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Christmas tradition: It all began with the winter solstice |  |
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| By Laura Homan
The Christmas season has many traditions. The day after Thanksgiving, Christmas music begins playing on the radio and people all across the country start unpacking their decorations. Ornaments, trees, and artificial snow begin lining bookshelves, mantels, and tables. With all of the people celebrating in one way or another, knowing the history of some of these traditions is an important part of the holiday season. Bruce Forbes, professor of Religious Studies at Morningside, explained some of the traditions of Christmas and their histories.  “Christmas is a Christian event but also a winter festival and a time for family. Combine the three together and it’s a very powerful thing,” said Forbes. Winter festivals were held around winter solstice, around December 21st, to bring people together in the cold and dark season. The winter festival was a time of food, gathering, decorating, drinking, and general merry-making to keep the cold at bay. These festivals often were held to represent life in the season of what seemed like death. “Going into winter is like going into death and hoping you’ll come out alive,” said Forbes. “These people came together to celebrate life in this time.” Christmas was added in later during this time as the day of Jesus’ birth is not clear. Through this addition, traditions have been gathered from various places and added to what we know now. The main aspect of nearly everyone’s Christmas traditions is the Christmas tree. We bring them into our houses, wrap lights around them, and adorn them with little ornaments each year. These trees are the centerpiece of the living room and the focal point of many celebrations. On Christmas morning this is the first thing rushed to by the inhabitants of the house to discover what is in the finely wrapped packages beneath the branches. How many truly know the history behind the tree?  Evergreens were a part of winter festivals before Christianity even became involved. They were used as the greatest symbols of the life that lives even in the coldest times. Then people began bringing the trees inside to decorate and celebrate. The indoor Christmas tree is said to have originated around the 1500’s in Germany, but it may have been earlier than that even. The trees didn’t become popular in Europe as a whole until Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, both of German descendents, brought a tree into their home for the world to see. A drawing was done of them around the tree in 1848 and used in newspapers all across Europe. After seeing the image in the papers, people all over England began bringing trees into their homes. Eventually it spread to the United States. Originally the trees were small and placed on a table. Decorations would be placed on the table along with the presents. As the presents got larger, so did the trees. Today, many trees are large ceiling to floor trees with presents overflowing below the branches. Another popular symbol of the Christmas season is the poinsettia. This plant is a native to Mexico and a winter-flowering plant. What are usually called the petals of the plant are actually the leaves. The red color only appears on the leaves when the light decreases from the sun. When the Spanish came over to North America they brought with them Christianity and the stories linked to it. From this came a folk tale about a young girl who wanted to bring a gift to the Christ child but realized that she had nothing to bring him. She brought a handful of weeds to the cradle and he turned them red. The plants received the name “flores de Nochebuena,” or the flowers of the Holy Night. When a U.S. ambassador by the name of Joel Poinsett, an amateur botanist, went to Mexico he brought them back to the U.S., hence the name. These are just a couple Christmas traditions that have been passed through time to our society. Many of the traditions that are celebrated annually are not traditions from our society but from other countries. “Many people say that we’ve lost the purity of the holiday and we need to get back to it,” Forbes said. “But it never was a pure holiday. From the beginning it was a mix of many different cultures and traditions and it still is.” To find out more about the history of Christmas, Bruce Forbes has written a book titled Christmas: A Candid History. (Dec. 3) |
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