this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
182 points (94.6% liked)
Political Memes
5614 readers
1496 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The tree thing has nothing to do with Christianity.
It's just another pre-existing tradition (from the Roman Mithras-cult), that was co-opted to ease people's adoption of the new religion.
The Mithras cult did not have any particular attachment to trees, you are probably confusing it with Saturnalia. But even then people did not bring a single solitary tree in, Saturnalia was celebrated by decorating rooms with many evergreen plants and branches as was common in a lot of winter solstice celebrations. The act of bringing in a single evergreen tree and decorating it came much much later, medieval times.
There's not much point in arguing over who started using evergreens in Winter solstice parties.
I mean I'd be very interested in knowing the true origins of solstice parties, as I strongly suspect they predate homo sapiens. Definitely predate writing, by a lot.
The Mithras cult gets far too much credit for these things. We know very little about them. Almost everything you've heard about them was made up.
The modern Christmas tree tradition goes back a few hundred years to central Europe.
Same with the Easter bunny.
I thought it was the Norse thing. But that might have been the stockings