Origin of the Holiday Season

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, Winter Solstice, St Nicholas Day and even Thanksgiving. Would you believe that each of these holidays are one in the same? This is the story of where the holiday season came from and why thanks to Madison Avenue it has become so important. Lets start with two annual events that have happened each year since civilization began. One is the annual final harvest of the year when the last of the crops are plucked from the plants they grow on before winter frost sets in. It is during the final harvest when agricultural communities would know how much food they had to ration through the winter months. The other event is Winter Solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year. The days after Winter Solstice gradually begin to get longer until Summer Solstice where the day is at it's longest and the night it's shortest. The significance of the days getting shorter happening at the same time as the cold of winter was not lost on our ancestors. Many of them feared that one year the days would continue to get shorter until the sun was gone forever and the entire world would freeze for good.

Out ancestors would cheer themselves up by creating an annual feasts which would take place just after they year's final harvest. This was when they knew how much food they had grown and how much they would have until once again they could grow food in the spring. They also knew how much cold be spared for a feast and they knew how much of their livestock they could feed during the winter. The livestock they could not feed were killed off and ended up being eaten during the feast. These feasts were not just a celebration of a bountiful harvest but the farmers way of saying he trusted that spring and summer would return again as he could afford to eat large amounts of his winter stock. During the medieval period the new world religion, Christianity, liked to talk about how the end of the world was just around the corner. This revived the fear that the summer may never return. The harvest feast was moved to the day after Winter Solstice, so just in case the sun did not reverse itself then the feast would be cancelled and the food could be rationed out for an extra month. Many cultures already had their feasts held later during winter festivals. These festivals were joyous celebrations because the farmers had proof that the days were in fact getting longer and summer was making it's return. The Catholic Church decreed that the Winter Solstice would be the first day of the new year. They also decreed that December marked the birth of Jesus Christ and that the Winter Solstice was transformed into the day of the Christ Mass. They had hoped that by altering the Winter Solstice into a Christian holiday they could both draw attention back to Jesus and away from the ancient pagan traditions, and that they could alleviate all fears that there would be no solstice and the days would continue to get shorter. But the Catholics were pretty bad at keeping a calender prior to the invention of the leap year, and not realizing that a year was not 365 days long but 364 and 18 hours long the date of the Winter Solstice gradually drifted away from January 1st. When the mistake was finally discovered and corrected the Winter Solstice ended up on December 21st, Christmas on December 25th, and January 1st, a.k.a. New Years Day, taking place ten days after the solstice.

The Christians happily adopted Jesus' birthday as the reason for the winter festival and aside from the few hours devoted to the Christ Mass the celebrations continued as usual. They even became so popular that by the 12th Century the festival was expanded to twelve days. This is the meaning behind the song "12 Days of Christmas" as the "true love" mentioned in the song is contributing food, decorations and entertainment to the feast. Meanwhile another December holiday was getting attention. December was also the month of the death and possible birthday of Nicholas of Myra who many called Saint Nicholas. An annual celebration called St Nicholas Day was held every year since his death. Nicholas had become so popular that he began rivaling Jesus. Nicholas was known for handing out gifts to the poor and needy, which in turn lead to the tradition of giving gifts in honor of St Nicholas on his day. In Germany children were told that if they left a shoe full of hay by the fireplace then the spirit of St. Nicholas would enter the house. Giving the hay to his horse he would then repay the child by leaving sweets or a small toy in the shoe as a gift. Admiration for St. Nicholas did not last for long. Martin Luther was against the Catholic system of declaring historical Christians as Saints. At the time Catholics were encouraged to pray to the Saints which Luther saw as violating the first commandment. When he began the first Protestant religion, Lutheranism, he declared that there would be no more honoring men as Saints. As Germany became Protestant children wanted a substitution for St Nicholas Day. Martin Luther suggested that instead of the spirit of St Nicholas on his day that on Christmas eve that the spirit of the new born Jesus could bring the children gifts. The Christ Child, called Cristkindle in German, would fly through the air in his magic crib bringing sweets and small toys to reward good girls and boys. As other countries became Protestant they also replaced St Nicholas with various other spirits. In England they simply gave Nicholas the new name Father Christmas who looked and acted exactly the same as St Nicholas.

After the English Civil War of 1651 the dictator Oliver Cromwell gave power to the religious group known as the Puritans. The Puritans hated the Christmas festival seeing it as a Catholic invention and that the celebration only encouraged sin. Christmas was banned and riots broke out by those who refused to give up their celebrations. Eventually a sort of compromise was reached where the celebration was removed from Christmas and instead it was turned into a sedate holiday spent at church honoring the birth of Christ. Twenty years prior to the Civil War a group of Puritans left England to form a colony in America. There under their own rule they did away with the Christmas feast replacing it with the feast of Thanksgiving which took place shortly after the fall harvest. The Puritan colonists, who would later be known as The Pilgrims, were among the first English settlers in America eventually forming the original 13 colonies. The non-Puritan colonists brought over the tradition of Christmas, but much as in England it was tamed to just a religious observance with a few decorations. into In 1776 the colonies revolted against England and after the Revolutionary war gained independence. The new United States of America would eventually transform Christmas into something new. The Dutch had colonies in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York which had been taken over by the England by the late 1600's. The Dutch settlers were still living in America after the revolution and still celebrated St Nicholas Day. Americans wanted nothing to do with England after the revolution and decided to do away with the English created Father Christmas replacing it with the Dutch version of Father Christmas which was actually Saint Nicholas but was pronounced Sinterklaas ( Sinter being Dutch for Saint and Claus being Dutch for Nicholas ). While some of the Americans were now calling Father Christmas the new name Sinterklaas, others began calling him by the proper Saint Nicholas. German immigrants brought over the Cristkindle which Americans assumed was pronounced Chris Cringle which eventually became adopted as an alias for Saint Nicholas.

By the end of the 1800s, Americans abandoned the idea of a baby Jesus or a saint delivering gifts and instead transformed SInterklass into an elf who came from the north bringing toys for the children. Some more adjustments to the legend came from the Mexicans who pronounced Saint as Santa and eventually in California Sinterklass was pronounced Santa Claus. And since Hollywood was in California it was that form of pronunciation that swept the country once sound films were invented. Toy manufacturers began to see the value in Santa Claus as a way to get parents to buy their kids toys, as did other companies see Christmas as a new way to get people to buy their goods as gifts. The advertising agencies of Madison Avenue began heavily promoting Christmas and Santa Clause, who had evolved from an elf to a normal sized man who had a team of elves working for him at the North Pole. Eventually Madison Avenue realized that the Jewish were not celebrating the Christmas holiday and began to take a close look at the closest Jewish holiday to Christmas called Hanukkah. Hanukkah was an eight day observance celebrating a small miracle from the second century B.C. where an oil lamp with very little fuel managed to stay lit for eight days. Already by the 1900's Jews had begun to give out gifts to their children during Hanukkah inspired by the Christmas customs. Madison Avenue deliberately changed Hanukkah into the Jewish version of Christmas. More recently Kwanzaa, a modern holiday created in the 1960's to celebrate African Heritage, has been the target of Madison Avenue in an attempt to bastardize it the way they have with Christmas and Hanukkah as yet another gift giving holiday.

It is almost like playing the game six degrees of Kevin Bacon, but here is how all seven holidays are connected. Our ancient ancestors created an annual winter feast that originally began in the fall to celebrate a bountiful harvest but then moved up a month to the Winter Solstice where both became one in the same. Christians turned the holiday into Christ Mass which was suppose to be the celebration of Jesus' birthday but kept all the traditions of the prior winter/harvest festivals. Meanwhile problems with the Roman calendar caused the winter Solstice to move off of January 1st and over to December 25. The Catholic Church caught the mistake and moved the Christ Mass to the 25, not much of a problem as the festival was originally a 12 day event. More problems with the calender allowed the Winter Solstice to drift to the 21st of December before the problem was caught again and the Roman Calender was changed to include a leap year to prevent further drift. Protestants took a separate holiday called St Nicholas Day and began adopting it's customs into Christmas by creating Santa Claus. Meanwhile other Protestants moved the winter feast away from Christmas and back to harvest time calling it Thanksgiving. As civilization moved away from farms into modern cities the idea of a 12 day festival was no longer practical for workers and Christmas became a single day celebration on the 25th. Modern businesses realized they could make a lot of money by promoting the exchanging of gifts and Christmas became a commercial holiday. Realizing that Jews did not celebrate Christmas a move was made to transform Hanukkah into the Jewish Christmas adopting many of it's customs. Currently attempts are being made to turn Kwanzaa into an African American version of Christmas. This is the origin of the Holiday season where we as a civilization spend the most money mostly buying gifts for each other. This is the time of year when stores make most of their yearly profits. While our ancestors judged prosperity by how bountiful their harvest was, today we judge our prosperity by how well the economy is doing based on how much we are able to spend for the Holidays.