Pagan Christmas: The Vegetation, Spirits, and Rituals on the Origins of Yuletide

• Analyzes the symbolism of the various vegetation related to Christmas

• Reveals the shamanic rituals which are on the coronary heart of the Christmas celebration

The day on which many commemorate the delivery of Christ has its origins in pagan rituals that heart on tree worship, agriculture, magic, and social alternate. However Christmas is not any strange folks observance. It’s an evolving feast that over the centuries has absorbed components from cultures everywhere in the world–practices that give vegetation and plant spirits delight of place. In actual fact, the symbolic use of vegetation at Christmas successfully transforms the modern-day front room into a spot of shamanic ritual.

Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ebeling present how the traditional which means of the botanical components of Christmas gives a novel view of the faith that existed in Europe earlier than the introduction of Christianity. The fir tree was initially revered because the sacred World Tree in northern Europe. When the church was unable to drive the tree cult out of individuals’s consciousness, it integrated the fir tree by dedicating it to the Christ youngster. Father Christmas in his red-and-white go well with, who flies by the sky in a sleigh drawn by reindeer, has his mythological roots within the shamanic reindeer-herding tribes of arctic Europe and Siberia. These northern shamans used the hallucinogenic fly agaric mushroom, which is purple and white, to make their soul flights to the opposite world. Apples, which determine closely in Christmas baking, are symbols of the solar god Apollo, so that they discover a pure place at winter solstice celebrations of the return of the solar. In actual fact, the authors contend that the emphasis of Christmas on inexperienced vegetation and the promise of the return of life within the lifeless of winter is simply an adaptation of the pagan winter solstice celebration.