins of a pre-existing religious holiday.
While both the tree and the rabbit have their origins in pre-Christian pagan religious belief or practice, their association with Christian festivals is more one of timing than anything else, and their spread and popularity is, to my mind, definitely associated with the secularisation of these festivals.
A much clearer case of pagan influence on Christian practice is the date of Christmas itself. There is no scriptural evidence as to the time of the year at which Christ was born. The decision to celebrate this event in midwinter appears to have been a simple (and presumably deliberate) attempt to capture for the Christian festival the associations with rebirth already enjoyed by the pagan festivals - and probably also an attempt to supplant the pagan festival.
The timing of Easter was associated with the Jewish Passover (although the two are no longer in phase) and there are strong scriptural reasons why this should be so.
Well, the tree and bunny (hare, actually) outside the germanic sphere are a recent secular addition.
They have existed inside the germanic sphere for thousands of years.
Same with Santa, really. How the world knows him is a comercialised, secular version of a christianised version of a germanic God. Santa Claus = Saint Nicolas = Wodan.
The timing of the feasts is all important, as you yourself later in your post. The whole idea behind the christianisation of the feasts was that, in time, people would forget the original religious meanings of the symbols. Indeed they have been forgotten, to a large extent. But originally those symbols did have religious meaning. So to label them as non-religious symbols doesn’t do them justice, I feel.
Mmm. Yes. But the dates of Christmas and Easter were fixed long before Christianity had reached the Germanic world, so it can’t have been an attempt to take over the Christmas tree and the bunny. The co-option of the tree and the bunny was at best associated with local churches, not the universal church, and from the church’s point of view it was never a very big thing (as witness the fact that, withing the religious dimensions of Christmas and Easter, the tree and the bunny are pretty well irrelevant, and always have been).
I guess my point is this. There arepreChristian pagan borrowings in Christianity, but (a) the tree and the bunny are not very good examples of this, especially if, as you say, it is mainly Catholicism you are concerned with, and (b) the pagan borrowings, influences and inheritances are pretty minor compared with the borrowings. influences and inheritances from Judaism.
As it happens, the origins of Christmas trees, Easter bunnies and the dates of the major Christian festivals, are all dealt with in several of Professor Hutton’s other books, most notably, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford University Press, 1996). Hutton’s point is that not only is Wicca only of very recent origin (as demonstrated in The Triumph of the Moon), but also that it was based on an uncritical acceptance of one particular interpretation of pre-Christian paganism that historians now find unconvincing.
Thus, Christmas trees were invented in Germany in the sixteenth century, while Easter bunnies/hares are even more recent than that. That there was ever a pagan springtime fertility festival is now a matter of dispute among the experts. Indeed, Hutton rejects most (but not quite all) the claims for Christian festivals as pagan survivals, often because there is simply no evidence that there were pagan festivals on those dates. Assuming that there were is a circular argument. As for the date of Christmas, even if one accepts that it was related to Saturnalia (and that is far from straightforward), that is a case of Christianity co-opting a Roman celebration, not a Celtic/Germanic one.
I have heard of Eostera being disputed as the origin for Easter.
As Bede is the only source for her existance.
But that only in context to the name of the feast. I always thought it was in honour of Freya, who’s symbol is a hare.
For Christmas coinciding with the winter solstice, I find that a rather too big err… coincidence to dismiss.
Sounds like an interresting book though, must try and find it.
Ah, but Christians were celebrating Easter long before Christianity had any contact with the Germanic peoples. The English word “Easter” may have Germanic orgins, but the festival predates the word by many centuries, and plainly does not have Germanic origins And even today most Christians do not use the word “Easter” (because most Christians don’t speak English) or recognise any association between Easter and bunnies (because most Christians live outside an Anglo-Saxon culture). As I say, local churches in Germanic areas may have adapted some aspects of pre-existing pagan beliefs or practices some centuries after Christianity was established and these may have spread somewhat, but this is really quite marginal.
As for Christmas being celebrated around the time of the winter solstice, this is probably not coincidental, but so what? The connection, if any, to a pagan festival would not be to a Germanic one, there may not be a connection to any pagan festival (the solstice might have been regarded as a symbolically suitable time without regard to any existing religious practices) and, in any event, the precise date on which Christmas is celebrated is probably the least significant aspect of the celebration.
My point remains that pagan accretions to Christianity - or, at least, the ones you have suggested - are really very marginal.
UDS[, you are too hung up on the germanic.
In other regions other pagan religions have had their influence.
The Jewish Pesach itself is suspected to have its origins in a more ancient ‘spring celebration’.
Highly unlikely to the extreme.
It is very significant with regards to its origin.
If you want to call it marginal that Christians are still celebrating pagan festivals and ‘worshipping’ older Gods, in the form of Saints, that parts of Christian religion itself have been nicked from other religions, be my guest.
December the 25th is also the birthdate of the Mithras, the central messiah figure of the Phrygians, whose religion existed before Jesus’ time. It seems like too much of a coincidence to me that the Church would choose that date as the date of Jesus’ birth. Here is one ink, and here is another.
Well, but even if there are pagan influences on Christian festivals and rituals (and it seems to me there pretty definately are), that doesn’t mean that Christian theology and beliefs were strongly influenced by paganism.
I think that it’s possible to argue that they were also, at least by neo-Platonism and Stoicism, but that’s a different argument.
The original assertion was that “both Wicca and Catholicism have their roots in ancient, preChristian pagan beliefs” and my response was to disagree
“. . . if you mean to say that they have their roots exlcusively in pre-Christian pagan beliefs. That Christianity has its roots in pre-Christian beliefs is undeniable - it’s practically tautological - but its roots are mainly in Judaism, which is not generally classed as a pagan religion.”
The question, then, is whether Christianity’s roots are predominantly or substantially pagan, and I maintain that they are not; pagan accretions to Christianity are marginal.
Christians are not “still celebrating pagan festivals”. They are celebrating Christian festivals on days which, in some cases (in fact, perhaps in just one case) are around the same time as the days on which pagan festivals were celebrated. Even if we assume that the date was chosen because it was the date of the pagan festival, why do you assume that the intention and effect was to continue the pagan festival? Surely it was more likely to supplant the pagan festival?
Christians do not worship saints; some Christians venerate them. The great majority of saints have no connections at all to any older gods. In some cases stories or qualities originally connected with an earlier god have become attached to a saint (who may or may not be a historical person). Even so this does not mean the Christians are either worshipping or venerating the older god. You might argue that this was so if the identity of a saint was substantially the same as the identity of the earlier pagan god, but is there any case where this has been established, or even suggested?
And, yes, all this is marginal. The date of Christmas is not a matter of importance; different Christians celebrate Christmas it on different days, or celebrate different festivals on the same day; they are all Christians nevertheless. Many Christians do not venerate saints at all – indeed, they object to the practice – and, of those saints who are venerated, I think only a handful have any plausibly suggested connection to pagan gods.
The non-pagan inheritances of Christianity are vastly more significant than these. Monotheism, for example, is plainly central to Christianity in a way that the date of Christmas is not; it is a Jewish inheritance. The Old Testament is plainly central to Chrisianity in a way that the veneration of St Nicholas is not; it is also a Jewish inheritance. You see my point?
If you want signficant pagan influences on Christianity, look at the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian theology from the time of St Thomas Aquinas onwards. Now you have a much stronger case.
Except it probably isn’t. The commemoration of Christ’s Nativity seems to have predated the idea that it should take place on 25 December, with different churches having previously used a variety of other dates depending on local custom.