The Pagan Days Of The Week

Is the Christmas Tree Pagan?

There's been a lot of discussion about the origins of Christmas and Christmas trees, some claiming it's evil Paganism, others saying it represents their religious beliefs.

Lots of different beliefs, a bit confusing, but we aren't going to be part of that argument.
Personally, we could care less if people say Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays.

We celebrate and decorate the tree for our own reasons, not for the reasons of others.

But just for fun, let's take a closer look at some differing viewpoints.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that were green all year had significant meaning for people in the winter. 

Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, earlier civilizations hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. 

In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. 

Many ancient civilizations believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become weak. 

They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. 

Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

Early Romans celebrated the solstice with a feast called the Saturnalia decorating their homes and temples with evergreen boughs. In Northern Europe the Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. 

The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

It was Germany that most likely started the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes.

It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. 

Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees to be a strange practice.

The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier. 

The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747. But, even by the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was slow to be adopted in America. To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. 

The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any such nonsense frivolity. 

The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.” In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. 

That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.

In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree. 

Of course, what was done at court immediately became fashionable—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society. The time for the Christmas tree had arrived.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees with homemade ornaments, while the German-Americans continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. 

Popcorn strings with berries and nuts became popular as well.

 

So, there it is. 

We just want peace, isn't that the intended message, peace on earth and goodwill toward everyone?

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate, make it special to you.

If it's Yule, Winter Solstice or Christmas, embrace it, make it yours and ignore all the bickering and negativity.

What Is A Pagan Anyway?

Paganism translates literally as "country dweller" and is the umbrella term for the polytheistic pre Christian religious and magic paths. 

Paganism is a general term and many Witches, Shamans, Druids and Wiccans can and do identify as Pagan.

However it is possible to follow any of these individual paths without being considered to be a Pagan. 

Witchcraft in particular is a secular path and many witches do not like being associated with Paganism due to its connection with deity. 

Paganism has no single defined belief system and as such many different paths and traditions are celebrated within the Pagan culture.

The most commonly held beliefs held include worship of dual or multiple deities and an emphasis and affinity with nature and the natural world. 

Modern Pagans follow in the footsteps of their pre Christian ancestors and observe ritual and practise believed to have been adopted by Pagans of old.

A good example of this would be the observance of the wheel of the year using the change of seasons as inspiration for magical and spiritual work. 

Many modern Pagans celebrate the eight sabbats which, although not strictly derived from olden times, do mark the seasonal changes our ancestors would have observed. 

Modern Scientific, Theosophic and Philosophical thinking are incorporated into NeoPaganism, blending ancient wisdom with modern thought.

A modern Pagan seeks to interpret the wisdom of ancestors within a modern lifestyle. 

For example a modern Pagan is likely to be less reliant on the land but will still look to bring the influence of changing nature into everything they do. 

Harvest time for the Pagans of old would have been about physically reaping the grain from the land but for the modern Pagan it is a time to reflect on a more metaphorical interpretation of reaping what has been sown in relation to their own lives.

The traditions inherent in mythology play a big part in the practise of the modern Pagan. 

In Europe the Celtic and Norse mythologies are perhaps the most closely linked to Paganism though many pantheons including Greek, Egyptian and African are worshipped by modern Pagans. 

The choice of pantheon is often connected to personal history but Neo Pagans often choose deities to whom they feel a spiritual rather than a historical connection. 

In the modern world with the easy exchange of information, Pagans have more 
freedom to explore their own spiritual leanings and it is not unusual to find an individual worshipping deities from a different part of the world to their own.

Paganism often suffers a bad press for alleged associations with Occultism, Satanic worship and Dark Magic. 

None of these are elements of Paganism. 

Satanism in particular is not a Pagan path as Satanism (depending on the tradition) is either an Athiest or a Monotheistic faith. 

Neither fits with the multi Gods of Old and NeoPaganism.

Paganism can also be defined more widely as any religious path not following the Christian Bible. 

This is unsurprisingly more of a Christian definition than one widely accepted by the Pagan communities.

Was Norte Dame Pagan?

Notre Dame started off as a center for paganism.

Construction on the cathedral began in 1163, though it didn't wrap up until long after; while the towers were completed in 1245.

It was first home to a Pagan temple, which Romans built after Julius Caesar led them to occupy the city in 52 BC.

We know that Maurice de Sully, Bishop in 1160 wanted to reconstruct the site where Norte Dame is today. That same site is where a Roman church and Pagan temple once existed.

The Île-de-la-Cité on which Notre-Dame de Paris now stands was once a Pagan Gallo-Roman city known as Lutetia.

The cathedral may have been built right over it.

From the Facebook page Wiccans and Pagans Coming Together...

You may be hearing lots of people mention that Notre Dame was a Pagan temple before and are maybe wondering about this, whether it's true, and why it was like that.

Since it's one of my favorite historical subjects, I'll explain what I know. 

Most churches in Europe older than 600 years were built on former Pagan sites. This was actually official church "policy." Popes (especially Gregory "the great") specifically ordered that new churches be built on old Pagan sites. In some cases, wood and stone from the old sites (temples, groves, etc) would be used partially in the church.

The idea was that it would be easier to convert people to the new religion if it seemed like the new places were merely continuations of the old. 

They didn't come up with idea, though. It's what the Roman Empire did, too. They often re-carved old statues and standing stones with new images to fit their imperial religion, also changing the names of local gods to make them Roman. This is a lot like what the Catholic Church did with saints, many of whom had Pagan roots or were pagan gods.

So most of the oldest churches in Europe actually have two (or more) layers of Pagan sites below them: one Roman pagan on top of an "indigenous" (or pre-Roman) one.

The best know example of this is in Paris: Notre Dame, which was a temple to Jupiter during Roman conquest and a smaller shrine (suspected of being a goddess shrine) before the Romans conquered and built their own temple.

Incidentally, there's another church with two much older Pagan sites below it, except it was only consecrated one hundred years ago (1919). That church is the basilica of the sacred heart (Sacré Couer) on Montmartre, and is dedicated to "expiate the sins" of the Paris Commune.

The hill it's on, Montmartre (the red-light district where the Moulin Rouge is), was once a Roman site dedicated to Dionysos and Mars, and before that it was a Druid mount. 

So even though the last official Pagan worship on the place ended more than a thousand years ago, people are *still* building Churches on Pagan sites.

From a Pagan perspective, this makes complete sense (even if we'd rather see the old temples and groves back). Because places don't stop being sacred just because the buildings on them are destroyed. It isn't the humans who make it holy, it's the spirits of the place and the land itself.

Sacred sites are places you can communicate with gods easiest, "wells of power" or "crossroads" or "places where the veil is thin" or however else you want to describe it. 

So whatever the dominant religion, even if it's a "secular" one, it makes sense for the religious buildings to be in those places and not elsewhere. And even if the people choosing the site aren't aware of the theory behind it (but the Catholic Church is a lot more magically-adept than most people give them credit for), they unconsciously sense this truth.

So anyway, Notre Dame is burning. But the place was sacred before, and the building isn't what made it sacred. So mourn the loss of art and the destruction of a symbol, but don't mourn the loss of the sacred: it's not going anywhere.

Have Researchers Found An Ancient Sanctuary To Pagan God Pan?

Archaeologists in northern Israel have uncovered a Roman-era gate they suspect is the entrance to an ancient pagan location.

Israeli archaeologists believe they may have uncovered an ancient sanctuary of the Greek god Pan in the north of the country.

During excavations carried out by the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, the team discovered this giant Roman gate in the ancient city of Hippos, which is believed to have led into a sanctuary dedicated to the worship of Pan, the god of flocks and shepherds who, in Greek mythology, is depicted as half man and half goat.

The height of the original gateway is estimated to have been about 20 feet, and part of a much taller structure located just outside the ancient city limits. 

According to Michael Eisenberg, head of the archeological team said, “Now that the whole gate has been exposed, we not only have better information for dating the mask, but also a clue to its function.” 

Being a Pagan