Pagan God Odin AKA Santa Claus
"the Christmas celebration was created by the early Church in order to entice pagan Romans to convert to Christianity without losing their own winter celebrations. Certain prominent gods and goddesses of other religions in the region had their birthdays celebrated on December 25, including Ishtar, Sol Invictus and Mithras." - Wikipedia
Did you know that no one is really sure when Jesus Christ was born? Some churches celebrate His birth as January 6. Other scholars think Christ was born in the spring or summer and yet others think He was born in November.
But everyone generally agrees that Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th.
And did you know that Santa Claus is based on a pagan God named Odin? Apparently Odin was a pagan God in the mythology of people who would today be considered Germanic or Northern Europeans. There were tales of kids leaving their boots by the fireplace and Odin would leave food in them.
So when we celebrate Christmas aren't we mixing Christianity with paganism?
Do you think that most people know the origins of Christmas and that December 25th has nothing to do with the birth of Christ? What do you think about this?
And on the subject of religion; read a great post from BoringBlackChick here.
9 comments:
I knew about the birthday but not about the odin thing. Christanity is loaded with pagan themes.They say it was a tool missionaries used to get the Nordics to bite it by relating it to there beliefs. Thats also how we got the white Jesus look.
i definitely knew that december 25th is not actually Jesus's birthday, but i didn't know about odin. doesn't really matter to me about santa though 'cause i don't get into that whole craze anyway. i don't agree that "Christianity is loaded with pagan themes" as clnmike suggested. people have incorporated pagan themes with certain holidays and celebrations over hundreds of years. the Christmas tree is also pagan also because people actually worshipped trees. i'm a Christian and i put up a tree, but i'm not bowing down to the thing. but anyway, there are a lot of traditions that we hold that were drawn from paganism like birthday cakes and wedding cakes...
check this out:
http://www.dgreetings.com/birthday/birthday-history.html
it explains:
According to a Pagan myth, evil spirits visit us on our Birthdays. Thus, the birthday celebrations has rituals like making noise during birthday parties. This is done to scare away the evil spirits. The party venue is made bright with candles, lamps, gala fires etc. People shower gifts on the Birthday person and impart their blessings.
Good post.
Come the Christmas holidays, the majority of the American people have their minds on XBOXs more than they do Jesus Christ.
ClnMike,
The whole White Jesus is a topic for another day.
There is so much paganism in general that is celebrated in western culture. It's really amazing.
Mama's Got Moxie,
Wow thanks for the info about birthdays. That's really interesting. It amazes me that we know so little about the customs that we adhere to.
And thanks for the link and for stopping by.
Don,
So true, it’s just getting worse and worse every year.
It doesn't really matter to me when Jesus' birth is celebrated - as long as it's celebrated. Since nobody can pinpoint the date anyway, let's just recognize that He was born -
Brown Love,
True, I just think it’s interesting that there are so many things about holidays that we don't know the origin.
Wow, I didn’t know that Thor’s dad was also an inspiration for ole Saint Nick. Interesting.
BTW:
“There is so much paganism in general that is celebrated in western culture. It's really amazing.”
True, in “western” cultures (as well as in Eastern & African culture), however, Christianity is rooted in the Arbahamic tradition of the Nazarenes, and at base, is not paganistic.
Pagan rites and traditions were introduced by the Roman church.
DJBA,
I think the fact that we have paganism ingrained into American culture is very interesting.
It's also interesting that right wing Christians rail against the war on Christmas but don't have a problem with Santa.
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