[ad_1]
The celebration of Christmas is a special blend of pagan, Catholic and Protestant traditions. The figure of the infant Jesus, the donor Jesus, first spread among Lutherans in Germany and then came to us through Austrian and Czech mediation relatively late in the 19th century.
“The day of the birth of Christ was not celebrated in the first three centuries. The ancient liturgy grouped everything around the death and resurrection of the Savior”, writes Antal Várnagy in his book Liturgy.
How long have we been celebrating Christmas?
The formation of the celebration of Christmas in the so-called “time of Christological struggles” (these are debates on the judgment of Christ) falls back to the fourth century. The theological debate on the divine or human nature of Christ was of crucial importance later in the celebration of Christmas. The Council of Nicea declared its unity with the Father and introduced the concept of the monothe, writes the Hungarian Catholic Lexicon.
The celebration of Christmas played an important role in the displacement of Roman sun worship. The birth of the Sun was celebrated for ancient mythological reasons in Syria and Lower Egypt on December 25, and from there it was moved to Rome.
And because Christ is the day of truth and the light of the world according to the Bible, and in fact “the true light that illuminates all men”, Christians began to celebrate the birth of Jesus as early as December 25. His aim was to displace the pagan festival of the winter solstice and fill it with Christian content. The celebration of Christmas in Rome dates back to the 330s. This is the celebration of the birth of Christ in the West, the Major’s argument sounds.
Holding gift giving
Natale, birth and gift (the feast of Saturnalia) are two pagan traits mixed with Christmas customs. (Gifts were a custom among the Romans during Saturnalia. Pagan Saturnalia fell before the Feast of the Invincible Sun, so certain elements of Christmas, later gift giving, easily became part of it.) placed the coming of Christ for the feast of the invincible Sun.
It is the figure of Santa Claus – Saint Nicholas woven from two natural persons anyway – and the different versions of Santa Claus appeared in the West in a gift paper, which for a long time meant the monopoly for them. However, after 1517, Protestantism did not cultivate the cult of Santa Claus, which dates back to (also) Bishop Saint Nicholas of Myra, as the Protestants did not follow the cult of saints. It was here that Jesus first appeared as the main figure of Christmas, following the teachings of Luther. Beginning in 1535, Luther replaced Saint Nicholas, a gift, with “Christ heiliger,” as described by Manfred Becker-Huberti, a German theologian.
In parallel, Protestantism, instead of a church party, placed Christmas partly among families, which was accompanied by the appearance of gift-giving. But the claim to the Christmas tree also began its journey of conquest from German (perhaps Alsatian) territory and Lutheran communities around the world. However, the conquest required the expansion of the railroad from the 1870s, which made it easier to transport the trees, Becker-Huberti notes.
Catholics could easily join in on this family vacation too. After all, the birth of Jesus also signified the birth of the Holy Family, and the Catholic response to the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, also helped to strengthen the family character of the holiday.
At the same time, the gift is included in all this, since Christ was a gift from God. In addition, the strengthening of the emotional charge of the holiday had already begun among Catholics: Saint Francis of Assisi first arranged a nativity scene in 1223.
From Jesus to Jesus
However, the strict Lutheran figure of Jesus could not really play the role of gift giving. The child Jesus was much more prepared for this: Jesus shares the rewards. The figure of Jesus, that is, Christkind or Christkindl, has spread in southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria, according to some sources, but Becker-Huberti links this not to the territory but to the Lutheran religion. At first, Christkind, in his opinion, showed not youthful but feminine features, it could have been a boy of 10-15 years according to contemporary representations, adorned with angel wings.
In any case, this much kinder figure has easily first become popular in Lutheran Germany, in the 19th century. and at the end of the century throughout Germany. In the Habsburg-dominated areas, in the countries of the later Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, similar cults spread through the Counter-Reformation. Jesus became the main gift giver in the Czech, Hungarian and Slovak territories. However, according to the ethnographer Sándor Bálint, the traditions of this are not found in the Lutheran religion. The cult of the little Jesus in Prague had a major influence in the Czech Republic, Austria and Hungary, during the Renaissance of the Austro-Czech Baroque (Counter-Reformation), in the 17th century. century.
[ad_2]
