Have you ever wondered how people truly came up with Christmas and what inspired many of the things that people do during Christmas? Well, Yule and Saturnalia are the two holidays that inspired many of Christmas the traditions.
First off, what are Yule and Saturnalia? Yule is a celebration on the Winter Solstice that the Norse created to honor the returning of the sun after the shortened days. The main god they would worship would be Odin, or the Yule Father. He would ride across the night sky determining who was good and who was nice. Sounds familiar, that's because many of the traditions involving Santa Claus correlate to a lot of things that Odin would do. There was also the goddess Sol, the goddess of the sun, who started returning since the days were becoming longer. She would ride across the sky with her two steeds Arvak and Alsvid. Another big correlation is with the Christmas Tree. Early Germanic Tribes would decorate trees to celebrate Odin. Some of the things they would use were candles, fruits, nuts, and gingerbread.
Saturnalia is also a big inspiration to Christmas, like gift giving. Saturnalia was celebrated by the Romans and honored the god Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans would also hang up holly wreaths since holly was sacred to Saturn.
Another thing is that they both involved feasting over a long period of time. With Yule the fathers and sons would bring a tree into the house and over a period of around 12 days the log would burn and the family would feast. With the Romans and Saturnalia they would celebrate the week before the Winter Solstice and then it would last a month. Also, slaves were freed during that time and everyone would just celebrate and feast.
There are many other correlations between the two holidays and Christmas. I personally celebrate one, Yule, because I’m not Christian and I’d also be considered pagan. I also decided on this topic to make people more aware of how their holiday that they celebrate came to be. Yes, Christmas also has many Christian parts to it, but like I stated before many of the traditions people do now were inspired by the Romans and Norse who the Christians wanted to convert to Christianity. So, the church decided to take many of the Yule and Saturnalia traditions to make the Norse and Romans more likely to convert.
What do you think of Yule?
What do you think of Saturnalia?
https://www.history.com/topics/christmas/history-of-christmas
https://chefin.com.au/blog/these-6-christmas-traditions-are-actually-pagan-customs
https://sonsofvikings.com/blogs/history/viking-origins-of-christmas-yule-traditions
Replies
I like this topic! Good summary as well. You should have "bumped it" so people would have seen it more. I also think your questions could be better.