The holiday of Christmas, often criticized for its commercialization, has a rich and complex history that dates back centuries. This episode delves into the origins of Christmas traditions, tracing how they have evolved and adapted over time, often blending with pagan customs. It also addresses the misconception that Christmas was simply stolen from other cultural celebrations, emphasizing that the date of December 25th was established long before it became widely celebrated. As we explore the historical significance of Christmas, we challenge the narrative that the holiday has lost its true meaning, highlighting the generosity and spirit of giving that permeate the season. Join us as we uncover the fascinating interplay of history, tradition, and modern interpretation surrounding this beloved holiday.

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Jingle bells, Batman smells and Robin laid an egg.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, a hippopotamus and you.

I want golf clubs, I want diamonds, I want a pony so I can ride it twice, get bored and sell it to make globe.

If you recognize those quotes, congratulations.

You are a glutton for Christmas content.

Which brings you here brings you to me.

The holiday that dominates the last two months of the year, whether it be by preparing, shopping or traveling to visit people to celebrate Christmas time, is a massive holiday in terms of marketing and economical impact as well.

But what does it mean?

What is the meaning of Christmas?

Where does it come from?

And has the spirit died?

Today we are looking into the history and the celebration dedicated to the birth of one man who shaped our lives and the things around us.

No, obviously that's not it.

Oh yeah, Jesus.

Yes, Jesus.

His birthday, the origins of the holiday, how it was celebrated, and the myths and falsehoods around it.

All that and more on another episode of the Remedial Scholar.

That's ancient history.

I feel I was denied.

Critical need to know belongs in a museum.

Welcome everyone to the Remedial Scholar.

I am Levi, and it's time to get festive.

If you're new here, thank you for joining this adventure.

I think you picked a really good topic to start with.

Please set your gifts under the tree.

This is the type of episode that I think is the most fun for me to write.

And I think that these episodes that weave throughout a long period of time around like a singular topic tend to be the most interesting, at least to me anyway.

So I hope that that comes through.

I think in most art mediums, if you're genuinely interested and you're enjoying what you're doing, it tends to reflect in the listeners or the.

In the people who consume it.

Appreciate it.

Like the OG episode of War Dogs the Pirates 2 parter, the art vandalism episode.

You know those episodes where I dance around one particular topic and connect it to a main timeline?

Today's episode will be very similar to those.

Overall, I think the inspiration for this episode came from me looking at all the decorations going up at my retail job before Thanksgiving has even happened.

That's called the Christmas creep or the holiday creep.

The commercials, the trees, the boughs of holly.

It's all.

It's all too very much, I think.

I don't know if that.

That last sentence might have been a grammatical nightmare But I don't care.

So the other thing that came to mind is around this time of year, I see a lot of things about the holidays online.

A lot of memes and pseudo historical pages claiming one thing or another about the origins of Christmas and where it came from and how it was maybe stolen or whatever.

So I hope that this guides some critical thinking towards the topic.

And I feel like I'm one of the best people that could do an episode like this because A, I'm not religious, so I get to prove somebody wrong either way.

And if you know me, you know that I live for that kind of thing.

All right, so this episode will go down in a similar way to those episodes that I mentioned a little bit ago, starting with a brief overview.

Overview and some trending comments towards the holiday.

And then we're going to go back in time, talk about the early iterations and go through throughout history and see how it evolved and what influenced it.

When we get to more modern times, I will talk about some different ways that the modern companies have shaped the way the holiday means to some, as well as the imagery that is mostly synonymous with the holiday in the United States.

And also checking out the holiday around the world, kind of.

So with that, let's get into it.

Christmas, the celebration of the birth of.

Of Danny DeVito.

No, it really should be though.

I think we would all be okay with that though, celebrating Danny DeVito when you figure out when his birthday is.

Not even a real fan.

Don't even know when he was born.

He deserves the world.

But no, of course Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Herald Christ.

He was born on December 25th.

Boom.

Case closed.

What's next?

Well, we've already come to the first fork in, in the road of this story.

How do we know this to be the date?

Why?

December Bible does not indicate any specific times.

And the dates discussed in books like Luke when discussing his birth point to general time periods and not the month and day.

Some speculate that he was born in April because of the shepherds in the field at that night, which was a practice to take place during lambing season to watch for birth of little baby Sheps.

How adorable.

But this is also dubious because not every shepherd does this and they don't all.

Like all shepherds don't do things the exact same.

Right.

So it can vary region to region.

So what made December 25th?

Well, some people on the Internet will tell you they stole this day.

They picked this day to convert pagans because the pagan celebration of Saturnalia which we'll talk about in a little bit, was a good time to easily convert them, right.

In the early years of Christianity that they stripped the pagans of their traditions or took the traditions and were like, hey, see, we do this too.

Come on over.

And in some cases we'll see, we'll certainly see later on that would be the case.

But that has little to do with the date that Christmas is actually celebrated.

While the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, which is the day celebrating Saturn, um, it's actually like a week long celebration and it's pointed to as being the origin of Christmas and it certainly has a lot of things that kind of cross over.

But a different type of belief was used to land on that specific day.

There was an ancient belief that tied key moments in people's lives to their birth and their death to the same day.

Right.

And this is not always true, but it's happened because, you know, the sheer amount of people that have ever lived on the earth, specifically important people, it's bound to happen a couple times.

Right now you're probably sitting there going, well, hold on, hold on.

You said connecting a birth and a death and that that was the practice.

But Good Friday, the most ironic name of any day is the date of Jesus's crucifixion, and that's in the spring.

Well that's true, but in this instance, early Christian historians believed that his death was tied to the immaculate conception date date in which Jesus was placed inside Mary by an angel.

Right.

March 25th is that day.

And that day was calculated also by early Christian historians.

And so by the time a man named Hippopolitus Hippopotamus in the second and third century wrote a sort of chronological book in which were like super early versions of encyclopedias, he is suspected to have made the final connection of and gear the celebration of Jesus's birth on December 25th.

So that makes sense in a way.

Right.

We actually have no way to tell exactly when he was conceived.

No video weird or born for that matter.

So we have to kind of take this guy at his word basically.

And they did.

Celebrating the first Official Christmas on December 25, 336 CE.

And you can try and suss out some clues from the Bible or other historical documents, like several arguments pointing at a misrecollection of certain authors in the Bible, either miswriting names or even later, like mistranslating it.

Luke, specifically the book of Luke, indicates that Jesus was born when Quirinius was the governor of Syria.

But if he meant to say Quintilius which is only a few letters different.

Right?

That puts the date of birth to 6 BCE or 7 CE, which is quite a range.

I think it also is important to note that the book of Luke was likely not composed until close to 100 CE, which is not to say that it does not have historical value.

And you know that they definitely took writings of his to compile this, right?

But over time dates can get confused and remembering names can be hard in this tradition of passing stories along.

Back then was very tough to do without anything being changed.

So there's that.

If Luke is to be believed, then a winter birth does line up with this writing, mainly indicated by the first governor term of Quirinius, who served as the governor starting in the winter of either three or two bce.

Other gospel writers like Matthew can lead us to the date of around 7 BCE and part of the reason for the lack of knowledge around his birth too is that early Christians were of the belief that birthdays were not important.

It was the date of their martyrdom that really made them who they were.

Right?

Because that's their sacrifice.

So they they honored the day they died.

So Easter, the resurrection.

Much more in favor of early Christians as a date of importance.

And that's why the March 25 date was found by early Christians in general.

Okay, so that was a lot.

And we barely even got to the bearded baby being born.

However, I do want to stop for a second because there's a thing that I'm doing and it might be annoying, which is talking.

No, it might not even be noticeable to others, but I want to take a moment and talk about the designation in terms of the era.

I'm using BCE and ce, but I'm talking about Jesus, right?

What gives?

I see memes of people talking about non Christians dismissing the B.C.

ad designations because they don't believe in Jesus.

And a clever and astute retort by some gotcha argument loving Christians going 20, 24 years since what got them which this that I've seen.

I have a couple friends that do that, but one in particular recently has inspired me and influenced me to take this little side road for a second.

So bear with me.

BC before Christ, right?

Ad Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.

And this was used by Christian scholars in the early dark ages.

And then in medieval times it really gained the most popularity when Charlemagne placed the standardized dating system to his kingdom.

Even still, not all of Europe abided by this system.

Oddly enough, the reason BCE and CE came about is a translational thing which is a Super common theme in this episode, you're going to find in the 17th century a German astronomer also.

Pause for a second.

This is some foreshadowing.

The amount of German influence on Christmas is wild.

So just keep that in mind.

German astronomer Johannes Kepler, heard of him.

Yes, that Kepler, he was using a designation in his writings which was the translation is vulgar era in things post Jesus, right?

So when he was trying to mathematize all of the astronomy that he was working on and pinpointing dates on when things were happening, he would say, he would write vulgar, but it was in German, right?

This German word, which can actually be translated to common or ordinary, was used to discuss things in Anno Domini because the year of the Lord to them was the common or ordinary literature year.

Like they lived in the common time.

This is the common world now because Jesus has came and passed and this is, this is common now.

It's not clear back then.

This is where we live, right?

Over time, vulgar era was adopted and changed into things like quote in the common era and then subsequently just common era and then ce.

This designation actually helped out a lot when scholars wanted to communicate with their translations with those of different religions.

Because now they could point to a day in time and balance that with whatever religion the person they were talking to had and would not offend them, right?

Like they would not.

So it, it helped progress things in that way.

So realistically, the thought of BCE and CE doesn't really even dismiss anything to one particular religion, which is also a theme, you'll notice, similarly to Happy Holidays is be.

You know, we also know that some people get offended by that.

So you really can't win.

Jesus didn't live in this 30 year ish long window between one BCE and CE, and there are some hoops you can jump through to even get him to being born in one BCE because there's no zero, right?

People who have a Christian centric view of the world and history tend to forget that every culture had their own ways of dating things.

We learned a little bit about that in the Maya episode.

So what if Jesus was born in Mesoamerica?

Would then would it be shifted?

Right.

There's around 40 different types of calendars being used in our modern world, each of them varying methods of dating.

And if Jesus is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, wouldn't that be our first year?

Realistically, I, I mean, I just kind of want to point out how flimsy that type of thinking can be.

And I hate that some people have tried to weaponize it.

Like there aren't thousands of different religions and cultures who believe differently and also are like, no, you're wrong, this is our thing.

And there's hundreds of different ones just in Christianity alone.

So just for fun, 1bc corresponds to the following years in these calendars.

Obviously the Gregorian and Julian calendars, it's 1 BC.

The AB Herb Condita calendar record records it as 753.

Ancient Greek era places at the 194th Olympiad year 4.

Assyrian calendar listed as 40 50.

The Bengali calendar is negative 593.

So that's kind of weird.

The Berber calendar is 950.

Buddhist calendar as 5 544.

The Burmese calendar is minus 638.

Metal Monkey is an awesome band name.

If nobody's taken that yet, you need to get on it.

The Coptic calendar covers -284 to negative 283.

Ethiopian as negative 8 to -7.

Hindu calendar notes Vikram Samvat as 56 to 57.

The Holocene as 10,000.

Iranian calendar listed as 622 BP to 621 BP.

Islamic calendar.

I'm assuming that's probably before Prophet, right?

Before Muhammad, I would assume, yeah.

And so on and so on.

Right.

There's so many different variations of the calendar for just one bce Right.

Anyway, now that I've scratched, scratched that itch, let's move on to the earliest forms of Christian celebration or Christmas celebration.

As I mentioned a little bit ago, birthdays did not have the same importance of religious figures in early Christianity, which certainly led to later confusion on when to celebrate such a date, but also meant that the celebration in general would take a while to become a thing.

The day December 25th was chosen and under the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine, this holiday was first celebrated.

Constantine was the first Christian emperor and one who ultimately led to the empire being Christian in general.

Although around this time where things began to splinter as well.

Right.

The east and the west.

Before Constantine rose to power, there were still events of persecution towards Christian Christians throughout both the east and the Western Roman empires.

After he took control he some of these tensions and eventually announced his practicing of the religion, many Romans were no doubt secretly Christian.

And it was scripture from like it was about Jesus, which is kind of crazy.

So it's like super early on.

And you know, this is at the time when Christians were being persecuted.

So kind of crazy.

But anyway, I just believe that some of Constantine's family members were Christian.

So that's.

His conversion was not exactly surprising.

But there are many who suggest that his conversion was a politically motivated move, as was most things Roman emperors did.

Right.

Still, he did dictate, at the advice of some historians at the time, that the birth of Jesus should be celebrated.

And in 336, the first one was officially anyway.

Um, no real record to indicate that others were or were not celebrated before this.

There's also not a lot of notes about how exactly they would have been celebrated, whether it be something that, you know, the people go to church and do a personal commemoration with their family or what.

But it is suspected that the traditions of gift giving from the celebration of Saturnalia, which is, you know, the harvest celebration that I talked about a little bit ago, it was done by early Christians at this point.

This practice of course continues to this day.

The other problem with not celebrating birthdays of important religious figures in early Christianity is that there's no real mention of how to do so in the religious texts.

So essentially all of what we know and do in celebration of Christmas is not related to anything within the Bible, which is kind of interesting.

Not to say that none of the things hold meaning to Christians.

Right.

There's so many different ways to, you know, worship or honor your deity, your preferred deity.

Right.

Just that the texts specifically don't give any guidance to what could be done.

There is a statement made often by people discussing how these traditions that we now celebrate, that these things were taken to easily convert pagans to Christianity.

And I will be honest, I was one of those people.

But the more I researched about it for this episode specifically, the less I think that that to be true.

Early Christianity was trying to distance itself from other beliefs to be its own thing.

People choosing to bring their own beliefs into Christian celebrations.

And the eventual melding of the two makes more sense in my mind than Constantine being like, hey, if we make Christmas just like Saturnalia, they will celebrate it instead.

Well, Saturnalia was already kind of losing popularity at the time, and the two holidays are roughly a week and change apart.

So it's not hard to imagine that people were not thinking about doubling up on gift giving in the name of a new God.

Instead, it's more likely that people who enjoyed certain traditions brought them over, or maybe even that it was just like gift giving was even really seen as a Saturnalia thing.

It was just winter solstice kind of thing.

It was just so ingrained in what they did at that time that they didn't think of it one way or the other, and it just carried on later on under Charlemagne.

This is going to be when you see a lot more of the, well, we'll take that pagan tradition and they can convert if they want.

And that's kind of it.

Saturnalia was celebrated with feasts, gift giving, partying, music in the streets the whole night.

The concept of wreaths and laurels is also found in descriptions of Saturnalia.

But no way to tell if they just did that, as was custom at the time, and it got absorbed in Christmas or how it transferred.

I did find a contemporary quote from St.

Augustine who talked about differences between the two celebrations in terms of meaning behind it.

He said, quote, we hold this day holy, not like the pagans, because of the birth of the sun, but far because.

But because of him who made it.

Which is fair enough, I will say, because I, you know, because I'm cynical and argumentative that, that this quote very much made me think about the playground.

Right.

Stick with me.

Do you remember being on the playground as a child and being in some sort of like, imaginary duel with another kid?

And it ended up being some sort of one upping competition of who could be like, who could beat the other's imagination.

Like, one kid's like, I blasted a fireball at you.

And the other kid's like, yeah, well, I'm wearing fireball deflecting pants and so on.

The Greeks were like, our gods guide us by their power, but also reflect us by their own fallacies and failures and represent the elements around us.

And the Romans were like, sane, but we're changing the names.

And then Christians came along and were like, actually, our God is the son of the God who made all of this.

It's like Batman.

You know, give him enough time and he can do anything, right?

It's just like this cheat code.

Okay, enough of that.

Let's get back to Christmas.

Christianity spread throughout Europe thanks to the adoption of it by Constantine.

Utilizing the established Roman infrastructure, apostles and missionaries traveled through the throughout the reaches of the Roman Empire.

Constantine is often cited as making Christian Christianity the official religion of Rome.

But that was actually his successor, Theodosius the First.

At the same time, he began to outlaw certain pagan practices in an effort to force people to be united under one common religion and subsequently be easier to rule.

And this growing religion continued to spread.

Obviously, as you know, in the 8th century is where I think it really hit its stride.

A lot of this comes from a man named Charlemagne, who you're probably familiar with.

Charlemagne lived from 768 to 814 and was eventually crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor in 800 by the Pope at the time, Pope Leo Leo III.

And this actually happened on Christmas Day.

So this is one of those moments where things kind of really solidified for the Church and Christianity as a whole in Europe in connection to the crown, like most of Europe to this day, I can actually trace my ancestry back to Charlemagne.

I went wild on ancestry.com one time and got all the back to him from my maternal grandma's side, which is kind of cool to see, but, you know, not rare.

Anyway, as Charlemagne took hold, it was imperative that the pagan rituals and traditions be outlawed for him to maintain a foothold over the Germanic region of Europe.

Many of these cultures had survived the onslaught of Roman expansion for hundreds of years, even close to a thousand years at this point.

And now it was becoming evident that they were being pushed away and assimilated once more.

The Frankish territory once was confined to what is Now Austria.

And 400 years later, by the time of Charlemagne, by the time Charlemagne died, most of Europe was under the Frankish umbrella.

France of Course, also Germany, chunks of Spain, northern half of Italy, and pushing as far east as the Czech borders.

This, this sphere of influence under his power was crucial in the spread of Christianity.

And what he did was limit as much pagan tradition as possible.

This included full on conquests.

But after that, outlawing their customs and practices was a big part in how to subjugate the people even further and force them to convert.

So yeah, I won't stray down this path too much further, but Charlemagne is why a lot of our modern traditions exist.

The idea of big weddings in churches was something that he was a super big proponent of.

The idea of Christian monogamy is really promoted from his time as he was outlawing pagan customs of having multiple wives or even just less formal relationships.

And in connection with this, adultery was punished pretty heavily thanks to him.

He instituted laws that put the clergy in judicial authority, which is sometimes even above the regional lords, which then promoted the dominance of the Church and essentially made it more of a more powerful threat than something like jail could be.

Church attendance was now somewhat mandatory.

Fines could be collected otherwise.

And also holy days were now to be observed.

Sundays, major feast days, now would replace former pagan festivals.

Under Charlemagne's reign, Christmas expanded significantly as a religious and cultural celebration, which reflected his broader efforts to unify this empire under Christianity.

And this is where a lot of the forced conversion of pagans comes, right?

He promoted the holiday as central to the Christian identity, mandating its, mandating its observance and requiring attendance to Christmas Mass to reinforce shared religious practices.

Christmas became a symbol of divine kingship when he was crowned king, right?

And then, which was on Christmas Day in 800 CE.

Now, by tying Christmas to imperial authority, Charlemagne transformed the feast into a political as well as religious occasion, associating it with notions of divine blessing and governance.

This coronation not only emphasized the significance of Christmas, but also, you know, like I said, put his power in the front of these people's minds.

Charlemagne's efforts to standardize Christian worship across his empire played a crucial role in the expansion of Christmas as well.

He promoted the Roman rite, suppressing regional liturgical variations and creating a unified approach to celebrating major feasts like Christmas.

His investments in building churches and cathedrals provided a space for grand Christmas celebrations.

And then his clergy reinforced the holiday significance in newly Christianized areas.

In addition, he used the Christmas as a tool for converting pagan populations, right?

He replaced their winter solstice festivals with the celebration of Christ's birth.

Many elements of pagan traditions, such as feasting, gift giving and decorating with greenery were adopted, adapted into Christmas customs at this time, making the holiday more accessible to these new Christians as unknown if these things were brought by the former pagans, as they were seen as just a tradition, or if they were allowed to be brought by church authority.

I think it's also important to note that Christmas was not, you know, decided to be placed around the pagan winter festivals.

As mentioned previously, it already been decided that it was December 25, almost 500 years prior to this.

Charlemagne simply utilized the closeness of the two to further convert pagans.

Now, Charlemagne also emphasized education with the dissemination of Christian doctrine, which helps spread awareness of Christmas.

Monasteries and schools under his patronage taught the religious meanings of the holiday.

And like, just religious stuff.

Specifically, like they like that was the education that people were getting was just religious stuff.

And then within the feudal society, Christmas became a time for feasting and gathering that reinforced these social bonds.

Nobles hosted lavish celebrations, often distributing gifts to their vassals, further embedding the the themes of giving and goodwill into the holiday.

Charlemagne's promotion of Christmas helped to establish it as a major religious, religious and cultural event across Europe.

And by unifying its practices, Christianizing pagan regions, and associating the holiday with imperial authority, he kind of laid the groundwork for Christmas to become this deeply rooted tradition.

Now, I mentioned that there's no way to decide where certain trends and traditions came from, if they were borrowed in an innocent manner or a natural way, or if they were used strategically.

But given what I laid out for pagan traditions being, you know, super taboo in the Middle Ages, I would venture to say that things like using greenery wreaths, like green wreaths, greenery lighting, candles and whatnot, regardless of how they were adopted, they slowly became a very involved theme in Christmas tradition.

Right.

But I think that they were so commonplace that it was like, easy for them to bring in because it wasn't necessarily seen as just pagan or just Christian.

It was just a thing that they did.

There's also the growing use of the twelve days of Christmas at this point, which is rooted back in the late 6th century, but became more popular during the medieval period, lasting from Christmas until epiphany, which I had never heard of until this this research.

Epiphany was a celebration of Jesus's manifestation in the world is also known as the Three Kings Day or Three Wise Men Day, in reference to the wise men who visited, visited Jesus following his birth, in which is the metaphor of the world now knowing him.

And since when he was born, only his mom and stepdad knew him at that time.

You get the wise men to come in and they're like, hey, now we know that Jesus exists, right?

Bam.

Now, now you're what we call in the biz popular.

Anyway, that.

That is the origin of it.

Anyway.

The 12 days of acknowledgment, some gift giving, feasting, pretty tame.

Not sure where the hundreds of birds came into play, but they did eventually.

The song itself was not around until the 18th century.

So we have a little bit before that.

In medieval Christmas, feasts were often pretty opulent.

For those with means which could involve a pig's head, roasted swan, all sorts of fancy fishes, goose, veal, venison, duck, fruit, custards, pastries, nuts, cheeses, luxurious fruits like oranges, super fancy delicacies like honey and sugar, Right?

Like I said, though, if you had the means, if you were a peasant, you ate some stew with the least calcified bread you had made and maybe a chicken.

If you're very, very poor, you would often wait out in the cold near dining halls to receive the leftovers of the feast held by the rich.

Which is good, I guess.

They could be rude and just toss it out for the dogs or something.

It was also heavily dependent on how generous the manor lords were.

Some would invite serfs to dine with them on Christmas, welcoming the warm spirit of the holiday.

Others would invite maybe one or two, and the Scrooges did not invite anybody.

There would be dancing, singing, music, and, of course, warm fire to crackle in the background.

And the large feast.

One such recorded feast, like that of King John of England, had the following order for the celebrations.

24 hogshead of wine, 200 head of pork, a thousand hens, 500 pounds of wax, 50 pounds of pepper, 2 pounds of saffron, 100 pound of all almonds.

Excuse me.

Along with other spices, napkins and linens.

If that was not enough, the King also sent an order to the Sheriff of Canterbury to supply 10,000 salt eels.

This guy knew how to party.

The peasants down the road experienced mostly different circumstances.

This was a time when their yearly gifts to their respective lords were due.

Which means that they had less money than they already usually had to spend on things like feasts.

I can't help but wonder how much peasant money went towards funding the wealthy feasts around this time.

How would Tiny Tim feel about that?

Reminds me of the wise words of a philosopher named Bret Michaels, who said, quote, a mile away, live the rich folk, and I see how they're living it up.

While the poor, they eat from hand to mouth.

Rich are drinking from a golden cup.

Anyway, if you.

If you worked at the estate of the Lord, you were often given gifts from them the day after Christmas.

If you were peasants without those jobs, you would often craft, you know, simple toys for your children or fashion a trinket for a loved one.

In General, throughout the 12th days, there were people who would perform plays of sorts.

Street performers is probably the better comparison.

Games would be played between.

Between people like dice and chess and things like that.

Snowball fights, a lot of fun.

Children love those, right?

Which is, you know, something I haven't done in forever.

But what good, wholesome fun was that, right?

Until a friend gets cheeky and puts a rock or chunk of ice in their snowball.

Super rude.

Also want to pause here and let you know that in the middle of the 17th century, Christmas was actually outlawed in England and in the Boston colony.

If you listen to last week's episode, you probably know the source of this.

The.

The Puritans, following the Protestant Reformation, were hard at work at taking the fun out of literally everything.

Parliament was now actively removing things they deemed to be Catholic in nature.

This included Christmas, which was a parliament, which the Parliament declared it was, quote, a popish or popish festival with no biblical justification, which is fair.

We.

We did talk about that.

It's not in the Bible at all.

But also not going to give the Puritans too much credit, you know, broken clocks and all that.

This would impact the colonies.

Now, the holiday would return to form in England two years later when the monarchy was restored.

Oddly enough, they would be killing innocent people 10 years after that in the Salem witch trials, you know, so they had bigger fish to fry, I guess.

One story I found also described the Puritans.

Christmas in the New World.

The first Christmas of the Puritans in the New World, in which they spent it by building stuff.

The.

The first building of the Plymouth Pilgrims was built on Christmas Day.

And, you know, it's like they didn't care about doing anything else.

They're like, this day is not important.

Whatever.

We're gonna build stuff anyway.

And Even before that, the popularity of Christmas was not very high.

People didn't really even participate in it very much until after the Revolutionary War.

The Christmas, being a federal holiday, was signed into law by Ulysses S.

Grant, who is one of my favorite presidents, in case you were curious.

Talking about traditions, I think it's also time we look at some of the origins of suspected or suspected origins of our commas.

Common, common Christian traditions.

Christmas.

Ah, bam.

Anyway, I'm going to start with the Yule log.

Mule log obviously has its origin in pagan history and tradition.

It's obvious just looking at the name coming from the Northern European folks, where a large chunk of the tree would be set ablaze on the winter solstice.

Winter solstice taking place around the beginning of the Christmas season.

There's no shock that this tradition was eventually brought into the fold for Christmas.

Nobody can be certain when the tradition began for the Norse as their written history, pretty sparse.

But the history is obviously way further compared to that.

Weirdly enough, it being called the Christmas log predates the mention of the Yule log in the written record by 40 years.

But this is probably due to the fact that pagan traditions were still being suppressed.

My guess is that this is similar to most other things where it was done by the Norse people.

But as Christianity spread, and in particular when the Norse invaded and then had their own kingdoms, in some cases, like King Rollout, who converted into Christianity, these traditions would become, you know, more easily accepted in these cases or just done without mentioning their exact origins.

You know that and it's a log.

Do you really need to explain this tradition to Christian officials?

You're burning a log in the midst of winter.

The method of how they carried out this was that they lit it from the remains of the log of the previous year and a large section was lit with much of it sticking out of the fireplace.

And then you would kind of just kind of keep it, keep working it into the fireplace, which is kind of fun.

Seems super fun.

Makes sense why it's such a big tradition.

Because if you didn't pay attention, you burn your house down.

Contrary to what some people think, the Christmas tree did not evolve from the Yule log.

Specifically, Christmas tree also did not evolve from the adopted pagan traditions of, you know, having wreaths and other evergreen type plants in this house either.

You know, there's a.

There's speculation that it was a merger of the two, where there's a Christmas pyramid and then you have the Greenery, and then people just saw the tree.

Or there's a story of a saint who stopped these pagans, these Viking guys, from sacrificing an animal and he cut this tree down and then an evergreen tree or spruce or something sprouted from it.

I not going to verify any of that, but the earliest we know about the Chris, like the Christmas tree specifically comes from Christians in Germany around the 16th century.

Custom was actually rooted in spiritual connection to evergreen trees, where they were symbolized for their enduring spirit, which was linked to Christianity and God's love for people, you know, everlasting.

This makes sense.

The hardy nature of the evergreen is actually why it's so common across very a variety of spiritual and religious beliefs.

I assume that is why people assume the tradition was stolen from one place or another.

Decorations were placed upon the trees and things like flowers made from paper apples, candies and wafers, which symbolize the Eucharist, eventually changing into cookies.

There are some who believe that Martin Luther.

Yes, that Martin Luther who we just discussed that he was the first one to put candles and things on the trees idea supposedly came to him while walking through the forest on a clear night and seeing the lights of the stars flicker through the ceiling of the woods.

Obviously not confirmed, but I thought it was an interesting thing to add.

So how did fruit and candies turn into ornaments?

Well, the origin of these has its start in Germany, weirdly enough, and it also comes from just being frugal.

A glassblower named Hans Greiner.

And, yeah, obviously German, right?

Hans.

He.

So he was glassblower and with his skills, he opted to craft baubles of glass to supplement the expense of using fruits simply to decorate a tree for a few weeks of celebration.

Plus, if he kept them, you know, he could reuse them for years to come, thus saving money on spending it on fruits, and then you could just eat the fruit instead.

He would even impress his children by making them look like berries and apples and other fruits that they would decorate the tree with, which is pretty wholesome.

Also close to my heart because I loved glassblowing.

I never did get to partake in making ornaments.

And my own works often were very thick, really thick glass.

They never really got the balance thing going, so they'd probably snap the branches if I tried.

I could make a mean paperweight, though.

Anyway, this trend actually became super popular and ironic because the man who couldn't or wouldn't afford to spend money on apples to decorate his tree created a trend in which probably made a decent living for himself.

In an effort to keep up with the Joneses, seeing the glossy surface reflecting the shimmering lights of the candles and the fire, the trend took off.

It was a mainstay in German households.

And then in the 18th century and 19th century, with a lot of Germans immigrating to the United States, they brought the tree and the ornaments with them, and the rest is history.

And we'll talk about that history on this show.

So I guess we're gonna keep.

Keep going.

I will say that the tradition of trees and ornaments did escape Germany before that.

As Queen Victoria had her tree decorated with the traditions of her husband's homeland, which was then basically like, the people found out and she was, you know, kind of a trendsetter, and people were like, this is awesome.

We're going to do this now.

So it took off in England.

So the ornaments now introduced to the Americans really took off.

And the as most niche things in the United States.

But it is kind of funny how these little traditions come to America and then just take off and become like its own little industry.

So now natural.

So naturally, this same thing happened with Christmas trees and their adornments.

The lights soon were crafted in ways to simply simplify the candles on the trees.

Numerous safety tweaks were made to the lights to make them more marketable, including making the bulbs part of a circuit so that if they burnt out, they would not continue energizing the rest of it and then start a fire.

Smart.

And similar to the emergence of Mother and Father's Day that we discussed in that episode, the popularity of the holiday of Christmas and the decorating of the trees and houses with lights was emphasized to boost the economy during the Great Depression.

All right, so that.

That's lights.

Now let's go back a little bit further and bring in the most familiar face with Christmas.

Old Saint Nick.

Where does Kris Kringle come from?

Father Christmas?

Santa Claus?

Tim Allen.

Okay, I'm done jumping back to the 4th century.

In what is now Turkey.

We have A bishop named Nicholas, born around 280 CE in Potora, modern day Turkey, into a wealthy, wealthy family.

Nicholas inherited his family's wealth upon the death of his parents.

And then the events which he did to become a saint canonized by the Catholic Church are pretty cool.

And it definitely makes sense why he is associated with the holiday related to gift giving.

Some things he did is report or some things he is reported to have done.

Dropping gold into the stockings of a family of three girls who were either going to be sold into slavery or potentially prostitution unless they could get their family to pay for their marriage dowry.

This is also kind of the tradition of stocking stuffers, right?

The tradition was hanging socks above the fireplace to dry them out.

And apparently he climbed onto the roof, dropped some gold through the chimney and I guess bank shot at it.

Not exactly sure how he managed to get sacks of gold into his socks, but.

And you know, when I think of socks hung by a chimney, they're on the outside, so I don't, I don't know.

He curved the bullet anyway.

He also bartered with the Egyptian ship, an Egyptian ship to provide grain to his home state of Myra and then prevented famine of his people.

He petitioned for lower tax taxes, traveling up to 300 miles to do so, donated much of his money to the sick and the poor, advocating for these groups throughout his life life, one of their family famines or droughts would happen.

He would pay for food and distribute it to those in need.

A lot of these things he did without mentioning he was doing them or tried to remain anonymous as best he can.

He made it about the actions and not his own ego.

But word must have gotten around because people did find out he was canonized almost a century following his death, with which according to the record was 12-6-343, which we just missed it.

This canonization is also part of the part to the miracles he did, which is one of the more far fetched stories I will say.

Allegedly resurrecting three murdered children following a butcher slaying them to pass them off as ham, which is a wild story, even if that's half true.

That's craziness.

He was recognized for his work in his life before being canonized.

A church being named after him 200 years following his death.

His popularity did wane following the Protestant Reformation, however in places like the Netherlands, Germany, they still celebrated it on the 6th of December, which is kind of, kind of set off the Christmas time celebration.

Okay, so how did we get Santa Claus then?

Right?

Did they Just blend the name.

What's going on?

What kind of celebrations for St Nicholas Day was celebrated by using stockings to leave sweets inside or clogs in some places, with feasts and gift giving being a main part of it.

Obviously, you know, stockings were to be filled with gold and homage to St Nicholas's deeds of paying for the dowry for those three sisters that I mentioned.

But candier fruits like tangerines or oranges could be substituted if that was too expensive.

This is also the origin of what we do now, which some people do, I guess.

Placing chocolate coins and those chocolate orange things in stockings.

I do love those things.

Those things are awesome.

Nicholas is described as arriving at these feasts clad in a bishop's signature red robes and distributing gifts and sweets to the good children and coal, potatoes and even switches to the bad children, you know, for their parents to beat them.

The Dutch called him Sinterklaas.

And when they immigrated to the United States, the Americanized version, Santa Claus.

Meanwhile, Germany, the people who gave gifts for St.

Nicholas's Day were called Christkingel Christ Kindle, which translates to Christ child.

Essentially, like you're a child of Christ, you're doing good thing.

And it became Kris Kringle.

At first, he was not super popular in the United States.

The new fad kind of faded out.

And then a resurgence kicked up in the 19th century.

However, this is the earliest version of some iconic iconography associated with Santa Claus.

It goes as follows.

Old Santa Claus, with much delight his reindeer drives this frosty night, or chimneys or chimney tops and tracks of snow to bring his yearly gifts to you, the steady friend of virtuous youth.

The.

The friend of duty and of truth.

Each Christmas Eve he joys to come where peace and love have made their home.

Through many houses he has been and various beds and stockings seen, some white as snow and neatly mended others that seemed for pigs intended to some.

I gave a pretty doll.

To some a peg top or a ball.

No crackers, cannons, squibs or rockets to blow their eyes up or their pockets wherever where it's those apostrophe stopping ever or over.

Oh, wherever I found good girls or boys that hated quarrels, strife and noise.

I left an app.

Apple or a tart or wooden gun or painted carp.

No drums to stun their mother's ears, nor swords to make their sisters fear, but pretty books to store their mind with knowledge of each various kind.

But where I found the children Naughty in manners, crude and tempers haughty, thankless to parents, liars, swearers, boxers or cheats or base talebears.

I'm assuming that means lying.

I left a long black birchen rod such as the dread command of God directs a parent's hands to use when virtues path and his sons refuse.

Yeah, spare the rod, spoil the child kind of thing.

Right.

Anyway, with this poem there's accompanying illustrations, and these illustrations do paint a picture, pun intended, of what Santa Claus looks like.

Red robe, hat, rosy cheeks, sneaking into children's rooms.

You know, the norm.

Seriously?

This looks to be the earliest depiction of him in this manner.

It's also the first time describing him as having a sleigh or reindeer.

This appears to be the emergence of Santa as a standalone guy and not St Nicholas or Sinterklaas.

Two years following this poem, another one was written and published called a visit from St Nicholas, which was one to further develop this image of a jolly chubby guy.

This poem is better known by its other name, which was the Night Before Christmas.

This one far too long to read, but you're probably familiar with it.

It.

If not, you can google it.

This one names the reindeer that they flew, had, you know, gave him his big bag of presents, his rosy cheeks, his big beard and you know, they turned him into an elf.

Which makes sense why the elves are prep like they make presents.

Side note, I think we can all agree that Rudolph and the other reindeer are girls, right?

Reindeer males lose their antlers in the winter.

The females do not do that.

So do that information what you will.

Anyway, slowly these variation various depictions of Santa and his peeps merged and became something like what we think of today.

This drawing is set the stage for pretty much every other version of Santa after this point at.

And that one even is based on the poem that I just read and the images that came with it.

Since I told you where the first depiction of Santa was created, this.

This contradicts a Popular opinion in which Coca Cola created our modern version of Santa.

And while Father Christmas has, you know, donned many colors over the various versions and years, red is not created by Coke.

And it wasn't even Coca Cola that started using it.

They weren't the first one.

Hadn't Sunbloom did create the Coca Cola version of Santa.

And while, you know, this pairing didn't create Santa, I think that there's a lot of this that is used in modern versions or at least bounced off of another one.

Nas Santa, you know, was chubby, carrying toys, rosy red cheeks and whatnot.

Sun Blooms actually had, you know, the red coat trim with the white fur that we think of, the red hat with the same.

The white fur, the black leather belt and boots, you know, so you got to give it to them, right?

Well, no.

After NAS image gained national and even international popularity, artists all over began to do their own versions.

This image shows Santa surrounded by a bunch of children, looking like he's fading out.

What are finding out what gifts they want, right?

Has a bag over his shoulder, wearing red clothes, white fur trim.

In my opinion, this might be the earliest one to give him this specific look.

So, no, Coke did not invent him.

They certainly capitalized on his growing popularity.

They, you know, like I said, they weren't even the first ones to use him for advertising, though.

So it's kind of funny that there's this version of events that they somehow created it.

So that's Santa.

Now we have one more fun character to discuss.

One man who brings balance to the force.

One man who is my favorite in theory and in replication, going back to the motherland of all Christmas traditions, apparently Germany, this one does more than likely owe its creation to pagan rituals, particular, particularly the Norse spirituality.

Legend has it the creature known as Krampus is the son of Hell, the Norse God of the underworld.

Krampus is connected to the the winter solstice festivals and eventually became connected to St Nicholas's Day, despite Catholics not being pumped about this at all.

Krampus has its origins in the old German word Krampen, which translates to claw, which I feel checks out, since Krampus is also often depicted with very large claws connected to Christmas.

As far back as the 12th century, this boogeyman of sorts was used as a cautionary tale to scare children into behaving.

Otherwise Krampus would snatch them up.

This goat like monstrosity covered in fur, had large ibex like horns, fangs, claws of course, and carried a bag of sticks to beat children with, which is wild to me.

Adorned with chains and bells, he would scare children as he entered towns, dragged a basket with him to haul children away.

Totally normal stuff Krampus knocked took place in the night before St.

Nicholas's Day.

So what a whirlwind of emotions these kids probably had.

Also, how wild would it be if a kid or two you just happened to actually get kidnapped or vanish on Krampusnacht, right?

Can you imagine?

That would be awful obviously, but kind of hilarious too, you know.

Definitely deserving of a nervous chuckle over the past year or over the past year.

Over the years Krampus just he drops in popularity and it becomes less and less of note.

But if you have social media, you're probably aware that there is a tradition and parade of sorts with Krampus actors crawling through these various German cities looking evil as heck.

I love it though.

Watch a video of them doing it, their Krampus runs and then like play some slow evil sounding metal in the background and tell me that's not awesome.

Krampus also has a super fun Christmas horror movie dedicated to the creature which I haven't watched in a long time and you know, definitely inspired to do so now.

Anyway, moving into pop culture of Christmas, let's get a timeline of famous works going of the, you know, that reference the holiday.

Not going to list everyone because we don't have eight years, but let's go to the first version of you know, nativity plays which date back to the 13th century, first popping up in Italy, which makes sense.

The carol Good King Wincellis started as a legend in the 10th century but was written into carol form in the 19th century.

Around that same time you have silent night.

20 years later, 20 years later, a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is written which also uses a version of pre Santa Father Christmas imagery depicting him as a robe green robe wearing man.

The subsequent films have been released like every three years.

It feels like I counted 33 different film adaptations including movies that use the same premise but might have slightly different characters or settings that are popular in the United States alone.

Outside of that, hundreds of versions exist.

Dr.

Swiss.

Swiss, I can't remember.

Yeah, it's not Seuss.

I know that.

It's like Swiss.

Something like that.

I love them.

Home alone.

Probably one of the most fun modern movies about Christmas time.

Not so focused on the exact holiday itself, but, you know, general themes.

Elf.

I know him.

Tons of different versions.

And depending on what you define as a Christmas movie, then that list can expand literally forever.

I will take this time to say I love Die Hard.

This movies are great, I love them and I have all of them on Blu Ray.

But I hate, I hate that everybody talks about it at Christmas time.

Everybody thinks it's the funniest thing to do and it's the oldest, least creative commentary on anything ever, in my opinion.

If you're going to do that, you have to add so many different movies that have nothing to do with Christmas other than that they take place during Christmas time.

Here's a short list to prove my point.

Mean Girls, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, the Ice Harvest.

Just Friends in Bruges, Iron Man 3, you know, so many.

None of them really have anything to do with the holiday spirit or Christmas itself.

No real meaningful messages about what Christmas means or lessons to be learned.

They just take place during that time.

Could just be me just being a hater.

I could just be out of touch.

Could be both.

Anyway, as a summary of depictions of Christmas in different works over the years.

Now, in the spirit of Arguing with people about things that might not matter.

I would like to now transition into the common myths and misconceptions about Christmas that have been spread over the years.

And some of these I may have mentioned.

But I just want to discuss more specifically at this point.

So gotta start with the opposite spirit of my rant a moment ago and discuss non Christmas things like Jingle Bells.

This is kind of.

This is a controversial opinion, but this is not a Christmas song.

I guess in the same way that the popular opinion of the general public is willing Die Hard into the Christmas movie category, as is and was the case with Jingle Bells.

Right?

Hey, go and look at the lyrics and then tell me with confidence that this is a Christmas song.

The song itself was simply a song.

It was never intended to be a Christmas song.

But somewhere along the way it was adopted into Thanksgiving and then eventually into Christmas.

The lyrics have also changed quite a bit.

But basically the song is about a guy and a lady out for a little late night sleigh joyride and they wreck and then he gets laughed at by people.

So, you know, the next one I believe is proof throughout the episode.

But it was not.

But it's that Christmas was not super popular for a long time in terms of Christianity is not even the most important holiday.

Obviously they would favor Easter since that's the more important day in terms of their religion.

In the same vein, many websites talk about another myth being Jesus's birthday, which we discussed continuing the Christian religion section of the myths.

Nowhere is it stated that there are three wise men or three kings that visited Jesus.

And they're not kings, they were magi.

Magi, but they're essentially wise men.

There's three gifts given, but there's no mention if that number correlates to the amount of people that that came.

So kind of funny.

Also, Jesus placed in a manger in a stable, right?

Not really.

This is more so an issue of translation.

You know, there they didn't have any room in the inn, so they put him in the stable.

Well, the word that's for in is actually mistranslated.

And that word is essentially a spare room.

And in a house in the time, most of the people lived on the second floor.

And the lower floor is where Jesus was supposedly born, if you, you know, take the translation properly.

So he wasn't really.

They weren't kicked out into a stable in the middle of winter, they were given a B or like not a basement, but, you know, a first floor.

Was this because they just, just they didn't think too highly of Mary and Joseph or was it to give them their space?

Who knows?

But I just wanted to use that one.

So the next one I want to describe is that Christmas was stolen from pagan Ramon.

Pagan Roman traditions of Saturnalia mentioned this before, but I want to reiterate that this is just not the case.

The idea that Christmas was decided to be on the 25th, specifically to jump on the back of a pagan holiday, to easily convert pagans is not the case.

As I mentioned, the day of Jesus's birth was decided well before the holiday was celebrated.

When it was decided, they had no intention of even celebrating his birth because they preferred the martyrdom day, right, which would be Good Friday, the day the man, the man who provided the 25th is the day of Jesus's birth died 100 years before Christmas was even celebrated.

It wasn't a popular culture.

Nobody like kings weren't.

Like Charlemagne was not even in power yet.

So Christianity was not the dominant religion at this point.

So the day chosen was not done to trick non Christians because they had no way to know that they would be able to eventually change things up.

Right.

Early versions tried very hard not to be the same as other, you know, religious celebrations.

You know, they wanted to do their own thing.

So did timing eventually help later on with like Charlemagne and whatnot?

I'm sure it didn't hurt, right?

But it's far cry for being that that's the reason why it exists.

Did they decide to amp the day up in importance to do this?

Perhaps.

But you know, the evidence does not point to it being a tool of conversion in that way.

And that's coming from someone who does not support the bearded baby in any way.

Another Myth is that St.

Nicholas keeps a list of who is naughty or nice.

Not really even a myth.

This just kind of was just added about him.

And the jingle, santa Claus is coming to town.

And described by Santa as having a list.

Checking it twice, I'm sure you're familiar.

This is the first time this has ever been decided.

Whereas before, you know, St.

Nicholas, Sinterkla, Chris Kingle, all these people, when they arrived, they decided on the spot who was naughty and nice.

Because you remember, they looked at the pigsty room or whatever and saw if the kids were rude to their parents and then handed them a switch to beat them.

So, yeah, Anyway, next I want to talk about the War on Christmas.

You know, where non Christians use words to trash holiday trash.

A holiday dedicated to their favorite baby.

Saying things like Xmas and Happy Holidays get wrecked.

Christian nerds, right?

Not gonna say Christ.

Not even if there's a fire.

Except Xmas originates almost a thousand years ago, has been used by Chris Christians over that time.

The leading reason it exists is that in Greece, Christ is spelled with an X at the front.

People would know this if they paid attention to the imagery in their churches.

The Cairo, which is a symbol of Greek letters that look like an X and a P, basically.

But it's been used for thousands of years, and it was adopted by early Christian Romans, specifically Constantine, as a symbol of, like, Jesus is guiding us.

Right.

They put it on the shields or on their banners and stuff.

So you know that that's where they act like that.

Same kind of vein, obviously, the Cairo thing, don't worry too much about that.

But the important part is the X being an abbreviation for Christ.

It was used by Christians for thousands of years in the same way.

And it is simply shorthand.

And that's not a front to anyone, especially since religious people, you know, have been doing it forever.

And if they're doing it, then we're probably okay.

Are non Christian people using it to abbreviate it?

Sure, but they don't know that, you know, Seems like nobody does.

Okay, fine.

Then why are you saying Happy Holidays if there's only one holiday dimension?

A few things.

1.

What's the second word?

Holiday.

Gosh, I wonder what that means.

Holiday.

Oh, that's right.

It's a holy day.

I would assume the birth of your deity would be a holy day to, you know.

And it's not new specifically to slander.

The Christmas Day, right?

No more so than the shorthand of Christmas is two Christians who don't attend the mass of Christ on his birthday.

Right.

That Christmas is the Mass of Christ.

That's a shorthand.

So one's okay, but one's not.

Over the years, the phrase Happy Holidays was used and came into the fold in the US Vernacular.

Modern dissenters would love to point out that the mention of multiple holidays means that there are other holidays more important or like, like trying to equalize them, you know.

But if you have been paying attention to this episode at all, you know that there are probably 13 to 15 significant Christian holidays during December, varying, you know, depending on your denomination.

So even if a Christian can say Happy Holidays to another Christian, they might not even know which holiday they're specifically talking about.

So does that mean that you hate Jesus?

No know is it useful for the modern world where all people of all races, religions and creeds live amongst us and instead of just assuming someone is celebrating Christmas and saying Happy Holidays, it's infinitely more simple.

Right.

No more rude than assuming that and being wrong.

Right.

A lot of crazy nationalism things.

The temperament of people in this time was tumultuous to say the least.

McCarthyism rampant.

Right.

You have a lot of the pre civil rights hostility nationalism stuff.

The anger of people using Happy Holidays and Xmas grew within more conservative churches.

People started to.

People stated that the lack of the word Christ in both were blasphemous, which we now know not to be true even to this day.

People feel this way and you know, these kinds of people, I suppose you can't, can't help.

One of the early opposers of this was author C S Lewis.

He's a.

Was a devout Christian and was angered by these words like and specifically he really hated the commercialization of Christmas too, which is fair, but he hated that, you know, Xmas and Happy Holidays were being used.

Yeah, you know these, these people who think think of this and as like an affront to their beliefs.

You know, they love to make themselves the victims even in the happiest times of the year.

Even in a country where the religion, their religion is the majority.

You know, you get people like Bill O'Reilly for instance, carrying on this and sell this blatant lie to people who rely on people like him to give them real information but are not critically thinking enough to know that he won't.

So they just like intake and regurgitate and don't try and suss out the actual information.

Why does the blame get placed squarely on people either not Christian or advocating for language that doesn't ostracize non Christians and is not even non Christian in general?

Right.

The funny part to me is that the same people who decry these things like that these things make Christmas less Christian are not even aware that the reason these terms gained popularity is the same reason why Christmas, Christmas feels less Christian.

Cream dollar dollar bills, y'all.

What does this mean?

Well, commercialization of holiday how is now an economic boosting period for the year.

How advertising is used to sell things and use the holidays to do so.

Does this mean that the meaning of the holiday is cheapened?

I mean, I guess at face value you could say that for sure, but I guess more of an individual issue.

If you feel the day is good for you and your family and you're representing what it means to you in a positive way that reflects what it should be, then that's good.

I also think that the holiday transforming into something less Christian is not necessarily a bad thing.

If the spirit of your holiday is now so infectious that people outside of your religion want to celebrate it, then isn't that good?

Now the argument could be made that the holiday itself is less about the positive messages and meanings and more about spending money.

But the time of the year does by and large bring out the generosity of people, whether it's buying gifts for their loved ones or, you know, volunteering donating charity donations.

For instance, donations per person in the United states average around $20 per month between January and October, November and December.

That same group donates $50 per month.

The same.

The season definitely has the impact, right?

The amount of donations rise for non province 17 to 34% in December alone.

The last three days of the calendar year are also super big for donations with people being in the giving spirit.

So we go off that 17 to 34%.

That number for December alone, 94 to $189 billion just in December.

Right.

That's wild.

That's some serious generosity.

Now I do want to compare that to how much money is spent on the holidays.

Americans spend $955 billion in the winter holiday shopping this last year.

And that's.

That's crazy.

That's.

That's a lot.

I was looking for a comparison on how much people spent in general back then, but this was kind of an interesting find.

Keep in mind that the income per person back then was around $7,600 and the population was 132 million.

Compare that to the current income per capita being $69,000 and the popular population being 334.9 million.

It's pretty straightforward.

More money being spent today.

Right?

And more money being made.

I mean, only if you just look at these numbers alone.

But you got to take into account inflation and things.

But the dollars back then had more buying power.

The wages per capita back then, 7,600, which is closer to 150 to $170,000 today.

Money spent, 205, which is more like 40 or $4,000 today.

Current estimates place the average United States resident spending around 900 to $2,000 per person in the holiday season.

And the grand total of $27 billion, which was closer to 550 to $611 billion in today's money.

So money spent per person has risen pretty much every year.

Some years wages have risen, but have not risen, but the money spent still rose.

Like in the midst of World War II, wages didn't.

They actually dropped.

The holiday spending rose.

So many Beanie Babies right now, that was like 95 I think, when that started to take off.

But anyway, speaking of, let's move on to some of the most popular toys throughout the decades in the United States.

People love some yo Yos.

Good to know that they have been a fascination for almost a century now.

If you went to any movies in the last year, you'll know that the 50s belonged to Barbie.

There was also a debut of Mr.

Potato Head, which was originally an actual potato that you put these faces and arms on.

Pez dispensers.

Tonka trucks.

Oh man, Tonka trucks, Frisbees, Trolls, dolls.

In the 60s, Barbie got her first dream house there's remote control cars, Etch A Sketches, Easy Bake Ovens were popping along.

GI Joes.

That's right, dolls are for boys now.

In the 70s you have Nerf, Nerf Footballs, Rubik's Cubes, Stretch Armstrongs.

Later in the 70s, Star wars figures in the 80s brought us Transformers, Care Bears, Polly Pockets, Cabbage Patch Kids.

If you're ever bored, go watch the Cabbage Patch Kids videos.

Like shopping videos.

Like people fist fighting over them.

This 90s were wild.

Or I guess this would have been 80s.

The 90s had Super Soakers, Ninja Toys, Ninja Turtles, Ninja Turtles, Pokemon games and cards, Furbies, Tickle Me Elmo, Buzz Lightyear, and of course Beanie Babies.

I had a Tickle Me Elmo and a Buzz Lightyear actually.

And, and beating babies to think of it.

Yeah, it's because I'm a 90s kid.

MP3s, Nintendo's, Beyblades, Xboxes, iPods, Brats, PlayStations, Webkinz.

Oh, forgot about Webkinz.

That's awesome.

Also, you know, it's crazy how much it has changed.

From like early toys that grew, your imagination came like, it's like an extension of your imagination.

Like I like more and more.

I don't want to say like forced imagination, but something along those lines, right?

Like I love video games, movies, all that, but they also, they're, they do strip away some imagination, right?

And like they do compensate by giving a way to immerse yourself in these stories and things.

So it might be a lot.

I don't know.

I could just be getting old and out of touch.

Anyway, what does this tell us?

Does this mean the holiday is a marketing ploy by companies to get us to spend and donate more money?

Is it a great way for them to gain in the last part of the year to solidify their earnings?

Is Santa the consumer driven replacement of the once generous Santa Claus?

Has the holiday died?

Is it on its last legs?

I guess it is kind of all in the terms of what you believe, how you celebrate and what it means to you.

Like in general.

The thought of Christmas time has definitely changed.

You know, you think about the original Christmases and what they celebrated, what they did, it definitely feels like a different holiday.

Like I said, that really depends on the person.

For me, I have no, you know, I've really never had that religious connection to this time of year.

Wasn't raised in a household that put religion first and never even really talked about it.

I knew who Jesus was.

I like, you know I knew the stories.

I knew that Christmas was his birthday.

I got that.

I watched all the movies.

I got the concept.

It was, you know, for me, a time where families from far away visited, shared gifts in a way to show their love.

I remember traveling across the state, seeing my aunt, uncle, my grandma and my dad's side and then, you know, all of my cousins and then on my mom's side actually have.

Most of them actually came to us, which, you know, a little, a little bit different, but it was still kind of the same sentiment.

And, you know, yes, as a kid I was excited about presents, but I was also excited, you know, excited to see my grandma and grandpa, excited to see my cousins, the family that I really only got to see on holidays or special occasions.

To me, that was like the main purpose, right.

The gifts were kind of secondary.

They were like the icing on an already awesome cake.

Now, as an adult, I, I look at this time very similarly.

I think of the people I care a lot and use this time to express, you know, how much they mean to me or try to, whether it be, you know, a message to them, handmade gift or something.

I think they will like my niece and nephew now are the biggest parts for me.

I want to shower them with gifts.

Not because they need things, but and not because I'm driven by like billboards or commercials to give them things.

I, I want to do it because I remember the feeling of receiving gifts from people and remember how much it meant to me when I was, you know, had something specific on my list and somebody got that, took their money and bought that for me.

I thought, like, that's awesome.

Like, oh, you listened.

Like, that was what it was for me.

I appreciated that gesture.

And I give them things because I hope they will enjoy that.

You know, I want them to have those experiences that I remember, those positive experiences.

I try to get close to the things on the list, but I'm also kind of a creative gift giver.

In my more poor days, I would opt to give people artwork that I had made because that required very little money on my part.

And I still wanted to give them something.

Just something handmade is always more special in my mind.

But the argument could be said that I could just do that whenever.

Don't really need a holiday to tell me when, but.

But you know, the chances are that I'm probably going to get something from somebody at that point.

So this is my appreciation moment, right?

And you know, handmade things, you know, always a little more special in my mind.

That's How I look at it anyway, is, you know, you.

You took the time to create this thing.

Christmas time overall, you know, time to show the people you love that you care about them.

And you don't really have to spend any money to do that.

You can just be around to visit them.

Be the.

Be the gift.

You know, your presence is the gift.

You know, if that extra something that you want to give them is something that you.

You can do that.

That's great.

The original Christmas celebrations were feast drinking, gift giving.

The holidays not cheapened by you doing the exact same thing that they were doing back then.

As long as your heart's in it now.

Is this to say that the holidays have not been weaponized by companies looking to profit off of every aspect of our lives?

Of course not.

Movies, music, toys, businesses of all sorts have made billions over the years thanks to the holiday seasons.

That is the world we live in.

Though.

It's kind of funny that a holiday that has so many movies with messages of greed, selfishness and so on is one that is also profited majorly by companies exploiting people's generosity.

I don't really have an answer to the question of if the holidays are ruined, but I do know that if they are, it's on the person celebrating.

If you can't find the joy in something because of the way other people around you are enjoying it, then that's on you.

I don't like the way certain people enjoy football, music, art, video games, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop enjoying those things.

If you think that Christmas has lost its luster, maybe try and be less negative about it and spreading the love better.

Maybe stop thinking like a victim.

Like people are attacking your holiday at every turn.

Yes, commercialization and consumerism is a way of the modern world and yes, that has impacted itself on the traditions, beliefs and celebrations people of all walks of life hold dear.

It's not Christmas exclusive, not Christian exclusive.

Even people are told they need to buy this type of food through this holiday.

They need to give this type of decoration for that one.

You can't celebrate this day without using this thing.

You can't honor this guy without wearing that shirt or whatever.

That's just where we're at.

You could celebrate how you want.

If you like those things, go ahead and get them.

If Christmas means being generous to the people you love, love, then buy whatever your heart desires for them.

If it means decorating your house like HDTV recommends or Martha Stewart just threw up, go ahead.

Don't let people tell you that you are doing it wrong or that you are ruining the original message.

Because as we've learned today, the message and celebrations have changed over the years.

A day chosen to celebrate the birth of the Son of God was originally feasts, gift giving and merriment.

Has that really changed that much?

Like I said, if you believe that your holiday is being trampled by people using non direct words to describe it, spending time with their loved ones and giving them gifts, also being more charitable during that time, expressing gratitude towards the people around them.

Is that even true?

Or is it just that people are mad because other people are choosing to celebrate in a way that they enjoy?

That's you look inward instead of outward.

Anyway, that's that's Christmas people.

I hope you learned a lot.

There's a lot to share in this one.

I find myself deciding which lanes to go down many times during the research trying to decide what was worthwhile and what to lose.

I hope it was interesting enough and I hope that you have some fun facts to share this holiday season with your loved ones.

Hopefully as you're making your way to your holiday destinations, this provides you with some fun and not too cynical listening.

Comment your favorite tradition gift memory on the YouTube video in the Facebook group.

Tell me your favorite movie.

Argue with me about the die hard thing.

You know I'd love to hear from you and if you enjoyed this episode.

Share us with your friends.

Review us wherever possible for a wrap up the show.

I have some final quick thoughts.

I'll try to make it as quick.

I know I've been going a little bit longer here.

I think it's important to remember that every group today tries to claim certain traditions as their group's invention.

A lot of the Christian websites I visited for this research came up a lot of that.

They that a lot of the things that I found.

They obviously said that they created it and then pagan adjacent websites said that they created it and you know, modern companies said that they had a part in it or whatever.

People say that Christmas was created to convert non Christians and that it was stolen.

The lack of understanding of the people of our world has led to some very short sighted takes on the matter.

Every culture in every part of the world has some sort of celebration during winter.

Why is this?

Well, it's the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

The least amount of sunlight takes place on December 21st or 22nd in the Northern hemisphere and then in the southern hemisphere June 20th or 21st and then for summer solstice the days are flipped.

The point is that these days are super common for celebrations around the globe.

Culture to culture 30 different holidays and celebrations are present in December to this day, like major holidays for different religions and there's so many others that have been lost to time.

So to say one is more important than the other because of one particular belief systems is a little wonky.

People speak on free will without divine intervention, yet get annoyed when people use that will to celebrate how they choose.

Furthermore, they let it frustrate them that other people like are living their own lives like it affects them some way.

Claiming a holiday that that once belonged to some other culture was taken, ruined or whatever is kind of just lazy thinking.

Have holidays been assimilated and traditions borrowed or stolen and changed to others?

For sure.

Does that mean there is a massive conspiracy to do so or have been done by these groups?

I don't think so.

All right, that's enough rambling.

Thank you for joining me on this holiday episode.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me on the show in this journey.

You want to suggest a topic that you would like to hear or be fun for others to hear, please drop a comment in the Facebook group.

You can do it on the YouTube.

Send an email through the button within the link tree that's in the description.

Also in the description, our Friends, the Macabre Emporium, the Dark Windows Podcast, Real Creature feature, and of course west of Nowhere.

Until next time, keep questioning the past.

The future will thank you.

Bye.