Word: paganism
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Yule Logs: Many ancient winter solstice traditions included lighted candles, bonfires and blazing logs to speed the sun on its way to yearly "rebirth." The Yule log is adopted from these pagan customs...
...believed, Christmas has been celebrated on December 25 ever since Mary placed the Christ child in a manger. Unfortunately, historical documents, legend and law prove this widespread rumor unfounded. Books on the history of Christmas and on holiday traditions show that Christmas festivities have as firm a root in pagan ritual as Christian rite and that Massachusetts itself at one time played the grinch...
...final decision to fix the date was a direct response to an array of pagan harvest festivals, and ignored the philosophical arguments offered by some Christian theologians. Most sun-worshiping early religions--including the Persian, Roman Norse, Gothic, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon--staged lavish winter solstice celebrations to mark the annual rebirth...
Although the Church intended only to retain pagan forms, it had a difficult time restraining the pagan spirit. Despite clerical protests and papal anathemas, Christmas in the early days preserved many of the worst orgies, debaucheries and indecencies of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia. The clergy itself was whirled into the vortex, instituting a Feast of Fools so that "the folly which is natural to and born with us might exhale . . . once a year...
Spectacles like this undoubtedly led some people to question the purpose of the holiday, and, with the rise of Puritanism, Christmas's very existence was threatened. Regarding the good cheer as "pagan" and "Popish," England's Roundhead Parliament in 1643 abolished the observance of the day. The King protested and mobs attacked those who opened their shops. But Parliament adopted strong measures, and for the next 12 years Christmas as a general English holiday ceased...