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Kilidoescartwheels
Valinor
Dec 14 2018, 10:41pm
Post #2 of 6
(573 views)
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the American tradition of Christmas is the best example of the idea of the "Melting Pot", the idea that all these different races and ethnicities would blend together and form something distinctly American. We really do have a little bit of everything this time of year!
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 14 2018, 11:03pm
Post #3 of 6
(568 views)
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Thomas Nast – The man who invented Santa Claus Dec 9, 2016 Goran Blazeski
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https://www.thevintagenews.com/...nvented-santa-claus/
Our unique take on it - "Nast conceived and introduced our modern image of Santa Claus.......... 1881 illustration by Thomas Nast who, along with Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, helped to create the modern image of Santa Claus"
UK still uses Father Christmas for example.
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Annael
Immortal
Dec 15 2018, 3:29pm
Post #4 of 6
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how you get people to convert to your religion
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without using force: tell them that their god or holy being is the same as your god or saint and that their ancient celebrations are the same as yours, just changing the names as needed. The Catholic Church excelled at this.
It kind of backfired with the Africans stolen away to the Americas, though; they kept on worshipping their own gods & goddesses in the guise of saints and so kept many of their traditions alive in the new forms of vodoun, santeria, and condomble. A friend of mine, whose roots are in Puerto Rico, recently realized that her very devout grandmother's home altar was in fact a santeria altar, not Catholic!
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Greenwood Hobbit
Valinor
Dec 15 2018, 10:20pm
Post #5 of 6
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The Romans were quite good at it too -
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or at overlaying their own culture on the old one, rather than obliterating it by force. Mind you, they did quite a good job of obliterating the Druids! Aqua Sulis (Bath) for one example, became known as Sulis Minerva. Saturnalia (which took over from the old Winter Solstice) became the festive season when the new Christmas was celebrated. It's interesting, diverging slightly from the subject, that Mithras, the Roman soldiers' God, was also born at midwinter.
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 17 2018, 12:44am
Post #6 of 6
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Certain calendar periods just demand some kind of holiday.
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The dark part of the year cries out for a light oriented festival.
Also, look at Central and South American fusion of their native beliefs with Catholicism. I think the church decided that the form was less important than the conversion.
"To the people of these countries, there is no difference between the Pachamama (the Incan notion of mother earth: an integral part of the Incan belief system) and the Virgin Mary. Both hold a beautifully equal significance. In Potosi during carnival (a celebration of both the coming of Lent in the Christian calendar and the coming of spring in the Incan calendar), I saw a leather-faced Bolivian woman wrapped in a traditional Andean poncho, holding on her bowler hat with one hand, and spreading flowers on the cobbled streets and doorsteps with the other. I asked her why she was performing this curious ritual and she looked at me was a toothless grin and said matter-of-factly: “"Mijito, es para la Virgen… y para la Pachamama.”"
https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/...ism-in-south-america
(This post was edited by Eruonen on Dec 17 2018, 12:45am)
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