The Truth About Christmas
What is Christmas?
The word Christmas comes from
the words Cristes maesse, or "Christ's Mass." Christmas is the
celebration of the birth of Jesus for members of the Christian religion. Most
historians peg the first celebration of Christmas to Rome in 336 A.D.
Christmas is both a holiday and
a holy day. In America it is the biggest event of the year (especially for
kids), and for members of the Christian religions it is an important day on the
religious calendar. The federal government, all state governments, all
schools/colleges/universities and the vast majority of businesses in America
give employees one or two days off at Christmas, making it an important holiday
(other federal holidays are: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day,
Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day,
Veterans Day, Thanksgiving). In the Roman Catholic calendar, Christmas is one of
six holy feast days celebrated in America, the others being: Circumcision (New
Year's Day), Ascension, Assumption (Mary's assumption into heaven, August 15),
All Saints (November 1), and the Immaculate Conception (December 8).
Why is Christmas such a big deal?
There are two reasons why
Christmas is such a big deal:
·
According to the 1994 Encyclopedia
Britannica Book of the Year, there are 1.8 billion Christians in a total world
population of 5.5 billion, making it the largest religion worldwide. In America,
241 million out of a total population of 281 million people are Christians --
that's 85 percent. Because Christians follow Jesus, the birth of Jesus is
important to them.
·
In America, the weeks leading up
to Christmas are the biggest shopping weeks of the year. Many retailers make up
to 70 percent of their annual revenue in the month preceding Christmas.
Therefore, retailers hype the event beyond belief.
According to Daniel Boorstin in
his book The Americans, Christmas was largely a non-event in America until the
1860s. 1867 was the first year that Macy's department store in New York City
remained open until midnight on Christmas Eve. 1874 was the year of the first
window displays with a Christmas theme at Macy's. It has snowballed from there.
Why
do people give each other presents on Christmas day?
The tradition
of gifts seems to have started with the gifts that the wise men (the Magi)
brought to Jesus. As recounted in the Bible's book of Matthew, "On coming
to the house they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and
worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of
gold and of incense and of myrrh."
As mentioned in the previous
question, however, no one was really in the habit of exchanging elaborate gifts
until late in the 1800s. The Santa Claus story (described later), combined with
an amazing retailing phenomenon that has grown since the turn of the century,
has made gift giving a central focus of the Christmas tradition.
Is December 25 really the day Jesus was born?
No one really knows. What is known is that Christian leaders in 336 A.D. set the
date to December 25 in an attempt to eclipse a popular pagan holiday in Rome
that celebrated the winter solstice. Originally, the celebration of Christmas
involved a simple mass, but over time Christmas has replaced a number of other
holidays in many other countries, and a large number of traditions have been
absorbed into the celebration in the process
Why
is there a small evergreen tree in your living room?
This is a German tradition,
started as early as 700 A.D. In the 1800s the tradition of the Christmas tree
was widespread in Germany, then moved to England and then to America through
Pennsylvanian German immigrants.
Why have you decorated this evergreen?
...with ornaments, lights, fake snow and
Mylar plastic tinsel? In Victorian times, people had already started decorating
trees with candies and cakes hung with ribbon. In 1880, Woolworths first sold
manufactured Christmas tree ornaments, and they caught on very quickly. Martin
Luther, in the 16th century, is credited as being the first person to put
candles on a tree, and the first electrically lighted Christmas tree appeared in
1882. Calvin Coolidge in 1923 ceremoniously lit the first outdoor tree at the
White House, starting that long tradition. Fake snow and tinsel... Who knows?
It's probably related to the song "White Christmas" (we'll get to that
soon).
Why
do you have holly draped over the mantel and staircase?
Mistletoe has
apparently been used as a decoration in houses for thousands of years and is
also associated with many pagan rituals. According to the book by extraordinary
origins of everyday things Charles Panati:
For Scandinavians, the goddess of love (Frigga) is strongly associated
with mistletoe. This link to romance may be where our tradition of kissing under
mistletoe comes from
And
what about this nativity scene in the corner?
The star, the manger, the swaddling clothes, the shephers, the angels, the heavenly host and the wise men all come from the books Matthew and Luke in the Bible.
Why
is there a big log in the fireplace?
"Yuletide"
for "Christmastime" is a term derived from the yule log, which
in olden days was a huge log used as the foundation of the holiday fires.
Bringing the yule log in was, as recently as the 19th century, as much a part of
the pre-Christmas festivities as putting up an evergreen tree today.
"Yule" can be traced back to the Middle English "Yollen"
(cry aloud) and is thought to date from early Anglo-Saxon revels in celebration
of the discovery (after the winter solstice) that nights were becoming shorter.
Why
are there poinsettias on the hearth?
Poinsettias were attached to Christmas starting in 1828. Joel Roberts Poinsett, then the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, imported the plant from Mexico. In warm climates, the poinsettia grows outdoors as a winter-flowering leggy shrub about 3 metres (10 feet) high; as a potted plant in northern areas it rarely grows beyond 1 metre. What appear to be petals are actually coloured leaflike bracts that surround a central cluster of tiny yellow flowers. A milky latex in the stems and leaves can be irritating to persons or animals sensitive to it, but the claim that poinsettias are deadly poisonous is greatly exaggerated
And what about these fruitcakes?
According to Irma Rombauer and Marion
Becker, "Many people feel that these cakes improve greatly with age. When
they are well saturated with alcoholic liquors, which raise the spirits and keep
down mold, and are buried in powdered sugar in tightly closed tins, they have
been enjoyed as long as 25 years after baking."
Why
are there oversized socks hanging on your mantel?
According to a
very old tradition, the original Saint Nicholas left his very first gifts of
gold coins in the stockings of three poor girls who needed the money for their
wedding dowries. The girls had hung their stockings by the fire to dry. Up until
lately, it was traditional to receive small items like fruit, nuts and candy in
your stocking, but these have been replaced in the last half-century by more
expensive gifts in many homes.
Why
are Christmas cards scattered all over the coffee table?
Christmas cards started in London in 1843
and in America in 1846. Today, about two billion Christmas cards are exchanged
every year in the United States.
Why
do I keep hearing the same songs over and over again?
There is a set of songs that are played continuously during the Christmas
season. Here's a pretty complete list:
-
Away In A Manger
-
Carol Of The Bells
-
Deck The Halls
-
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
-
Jingle Bells
-
Joy To The World
-
Hark, The Herald Angels Sing
-
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
-
I'll Be Home For Christmas
-
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
-
Little Drummer Boy
-
O Come All Ye Faithful
-
O Holy Night
-
O, Little Town of Bethlehem
-
O Tannenbaum
-
Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer
-
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
-
Silent Night
-
Silver Bells
-
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
-
The First Noel
-
The Twelve Days of Christmas
-
We Wish You A Merry Christmas
-
What Child Is This?
-
White Christmas
-
Winter Wonderland
Since this
list is so short, you tend to hear each song about 700 times over the course of
the few weeks leading up to Christmas.
What,
exactly are the 12 days of Christmas?
The 12 days of Christmas are the 12 days that separate Christmas day on December
25 from Epiphany, which is celebrated January 6. Depending on the church,
January 6 may mark Christ's baptism (the Catholic tradition), or it may mark the
day that the wise men visited the baby Jesus with their gifts.
In the past, there was a
tradition of giving gifts throughout the 12 days, rather than stacking them all
up on the morning of December 25. That tradition, as you might imagine, has
never really caught on in America! We just aren't that patient. The song,
however, demonstrates that some people once stretched out their gifts (and gave
some fairly elaborate gifts...) over the full 12 days.
Why
do Christmas carolers walk around the neighborhood singing?
In the Middle Ages in England and France, carols were dances accompanied by singing. In the French Midi, for example, the "carol" was a kind of round dance. In time, the word "carol" changed its meaning, referring only to certain kinds of songs. The Anglo-Saxon tradition favoured gathering together small choirs on the village green to sing carols and Christmas songs for the pleasure of passers-by. A number of currently very popular American Christmas carols come directly from France and England
Who
is this Santa Claus person?
-
Why is Santa characterized as a short, fat and jolly pipe smoker?
-
Why does Santa wear such outlandish clothes?
-
Why does he ride around in a sleigh? Pulled by reindeer? That lands on rooftops? So he can climb down the chimney? With a big sack full of toys? Which he leaves under the tree for good girls and boys?
According
to tradition, he was born in the ancient Lycian seaport city of Patara, and,
when young, he traveled to Palestine and Egypt. He became bishop of Myra soon
after returning to Lycia. He was imprisoned during the Roman emperor
Diocletian's persecution of Christians but was released under the rule of
Emperor Constantine the Great and attended the first Council (325) of Nicaea.
After his death he was buried in his church at Myra, and by the sixth century
his shrine there had become well known. In 1087, Italian sailors or merchants
stole his alleged remains from Myra and took them to Bari, Italy; this removal
greatly increased the saint's popularity in Europe, and Bari became one of the
most crowded of all pilgrimage centres. Nicholas' relics remain enshrined in the
11th-century basilica of San Nicola, Bari.
After
the Reformation, Nicholas' cult disappeared in all the Protestant countries of
Europe except Holland, where his legend persisted as Sinterklaas (a Dutch
variant of the name Saint Nicholas). Dutch colonists took this tradition with
them to New Amsterdam (now New York City) in the American colonies in the 17th
century. Sinterklaas was adopted by the country's English-speaking majority
under the name Santa Claus, and his legend of a kindly old man was united with
old Nordic folktales of a magician who punished naughty children and rewarded
good children with presents.
It is amazing but true that the
common, popular view of Santa that we all have today, along with all the crazy
things around Santa like the sleigh, the reindeer and the chimney, all came
largely from two publishing events that occurred in the 1800s and one
advertising campaign in this century. Clement Moore wrote "The Night Before
Christmas" in 1822 for his family. It was picked up by a newspaper, then
reprinted in magazines and it spread like wildfire. Moore admitted authorship in
1838. You will find that he names the reindeer, invents the sleigh, comes up
with the chimney and the bag of toys, etc. Nearly everyone in America has been
able to recognize or recite this poem since the 1830s.
Then, between 1863 and 1886,
Harper's Weekly (a popular magazine of the time) ran a series of engravings by
Thomas Nast. From these images come the concepts of Santa's workshop, Santa
reading letters, Santa checking his list and so on. Coca-Cola also played a role
in the Santa image by running a set of paintings by Haddon Sundblom in its ads
between 1931 to 1964.
The red and white suit came,
actually, from the original Saint Nicholas. Those colors were the colors of the
traditional bishop's robes.
Why do so many people, even Floridians, dream of a white Christmas?
The song "(I'm Dreaming of a) White Christmas," written by Irving
Berlin for the movie "Holiday Inn" (1942) and sung by Bing Crosby, is
one of the best-selling songs of all time.
Who
is this reindeer named Rudolf?
who guides Santa's sleigh with the biological aberration of a red, glowing
nose capable of penetrating thick fog?
The whole story of Rudolf
appeared, out of nowhere, in 1939. Santas at Montgomery Ward stores gave away
2.4 million copies of a booklet entitled "Rudolf the Red-Nose
Reindeer." The story was written by a person in the advertising department
named Robert May, and the booklet was illustrated by Denver Gillen. The original
name of the reindeer was not Rudolf, according to the book by Extraoridanry
origins of everyday things Charles Panati. The original name was Rollo, but
executives did not like that name, nor Reginald. The name Rudolf came from the
author's young daughter! In 1949, Gene Autry sang a musical version of the poem
and it was a run-away best-seller. The Rudolf song is second only to "White
Christmas" in popularity.
Why
is Christmas sometimes spelled Xmas?
...especially when combined with the word "sale"?
According to the book Did you
ever Wonder... by Jeff Rovin, the word for Christ in Greek is Xristos.
The use of the shortened form "Xmas" became popular in Europe in the
1500s.
The word Xmas is so common in advertising most likely because "Xmas" and "sale" have the same number of letters, and "Xmas" is significantly shorter than Christmas.
Why
are stores and malls so geared up about this holiday?
Why does every mall have a Santa village, and why do kids come sit on Santa's
knee?
Stores and malls have been revved up about Christmas since the late 1800s. In America today, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are, by far, the biggest retail sales weeks of the year. The survival of most retail stores depends on the Christmas buying season. Therefore, retailers do whatever they can to whip people into a Christmas buying spirit and to attract them to their stores. Festive decorations, big ads, Santa's Villages and all the rest are a part of that process.
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