Pagans and holiday honesty?

I think we all need to study the history of our traditions

and determine what holidays are valid for us.

After that, we don't need to concern ourselves about

what others do, or who "stole" a holiday from us. We

should just follow our own path and be happy.

We may wish our friends well on their holidays, of

course... but that's about it.

Blessings,

Jean

ok,I thought pagans celebrated Yule(tide)???

Are u a Druid? Ok, first of all,as a solitary Wiccan, I celebrate Yuletide.

I celebrate the Winter solstice,too.

I was raised christian,and I always thought that the christians stole the Yuletide and made Pagans not be allowed to celebrate it.

That was always my understanding.

I understand your position on the gift-buying for the kid.

I wouldnt buy a christian kid a gift, unless it was my own kids.

All of my christian friends, know I am Wiccan,and do not shove their religion down my throat,.

I appreciate that. You are not the onmly one who has a problem with secret santa. I do as well,and i tell ppl that I can send a dollar-store gift, but only one or two, as I have 2 girls.

I believe that the cleebrations should reflect your true feelings on the holidays.

I choose to celebrate. u choose to be somber. Sounds like your tradition is different from what I have heard of,so I can't say I one way or the other,except,that ,I understand. By that,I mean, ppl celebrate differently. As a christian,when I was one,I didn't believe in the whole commercial thing. there was noi "christ" in christmas. It was all about the $$$$$. I hated that. Still do.

Hope I helped.

Pagan Roman (Church) used the old pagan holidays to convert the pagans. How it was explained to me by a priest and a nun, was that it was easier to convert the pagans if they were allowed to keep their pagan traditions. Keep the date, the traditions and just rename it. Yes Christmas is a pagan holiday. It truly has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. The same with Easter.

I would not worry to much about this Santa Claus character either. Santa Claus has nothing to do with Christianity.

You know many Christian's do not realize the truth behind their so called holiday. When informed about the truth, many will close a blind eye. I know. At one point in my journey I too fought to keep the traditions of men and hold tight to the pagan holidays I so loved to the point of denying the truth.

This will be the first year I do not observe this pagan holiday. You can have it back :)

~Peace

answer: in the Bible it tells believers in G-d not to bring a tree in and decorate it with silver and gold, that's a pagan custom. Christmas didn't exist for centuries after Jesus supposedly walked.

There were holidays around the world celebrating Solstice - check out the alignment at New Grange and Stonehenge. These existed for thousands of years before Christianity reached England and Ireland.

Every custom surrounding Christmas is of pagan origin and were incorporated. The Puritans forbid anyone in the new colony to celebrate Christmas because they considered all the practices too pagan.

Tell the one trying to guilt trip you to research the various practices around the world, especially England and Europe.

We aren't borrowing Christmas - we're celebrating Yule, the original holidays with our original customs.

I don't celebrate Christmas, Yule or any other holidays.. I celebrate the birth of our Lord.

The date, December 25, was borrowed from paganism by the Roman Catholic Church when they brought all into the Roman Church. They incorporated the dates of pagan worship with those of Christian worship and made the pagan holidays Christian or christianized the pagan holidays.

The Church did not paganize the Christian holidays.

They didn't borrow your holiday they took it and forced pagans to stop practicing paganism. That way you would all slowly assimilate into Christianity because the only way you would be able to celebrate your holidays was as per a Christian though nothing changed you celebrated it under a different name but the next few generations eventually became 'Christian'. Persecution sucks.

There is Absolutely nothing Christ Like About Christmas, there is no Christ in Christmas basically.

Thank Emp.Constantine.

*~Salams (Peace)

that's an excellent question and one which does no longer lend itself to ordinary solutions. on the superficial point, no. the effortless thought of Judaism and Christianity is that there is one God. truthfully, something that's no longer fabric is God. All spirit comes from God and to contemplate the different source of non secular guidance is to worship yet another god. This, my expensive, is a 10 Commandments No No. The prescription to love the Lord with All you coronary heart, strategies and soul supposes that in case you ask for help from the different religious source, then you certainly are no longer utilising the entire coronary heart, and so on. yet right that's the place it gets complicated. once you check out the Saints and the early Christian holiday trips that's obvious that they have been incorporations of Pagan holiday trips. In lots of techniques the church has explicitly or implicitly accompanied and introduced in exterior ideals. you will run into some situation from people who think of they get e mail right away from God. yet contained in the top, your religious life is between you and God. stable success - the gnome

If you look back into history, the concept of Santa is not Christian at all. He comes from the Nordic traditions and is in fact the modern-day, Christianized version of Odin, or Od.

If you don't feel comfortable giving your children gifts from Santa, try giving them gifts from Odin or the Holly King.

I say stick by your guns.

While there are aspects of Christmas that have been swiped from pagan faiths (I've even heard of Santa being a representation of Odin!), for Cthulhu's sake, if you're gonna do something like that for Yule, do it as a social thing, not as something you stole from another religious group.

'santa claus' comes from the dutch 'sinter klaas', which means 'st nicholas', but some argue that the myths about nicholas originated in paganism. i haven't researched it myself, and i've stopped caring about whether the way i celebrate the sabbats is 'authentic'. paganism is a folk religion, and the vast majority of the holiday traditions are folk traditions. my last name is an ethnic version of nicholas, and i got teased about being santa my whole life, so i claim to be his grandson and collect santas, and i celebrate yule in a traditional american way.

the truth is, we don't know how paganism would have evolved. it's ours now do with as we please, or as our gods inspire us. poeple who don't like that can do as they please, no problem.