Santa To The Rescue \
One of my favorite holidays is Thanksgiving, but for many people, it begins the “most wonderful time of the year”.
The same complaining about how many presents we “must” buy starts. Right? Many long for a simpler time when Christmas must have been more religious. To my surprise, Christmas as we know it has only been celebrated for about the last 200 years in America and England.
Christmas then was a time to PARTY, drink and riot.
or centuries, Christmas was anything but a time to worship. If people did attend church, they often dressed in wild costumes.
Think…Mardi Gras – Halloween, mixed together.
The festivals were a week long, filled with self-indulgence marking the winter solstice and dating back to the Greeks and Romans.
Long before Christ’s birthday, almost every culture celebrated the shortest days of the year. (winter solstice). They looked forward to the longer days.
\\\ We love spring \\\
Mid-winter festivals can be dated all the way back to Babylon and Egypt.
The Romans really partied hard. They celebrated their god of peace and plenty, “Saturnalia”. The festival ran between December 17th and 24th . Everything was decorated with flowers and banners and even gifts were exchanged. Slaves and masters partied together.
Even the Roman Christians celebrated the days of sin. The Church was not too happy about this at all.
It took 125 years to celebrate the birth of Christ. Why?
No one actually knew when Christ was born. Most biblical scholars think Christ was born in the spring. So why do we celebrate his birth in December?
You guessed it, to try and counter-act the sin and folly festivals of the winter solstice festivals.
There was never an official date for Christ’s birthday, until Pope Julius I (In 320) got tired of different days being used. He proclaimed December 25th as Jesus Christ’s birthday. It still took a back seat to the parties.
Many celebrated at the festivals, then repented later.
Sinful Christmas Raged On.
When the Puritans came to America in 1620, they attempted to outlaw Christmas. Churches didn’t even meet. You could have been fined and arrested for celebrating Christmas.
Try that today.
These laws were still in effect through the Revolutionary war. From 1789-1856, Congress even met on December 25th.
Chaos in New York
As more immigrants came over, naturally, disorder took over again. In New York City in 1828, the riots were so out of hand that they had to have a special police task force just for Christmas.
Christmas As We Know It
In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote the poem “The Night Before Christmas.” The poem about the jolly old elf was printed in the New York Sentinel in 1823. For the first time, children were an important part of Christmas.
In 1834, Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, was published. The story that stressed family, charity, and hope gave Christmas a wholesome meaning.
Scrooge was a symbol of the Industrial Age, where money and work dominated. Kind of sounds like today’s society. Men worked 12 hour days/ 6 days a week, and children started work often by the age of 8 or 9. This story reflected society at the time and people started reevaluating their values.
SANTA, SCROOGE and CHRIST
With Scrooge, we got to see the real meaning of Christmas. He was instrumental in the evolution of the values we place on Christmas over the next 30 years.
Who Was SANTA?
With the introduction of Clement Clarke Moore’s, St. Nick, suddenly Santa was everywhere.
But Santa wasn’t done.
Moore didn’t describe what he looked like. In 1863, Thomas Nast, was asked to Illustrate “The Night Before Christmas,” for a book. He was an elfin-human figure dressed in red that embodied kindness, gentleness, and jollyness.
More and more details were added to Santa every year, such as his workshop, the fact that he lives at the North Pole and he has a naughty and nice list. These details were added over 22 years of Nast’s illustrations for Harpers Weekly.
1865
Santa is our own invention, but he is based on good Christian men of the past. He was based on the loving and generous men, St. Nicholas and Wenceslas (like the song except he wasn’t a king in real life, he was a Duke). Their nations were built on faith, trust and mercy. Their lives were dedicated to following Christ and the Christian faith.
In an ironic way, the commercialization of Santa brought people away from riots and to a wholesome family time of gathering to celebrate Christ.
Even though Coca-Cola didn’t invent Santa Claus, they were very instrumental in his popularization.
Whatever your faith, this is still a wonderful time of year to gather with friends and family.
If you want a fascinating read, this info came from Stories Behind The Great Traditions of Christmas –by Ace Collins.
Entries (RSS)