The origins of Christmas and the customs and traditions associated with it is something we all would love to know of, since we celebrate it so whole-heartedly. The origin of Christmas was long back in time. All the customs associated with Christmas originated even before the birth of Christ, and an in-depth study reveals that the way we celebrate Christmas today is actually a collection of traditions and practices taken from all over the world and varied cultures and nations.
In Rome, December 25th is marked by the celebration of the Italic god, Saturn and also the rebirth of sun god there. This celebration was before the birth of Christ. The pre-Christian Romans believed that the daylight used to begin to increase December 22nd onwards, this is the time they assumed that the sun god had died.
They believed those three days later, the sun god rose from the dead. He rose from the dead as the venerable, new-born sun. They took this as the reason for the increasing daylight.
This caused the Romans to celebrate with joy. In Rome, sacred priests of Saturn used to carry wreaths of evergreen boughs in a procession.
When the authorized Bible started becoming available to people in England, those people began discovering the pagan roots of Christmas. Later this holiday was outlawed as witchcraft by some in England but near the later half of the 19th Century when other Bible versions appeared the celebration of Christmas was revived. Near the end of the 19th century, when other Bible versions began to come into sight, there was a revival of the celebration of Christmas and now it is celebrated world over. This marked the Christmas origin.
According to some historians the origin of Christmas tree was not only during the Christian Era but long before that. The Christmas tree origin shows that the Egyptians used these Christmas trees that we use today during ceremonials. They used it to celebrate the winter solstice. This is the shortest day of the year, on that day they used to bring green date palms home to symbolize life triumphant over death; this was basically the origin of the Christmas tree.
The Twelve Days of Christmas is an old festival and is celebrated in Christian cultures all over the world. Many people believe that the idea of the twelve days being the length of celebration is mainly based on a series of verses in the Bible. Also the Twelve Days of Christmas origin can be related to the belief that it might have taken 12 days for the wise men to reach Bethlehem after they saw the star. Different churches have differently interpreted the 12 Days of Christmas origin.
Christmas card origin started when people exchanged holiday greetings that were handwritten. First these were exchanged in person then later via post. By 1822, these became very popular in the US.
Long back in the 17th century in Germany, Christmas lights were used by the wealthy only. This was the time before electricity and those Christmas lights were just candles. These candles were just used on trees in those days to illuminate the decoration and ornaments. This period marks the origin of Christmas lights.
According to a legend the origin of the Christmas stocking is related to Santa. After Santa visited a house one Christmas night, as he went up the chimney many gold coins fell out of his pocket. These landed inside the kid’s stockings that had been placed near the fire to dry in the heat.
