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CanterburyTerrier t1_iyiaeet wrote

Reply to comment by ThalesBakunin in Why “the Christmas feeling” is more profound than you think - some holiday themed philosophy by Melodic_Antelope6490

There's a really interesting book which delves into the "roots" of Christmas called The Battle for Christmas by Nissenbaum. It doesn't focus on the ancient or Medieval origins of Christmas, but the evolution of Christmas as a thing that was wholly torn apart during the rise of Puritanism. Ancient customs associated with harvest and winter larders were wiped away by a Christian ethic of temperance. Basically, they wanted drudgery without punctuation and saw winter celebrations as drunken revelry... which it was, but they didn't see the need for it.

If you want to kind of get an inkling of those older traditions, you can kind of hear it in albums like The Christmas Revels: In Celebration of the Winter Solstice.

I say, kind of hear, because a lot of those traditions were wiped away and we have to reassemble them. It's not exactly the same, but it's kind of like Pacific Islanders having to reassemble their language and traditions after the colonial period tried to scour it away.

Anyway, the book explains how the Christmas we know today... the Victorian, Dickensian Christmas was, oddly enough, a product of Dickens coming to America and his readings of Washington Irving (who also kind of invented Halloween). The traditions in a Christmas Carol aren't invested in Christian imagery. They are invested in a type of pagan tradition that Dickens assembled or invented.

So, in the end, the hard to define element of Christmas might actually owe a lot to the murky nature of the traditions themselves.

Edit: Also, Christ's birthday was one of the few events which didn't seem to have an associated date which lined up with the Jewish calendar and Holidays so it was easy to assign to the Solstice celebrations.

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ThalesBakunin t1_iyiaomb wrote

Thanks for the recommendation of literature. I love that kind of stuff as I'm a bit of an anthropology/history buff.

In my house we wish each other happy Saturnalia.

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CanterburyTerrier t1_iyic2p2 wrote

You'd love the Christmas Revels album. "The boars head in hand bear I, bedecked with sage and rosemary!"

The book goes into a lot of class warfare and how Christmas was traditionally a time when peasants would remind land holders of their tenuous hold on power.

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e_sandrs t1_iyip74g wrote

I'm not going to remember enough details, but I recall reading somewhere that some "Early Christian Scholars" decided at one point that Jesus must have been both conceived and killed on the same day of "Easter" (not even touching the origins of that name here) for....reasons. Add 9 months to a Spring conception and you end up with a birthday around the Winter Solstice. See? It All Makes Sense Like It Should.

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akebonobambusa t1_iyk7nfb wrote

Jesus conception is the Annunciation and it's on March 25. The conception and birth of Jesus are based in the spring equinox and the winter solstice. Easter is based on a lunar calendar which is why it moves around.

The equinox and the beginning of spring sound similar but they most certainly are not. The beginning of Spring is the arrival of new life. The equinox is the turning.

Easter is also tied to Passover so it has another facet.

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ph30nix01 t1_iyj409o wrote

To be honest I always felt Christians tainted things with their shit. Every concept not of themselves they destroy.

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mytwocentsshowmanyss t1_iyjkre0 wrote

Why was the christian ethic against winter larders? Did they just go hungry?

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CanterburyTerrier t1_iyjxg16 wrote

They were fine with a surplus of food being stored. They didn't like the revelry associated with winter excess. Supposedly, winter was a time of low work requirements in agriculture. The crops were brought in and you had a good understanding of how much food you had to last you through the winter. A dependable excess meant you could party. Slaughter was traditionally done when temperatures dropped to preserve meat. You either ate it or salted it. Eating fresh meat was preferred. Beer and wine were also supposedly ready in December, though I don't know why?

December was a time to gorge.

Puritans did not like the excess and drunken revelry as a custom.

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AUserNeedsAName t1_iykb9lt wrote

>Beer and wine were also supposedly ready in December, though I don't know why?

I'm just a homebrewer, but I may have an (uneducated) answer to that. It takes ales about 3-4 weeks to ferment at 70F (slower in the cold), and lagers 4-8 weeks at 50F. This USDA source shows European spring barley harvests as ending in late September/October, about 8-12 weeks before the winter solstice/Christmas. This PDF from the University of Vermont shows the 2019 hops harvest peaking in late September, which is pretty typical. Sierra Nevada releases their Fresh Hop IPA each December to maximize hop freshness and showcase the year's harvest, for instance.

Figure a few weeks to get your other harvested goods stored before starting your brew and the timeframe lines up perfectly. You can also hold beer longer to let it mellow (Oktoberfest lagers are called Märzens because you brew them in March and let them sit), especially at low temperatures, so mid-to-late December should be the start of a peak beer season that dwindles slowly into the spring, at which point your winter barley is ready for harvest and a new brewing period begins.

EDIT: I forgot those timeframes are with modern commercial yeasts. If you factor in wild or other pre-modern fermentation methods, the fermentation time increases and no fudge factor or waiting period would be required.

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