What is the wonderful origin of Christmas?
There are only a couple of weeks left until Christmas starts. A time that is sure to be very well received by all of you since it allows you to meet again with your relatives and closest friends in one place. All this while you enjoy all kinds of sweets in the form of mantecados, marzipan, donuts or roscones de reyes.
Also, Christmas would not be such as we know it without gifts. There are many people who take advantage of these last days of December to make a very special gift to those dear people with the aim of showing all the respect and devotion that they process.
Although it is impossible to deny that part of the spirit of Christmas has been corrupted due to excessive consumerism, there are also some days in which values such as friendship, humanity and love of neighbor should be promoted. But not only to the people of our environment, but also to all those who are most disadvantaged.
Christmas is a holiday of pagan origin
It should be noted that the term of Christmas means "birth"And is intimately linked to the Christian tradition after the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth to the world, one of the most important historical and religious figures of the last two thousand years.
But what is the true story of Christmas? Really the call Jesus Christ was born on December 25 in that small town of Bethlehem located in Jerusalem? These are many questions that have been asked hundreds of historians throughout the world for long generations.
And after much research, it has been concluded that in reality December 25 was a holiday that was already celebrated in the heyday of the Roman Empire. During that time, the Natalis Solis Invicti, a party where the birth of the god was celebrated Apollo, one of the most important deities within the Roman mythology.
This was a time when the Romans always postponed their litigation and business in order to take advantage of those days off to exchange gifts in a tradition that has remained unchanged to this day.
However, after the legalization of Christianity in the fourth century thanks to Constantino I, on December 25 it was transformed by completed for attract and convert all pagans to the Christian religion. In this way, with the implementation of the Julian calendar, it was stipulated that the birth of Christ was just this day in order to eradicate completely just a vestige of pagan traditions.
Christmas and its influence on other religions
Does this mean that the day Pentecost is always celebrated on the same date in all the religions of the world? Nothing is further from reality. In fact, due to all the splits that Christianity has suffered throughout its long history, the date of the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ has also varied markedly.
A clear example we see it with the Russian Orthodox Church, which celebrates the birth of the Messiah on January 7. Just one day after the Three Wise Men brought gold, incense and myrrh to Bethlehem, on a date that has a strong cultural roots in Spain and that receives the “ Epiphany of the Lord".
On the other hand, Germanic communities Y Scandinavian They also exported a large part of their winter festivities to the full roots of the Christian tradition. In fact, the tribes of the north used to decorate an evergreen tree in honor of Yggdrasil, another Nordic deity that later became that funny habit of decorating a fir or pine tree and that has so much repercussion in the Western world today.
As a curiosity, the Aztec and Inca culture also celebrated the arrival of winter on December 23 with the aim of worshiping their own deities among those who highlighted the God of the Sun and War Huitzilopochtli by the Aztecs or the deity Inti on the holiday called as Capac Raymi.
In short, as you will have seen , the Nativity does not have its origin exclusively in the Christian religion. Throughout the last centuries we have seen how it has been "mutating" and has been receiving influences from all kinds of cultures such as Roman, Orthodox and Scandinavian, to later become this important date that we take advantage of to meet with our closest friends and family. ThemesChristmas
