Happy Holidays to you all! Get bent, FOX news. Let everyone celebrate the season. Now, I am off to prepare for Festivus at my house.

  • sab@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    In Scandinavia we never stopped calling the holiday by it’s pagan name - jul.

    We’ve been told for a thousand years now that it’s somehow supposed to refer to the birth of Christ, but the celebration is older than Christianity and nobody knows for sure the origin of it’s name. As far as me and my family is concerned, it’s a pagan holiday.

    Happy to celebrate with my Christian friends though, there’s nothing wrong with being inclusive.

    God jul!

    • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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      11 months ago

      Woah, I’m guessing that’s where yule as in yuletide in English comes from. A lot of Christmas traditions came out of Scandinavia so makes sense if true. Gonna look up some Jul info now.

      God Jul!

      • sab@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Bingo!

        Christmas traditions are a fun mix of things. The modern Santa Claus is mostly a mix of Saint Nicholas and a bunch of continental European traditions, but the pointy red hat is the product of being what we refer to as a nisse - a mythical creature closely related to gnomes.

        We have long traditions of leaving food out for the nisse living in the barn for Christmas. And Santa is not named after Saint Nicholas over here - we call him julenissen. The Christmas gnome, if you will.

      • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Similar thing with “Easter”, which comes from the name of Ēostre, the Germanic goddess of Spring. The origins of that holiday have nothing to do with Christianity, but the day and name were hijacked by Christians sometime in the mid-2nd century.