The holiday season brings warmth, celebration, and cherished traditions. According to historian Dr. Christine Senecal of the Department of History at Shippensburg University, there are a few parallels between Yule and Pagan traditions and our modern Christmas traditions.

“So, Yuletide corresponds very well over the season of December because that's when the days get the shortest of the year. And so that the kind of tradition of that gets wrapped around Christmas.”

In ancient times, the word pagan had a negative connotation. In the early Christian period in Rome, the Christians used it as a disparaging term for the people that hadn’t converted to Christianity.

“So, the three hundreds, by that time, there were later three hundreds. There were more Christians than pagans. And the word pagan can refer to a rustic person, somebody who's not sophisticated. So even in ancient times, it had a negative connotation. It doesn't mean somebody that is polytheistic. But of course, the ancient Romans that didn't convert to Christianity were polytheistic.”

Folks in Germany during that time that were not Christian had a lot of evergreens in the middle of the winter when the days were the shortest.

“And that's sort of like this idea that Christianity is triumphing over paganism, and then that tree is incorporated into the Christian tradition. But really it comes from the 1840s. There is a German wife of English King George, the third. Her name is Charlotte, and she is the first one to set up a Christmas tree in Windsor. So that's where it comes to the inn, to England. And then the husband of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, actually puts up another tree and they decorate it with baubles. And this is in 1840. And from there, it really gets going. There's Pennsylvania Dutch people also, and they're incorporating consciously a lot of this Germanic tradition. So, the Christmas tree and decorating it comes from that as well.”

Listen to the podcast to hear more connections between Yule/ Pagan Traditions. 

 

Support WITF: https://www.witf.org/support/give-now/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.