At Christmas, religious ideas are combined with pagan traditions.
Christmas is a term of Latin origin that means birth and gives its name to the festival that takes place on the occasion of the arrival of Jesus Christ to our world. The term is also used to refer to the day on which it is celebrated: December 25 (for Catholic, Anglican, Romanian Orthodox and some Protestant churches) or January 7 (for Orthodox churches that did not adopt the Gregorian calendar). .
Although tradition indicates that the birth of Christ occurred on December 25 in Bethlehem , historians believe that the true nativity of Jesus took place between April and May .
This theory is based on geographical issues that are impossible to deny: for example, it is known that in the northern hemisphere the month of December coincides with winter, which casts doubt on whether the shepherds were outdoors and that the sky that night has been crashed, all elements of the events narrated in the biblical texts.
In any case, the Catholic Church made the decision to maintain the conventional date of Christmas. It is believed that its reasons were that it coincided with the pagan rites for the solstice . In fact, there were important celebrations that took place on December 25 even before the birth of Christ : the Cápac Raymi of the Incas , the Natalis Solis Invicti of the Romans and others.
Christmas and Christianity
For Christianity , the Christmas celebration involves several traditions. There is usually a banquet that begins at dinner on December 24 and lasts until after midnight (that is, until the day of birth), nativity scenes or mangers (models of Bethlehem that represent the nativity) are set up, Christmas carols are sung. and a tree is decorated.
Christmas has transcended the limits of religion and has as its symbol Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas and Santa Claus ), a character inspired by a Greek bishop , who is in charge of bringing gifts to children around the world at 0 hours on December 25.
Santa Claus, also called Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas, is the symbol of Christmas.
The negative tints
As mentioned above, the celebration of Christmas is no longer necessarily linked to Christian tradition or religious belief . Almost on the contrary, the most pompous celebrations are carried out by atheists, or by people who do not practice religion in an orthodox way, and they focus on food and gifts, on the sophisticated and striking nature of the tree and on how numerous of family gatherings.
A typical middle-class family, generally composed of a father and a mother who work a minimum of forty hours a week each, and two children, usually spends the equivalent of a minimum wage on decorations, Christmas Eve dinner and gifts. . This supposed necessity, which turns Christmas into a materialistic date , leads to discomfort in the days before and a forced budget adjustment in the following ones.
The crisis has certainly had an impact on this custom ; but not to listen to reasons and choose to enjoy this iconic date in a more spontaneous way, but to cut expenses so that it is not necessary to do without any element of the celebration.
It is curious that a celebration that began as a religious tradition, in some way indispensable for those who adopt Christianity, worries non-believers more and subjects them to a series of carefully designed and structured obligations in a rigid and immovable way . Regardless of mystical beliefs, it is undeniable that an interesting combination of attitudes and feelings revolve around Christmas, such as surrender, guilt and suffering.