Despite many of the traditions making a resurgence during the Restoration (1660-circa 1688), the damage had essentially been done. This tradition lasted for several hundred years until Christmas celebrations were halted by the Puritans. The reaction to hearing a ghost story around the burning Yule fire became a tradition a feeling of warmth and group bonding at what was the coldest and darkest time of year. Humans haven’t changed much biologically in several thousand years, and a person’s physical reaction to a harmless scare-elevated heart rate, endorphin rushes caused by adrenaline-is still essentially the same. In the Southern Hemisphere, this is reversed, with the Winter Solstice falling in June making surfing at Christmas an appealing thought.ĭuring the Winter Solstice, it was tradition to sit around the fires built to ward off the darkness with the Yule Log and celebrate the rebirth of the sun. This event causes the seasons on Earth, with the solstices falling on the points where the axis points directly towards and away from the Sun. The Winter Solstice (also known as hiemal solstice, hibernal solstice, or simply midwinter) is caused by the angle of the Earth’s axis reaching its maximum tilt away from the sun. Many modern Christmas traditions are a conglomeration of many cultural and spiritual beliefs throughout time the Yule Log as well as Yule season are often linked to Pre-Christian celebrations of the Solstice in pagan traditions. From 1659 to 1681, the Massachusetts Bay Colony in what would eventually become the United States banned the celebration of Christmas with the penalty being a five shilling fine-approximately three days wages for a skilled tradesman. Shops were to remain open and soldiers would patrol the streets and seize food being prepared for a feast on those days. Oliver Cromwell may have been hinting about the less-than-Christian origins of some holiday traditions whenever he and the Puritans created an ordinance in 1644-following the outcome of the English Civil War-which abolished the Feast Day of Christmas (as well as Easter and Whitsun, another name for the festival of Pentecost). One of those things doesn’t quite seem to fit with the others, but “scary ghost stories and tales of the glories” have been an integral part of Christmas celebrations for certain cultures for centuries.īut how did something that is now much more associated with the fall and Halloween end up a quintessential (but quickly diminishing) Christmas tradition? Like so many of the things we now celebrate as part of the season, we must look past the symbols used in Christmas celebrations to earlier Pre-Christian times. The song Jingle Bells, chestnuts roasting over an open fire, various types of poultry in assorted shrubbery, and horror stories.
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