Think it depends on how interesting it is I’m might up is that too loud or is that okay with you guys all right well I know we may have a couple more folks trickle in but I want to honor y’all’s time and I did promise uh em Appel that would stop
Sharply at 7 so even though she’s lingering with her check-in process I want to do the right thing and at the right time um so uh let’s begin with a time of prayer Lord thank you so much for all that you have done for us and especially for the gift of Christmas
Help us to uh to consider the richness of the history related to Christmas and help that consideration and Exploration lead us to a deeper experience of Christmas this year we pray this in the name of Emanuel amen amen all right well so come on in come on in so that concludes the
Talk um great to be with you all this evening uh I I uh really just GNA throw a few fun things out uh with an exploration of the history of Christmas this is not exhaustive nothing ever is um and uh and yet there’s a lot of
There’s just so much the thing that I’m not even gonna touch tonight because uh Grant Wacker just spent a whole bunch of time talking about hymns and because we’re preaching on Christmas carols is music so if you care about if that’s why you’re here leave um otherwise we’re gonna dive around um so
Christmas there’s kind of there’s several ways to approach this and probably the there’s two things I want to talk about one is actually the history of what actually happened to the degree that we can know anything that actually happened with Christmas and then the other thing is sort of the
History of how we’ve looked at it which are which are two distinct things and so in terms of what we can know about what actually happened um here are some of the major sources that we have for uh the time period in which Jesus was born that relate to our faith
Um who knows what uh the Pauling letters say about Christmas anyone um anybody got anything from Mark who knows what Mark says distinctively anyone all right you all are not Liars good job because neither one of them say anything all doesn’t mention Christmas wasn’t that was not a theological issue
For Paul um other things were far more important he talked a lot about the crucifixion and the resurrection he did not talk a lot and by not a lot I mean at all about um about Jesus’s birth mark too uh doesn’t mention a Thing Mark
Begins by saying uh this is the story of Jesus Son of God and then launches right into the John the Baptist seen so Jesus arrives in his gospel as a full- grown man we don’t see anything baby likee um John I’m gonna skip Matthew and Luke John what does John say about Christmas
He actually does say something it’s just a little indirect what does he say you the beginning was word word word became flesh that’s the word became flesh is is probably the most Central it’s the Incarnation so all of that prologue from John 1 doesn’t tell us anything about history it tells
Us a ton about theology but nothing about history so the Incarnation critical Central um jus’ Antiquities is a pretty uh big source for someone who wasn’t a Christian talking about things um very Loosely he makes some references about Christianity anybody know what Josephus says about Jesus’s birth great you ought most honest people
Ever nothing is correct so we get very very very very little Matthew and Luke are our two sources primary sources for anything close to being a history on this now why um you know it makes sense when you think about it uh that Paul doesn’t care about Christmas now that’s kind
He’s not like Ebon or Scrooge but he the reason he part of the reason that Paul doesn’t mention is because what Paul’s focus is on is an expectation that Jesus is coming back any old day and so Paul didn’t spent a ton of time trying to dig up historical
Sources he was much more interested in Preparing People to receive Jesus um but as the church kind of grew and developed some issues popped up that made looking back looking at the story of Christmas and some of the history made it something we needed to do so um
The first three of these things listed are are heresies um so adoptionism was basically a heresy that viewed Jesus as being really a human who God adopted so like the you could take the gospel of Mark by itself where Jesus sort of arrives as a person
And then he’s baptized and the voice of God says this is my son the Beloved you could take that as a symbol of adoptionism he’s a man God loves him and says you’re going to be my son now um so it’s a very low view of Jesus’s Divinity
He’s he’s basically a person that gets adopted um dotism is the opposite of that so do in dotism it’s a fancy word meaning seems and so for the docetic they thought Jesus only seemed human he was just he was God and he just seemed human um and so nasis dotism is a part
Of or strand of gnosticism which basically the Gnostic had a really high view of spirit very low view of Flesh and so uh the gnostics really viewed Jesus as um a spirit What mattered about him the spirit and so all of those streams of heresies made Christians say
Hm is there anything we we need to remember and to say about how Jesus came into this world to combat what the adoptionist and what the Dost and the gnostics were saying so those three streams kind of pushed the early uh Christians to wonder more about
Christmas and or you know or more more so the birth of Jesus and then of course probably the biggest thing is we are so curious we want to know Stories We want to know that background so curiosity of course encouraged it now we don’t know what we don’t know who Matthew and Luke
Were as people that it’s a tradition that those books are written by those those people we don’t know anything about their background we have some guesses but we don’t know like their method we don’t know if they Luke talks about sort of writing a history um but his his methodology of
Compiling a history is nothing like a modern historian would be um if if Dr Wacker were to write a book in the style of Luke he would not have been accepted at Duke University um it’s just different style it’s a a whole you know 2,000 years ago before our modern
Discipline um was even known so so um however these two these two different writers had some sources and there’s some that they wrote about that they share and then some parts that are distinctive um you all I I know everyone in this room including uh the nine-year-old has heard sto these the
Account from Matthew and the account from Luke at least annually probably more like every day during Advent um for your entire life so therefore I fully expect you to be able to tell me what is uh distinct in the Matthew’s story what’s distinct in the Luke story and
What do both stories say I’m just kidding about fully expecting you but I thought it’ be fun to leave it blank and see if you could fill in any of the so uh what does Matthew tell that only Matthew tells and Luke doesn’t tell anybody back to d uh back to David
Maybe Luke does the lineage Luke does the lineage but he does it after Matthew does it in chapter one Luke does it in chapter 4 I think is that right um but one of them goes all the way to Abraham right and one of them
Goes to David so is it is is David the Matthew okay so they both they both do have a lineage their lineage is different though what else angs and angels and Shepherds for Matthew Only Angels both shepher shepher shepherds are only in Luke there’s no mention of a Shepherd in Matthew is that
Interesting Matthew um well I’ll get to it in a sec what what else either or or both wise men wise men is only in one of of them Matthew yep star star where Matthew only there is no star in Luke seriously it’s wild yeah yeah wise get the star wise get the
Star man I’m just shattering your Universe up I’m so sorry it gets worse don’t worry um Mary Mary yeah Mary both of them got married and in both versions in both versions versions she is um Let me let me show show some of this some a little bit more um
Matthew really is told through the lens of Joseph if you go through and read it it’s Joseph is center stage with his version in in Luke’s version Mary is center stage and in Luke’s version um I don’t think Joseph gets a line I’m pretty sure Joseph never speaks in Matthew’s version I don’t
Think Mary gets Aline I think just Joseph speaks so really interesting um only the star in Matthew Herod is mentioned he may be mentioned in like the very first part but he doesn’t do anything in Luke um if he’s mentioned it’s only by name in in Matthew he’s
Royal jerk um it’s only in Matthew we hear about the flight to Egypt that is not mentioned in Luke and then the story of Elizabeth and John all that wonderful only Luke tells US Census is only mentioned there and then you can see they both tell they both are adamant
Jesus was born in Bethlehem they’re both adamant Angels were involved they both agree his name was he was named Jesus even though in Matthew the angel says you shall name him Emanuel um that evidently was sort of like a middle Name and then um let’s see what else oh the manger uh the manger only happens in in Loop’s version so when you when you compare them there’s a lot they have in common but clearly they were remembering from different sources now does this mean that Matthew’s wrong and Luke’s
Right or Luke’s wrong Luke’s right I don’t think that’s most helpful way to to see it I prefer to to sort of take it all in and look for the bigger truths that they both point to it’s probably you know in terms of like the history of
It it would be almost impossible to you know say oh well obviously the Egypt Parts made up um because Luke didn’t you know that kind of parsing is probably the least helpful thing we can do but it is interesting to see how each Source pulls in a little bit now that’s a lot
That they tell in those in the bits there but there’s a lot that is not told and so um through the years we have looked to other sources to try to fill some of the things that aren’t told in um now these um these are not necessarily valid sources uh profits are
Great I’m not saying they’re invalid however sometimes what early church folks would do is look to the prophets and kind of pull stuff from it and say therefore this justifies this part and I’ll show you a couple things where that’s kind of things from the prophet have become part of our tradition even
Though they weren’t necessarily historical um there’s a bunch of old um you know written maybe in the 200s typically sometimes much later that are infancy sto iny gospels so they’re not considered like you know Holy Spirit written gospels they probably are more the work of some really imaginative
People and the Proto Gospel of James is one of them should you should definitely read it at some point it’s fascinating that’s where we get the names of Mary’s parents anybody know their names joim and Anna are their names um according to that which is not historical but still
It’s by tradition that’s their names and so the Proto Gospel of James tells uh in about 25 really short chapters it tells a lot of data that’s not in the in the gospel accounts like they claim that that uh Mary had a midwife uh as a part of that they claim that um
The uh well anyway just they did like a a test to validate whether um they had whether she was whether Jesus was conceived in the normal fashion um they did a test as a part of that and then uh it also claims that Not only was it a a virgin pregnancy but it
Was actually a virgin delivery not a C-section yeah so that’s all uh Proto Gospel of James even more detail comes out from the gospel of pseudo Matthew which I think would be a great name for a child and then the last thing there theot tacos which whenever I say that in
Church people get hungry um what that means is God Bearer so Theo God tacos Bearer and what that was a reference to Mary that was super important in the early church um and as the church was wrestling through its theology the church had been worshiping for generations with hymns that sang About
Mary being the theot tacos and so it was really important as we work out our understanding of how Jesus came into this world and his nature as being human and divine um some of those references influence how we held on to things in our understanding Christmas story so
Just a couple quick examples so here is a passage from um Isaiah that has been absorbed in the telling of the story um the Lord has spoken I reared children and brought them up but they have rebelled against me the ox knows its owner and the donkey its manger that
Israel does not know my people don’t understand that those phrases about uh ox and Donkey have clung um we sing songs about Ox oxen and donkeys around Christmas in part because people absorb the story from Isaiah um this is from the gospel of suda Matthew
Um in this one you get an oxan ass bent their knees and worship Jesus so it’s in that remembering of the story and imagining around the story you get those two animals literally entering into the manger scene um as a part of it and so it’s not a
Surprise that we see often an ox and a donkey in our major scenes um more things kind of come together so this is Isaiah chapter 60 multitude of camels uh if you go back and read Matthew Chapter 2 camels are not mentioned there’s no description of how wise men travel
There’s also no description of the number of wise men for a long time it was presumed there were 12 um we have no idea why of course the reason we give threes because there are three gifts but this passage from Isaiah links camels to those that bring the golden Frank and
Then it goes on and says foreigners shall build up your walls Kings shall minister to you Nations shall bring you their wealth with their kings LED in procession well what do you think happens we cling on to some of that language some of that remembering of
From Isaiah and we we get we three kings and so tradition U continue to imagine about those kings we get the names Balthazar melor um Casper which some think are kind uh like one of them might mean King one of them is probably a reference to Daniel’s name um and in Babylonian and
Uh and then I forgot what the other one was but you start to see that in the in the sixth century and then we continue to allegorize well um the venerable bead another great name for a child uh Noah had three three sons and it was thought that each of those three sons
Represented parts of the world and so um as the church has continued to kind of remember the story of the wise men those three sons the allegorization of those Sons uh sort of taken as Gentiles scattered through all out the known world and that’s why even to this day
You’ll often see one of one of them usually has darker hued skin and so that is a s meant to be a symbol of how the whole world through the Gentiles are coming to worship Jesus has nothing to do with like the actual story that we got
But we have told continued to tell it that way and so usually sorry for the grainy picture you get in these scenes in addition to the ox and the ass you get a camel and uh men that have crowns and so and then you know there’s even
More like this this is um this is just another one from from my son pseudo um uh describing a scene as they’re fleeing for uh for Egypt they’re going through the Wilderness and suddenly that you they see a SL a cave and Dragons come out of the cave and then Jesus who’s
Like two stands up and the dragons start to worship Jesus um so disappointed this did not get collected into the Bible um but you see you you know you see that that kind of imagination in the next passage there’s like lions and wild cats that start to worship Jesus so it
Makes me feel better for the ways that we’ve gotten really creative with our manger scenes Through The Years you know there’s all you know we can really see so much kind of coming in and it’s not you know this is Darth Vader probably wasn’t there um and yet and to the
Degree that all of these things sort of represent us you know may not be historically accurate but spiritually there is an inclusivity in that scene um so all that kind of comes together and helps us um see some of the history and some of the history of the history Sarah
But that story discredit theud Matthew gospel no there’s a lot of things that discredit it um that that one is that one was written like it was it kind of took the Proto Proto Gospel of James um and about like five six centuries later in Med mostly in medieval times began to
Just sort of throw more things into it to make it more interesting um so it was probably actually originally written in Latin not in Greek probably 800s I think something like that I’m kind of making that up but I think it might be true so and who knows what they’re
Thinking of when they think dragons um you know may have been a T-Rex so another thing that we really kind of struggle to understand or wonder about is the date right this is something that um I don’t want to spend for Forever on it but lot it’s really quite interesting and
Challenging like so think about it you know you and I every single person in this room has a clock device that’s synced with you know a computer somewhere that’s running absolute perfect time totally foreign concept to our friends who lived 2,000 years ago in fact as you know as Jesus was alive
There were multiple calendar ing ways that weren’t Universal that were at work Jews had a calendar system based on the moon uh the Romans were developing A system that would then be converted in like the 500s to um the ad system that we’ve got now and believe it or not
People would make mistakes so it’s not like they they had a any kind of universal system so um the fact like in terms of the year you know the time frame was developed in the 6th century and when it was developed it had some
Errors in it and so um so for a long time it was just the way it was kind of developed anodina meant year of the Lord and it was meant to be year of the Lord’s birth turns out they were off by a few years so Jesus probably was born
Four years before the year of the Lord um four to six years depending on how you calculate it so there there’s a lot of cluess related to ancient dates that we just have to name up front can I ask a Qui question what is this so 5249 those were original
Dates set for Christmas I’m glad you asked um so the first the first dates we have attached to acknowledging the date of Christmas now these were not in our modern calendar but it’s our conversion of the dates that were referenced are from Clement of Alexandria and he he had
Three those three Poss dates were referenced not definitively but he referenced the equivalent of May the 20th April the 19th and April the 20th as possible dates then he also mentioned that there was a sect of Heretics who had a big kind of baptismal celebration around what’s the equivalent of January
The 6th um and so those early dates were floating around now something that’s um important to um just to know is that there was a theory the complete years Theory what that means is that there’s kind of a um a presumption that uh especially for kind
Of heroic folks that they would uh their lifetimes would be governed in complete years and so what that meant is that if a person died on a certain date um they must have been conceived on the very same date so that their their span of
Life was exact no you know date to date and so interestingly enough the uh a couple of dates that have been thrown around for Jesus’s death for his death were the 25th of March and the four the sixth of April so those two dates because they were
Thought of as maybe being the date of Jesus’s death you do the math if he had been conceived on those dates nine months later would be the birth date which would be either 25th of of uh December or the 6th of January so both of those dates have been kind of
Held on to now of course uh huge factor that can’t be denied is that as Christians were um um coming from Gentiles there were lots of Gentile type celebrations and there absolutely was a huge celebration um the emperor before Constantine was a really in and he was really into the
Unconquered son um which was a huge cult and Constantine worshiped in that in that um cult before he converted if he converted um and so that that that that Cults big celebration was on the 25th of of December is probably not accidental um so in addition to the complete years
Theory you’ve got this um already existent holiday the Roman um date for the winter solstice was not um our more scientifically determined date it was that date 25th so you’ve got that as being presumed to be the um the the winter solstice so all of those things
Led to in the 300s this date being established the 25th being established so that is a history of the history the reality is nobody has any clue when Jesus was really born so sorry hope um so we had to pick a date and you know that one was was there’s some reason for
It being chosen but it is that is not there’s no history there um okay so that’s a that’s an image of some um Med eagal people partying too much um and that’s sort of what happened in uh in you know from kind of this early part as as things were being
Explored date kind of gets set parties feasting long seasons of of partying began to happen and so there was a season in which Christmas sort of be became party time and as the Reformation happened there were a couple couple things that kind of put a kabash
On that w why would you leave for a picture of a vomiting person I’m so confused have fun down there um so uh the Reformation one of the big things that would happen is feast days were often tied to Saints uh in the Reformation saints were not we didn’t
Want to venerate saints that wasn’t in the Bible so let scriptura and so when uh when the church would have these feast days and people would kind of go crazy um the church began to say h the Reformed Church especially H what are we
Doing here um and then ALS it was just a lot of Pagan relics U is a Germanic word that just basically means feast or could be could mean turning um but you know the Ule tide in England was like winter so he basically had party from November
To January and so with all of this uh and the Reformation then you get uh puritanism that uh was was not in favor of partying in general there kind of we kind of had a season in which Chris was poo pooed um and so here’s a little note from
Um the World Encyclopedia of Christmas uh the Puritans after the English Civil War the observance of Christmas was outlawed and so anyone who attended church on the 25th or made mince pies or even poor Plum Pudding was subject to arrest now I can’t guarantee that people were actually turned in jail for that
But just the fact that it was illegal you know tells you something and uh matter uh Puritan you know had this to say uh can can in your conscious can you in your conscious think that our Holy Savior was honored by mad mirth by long eating by hard drinking by lwd Gaming by
Rude rebeling by a mass fit for none but a Saturn or a bakus or the night of a mohamedan Ramadan you cannot think possibly think so um and I won’t keep reading it but it does include hellish Legions later so pretty anti- Christmas or anti- partying um so a lot that kind
Of dampened things um and in England especially Christmas kind of was on the outs um so the uh just there there even in the United States this is about the uh the Antics these were groups of people who would go and like knock on people’s doors if they didn’t give them
Get they do a little show and if you didn’t give them what you wanted they would break your windows or drink all your wine or whatever else um that kind of stuff was sort of like kind of happening a lot and so uh part of what
Happened is there was an effort to sort of reimagine Christmas and um and in so doing um it was it began really this this is like the 1800s um and you’ll see as we look at a few things there’s a lot that helped to reimagine it instead of a festival more
As a family center um event and so uh that’s a picture of Prince Albert he’s out of the can and he uh he had he was uh what’s her name’s husband Victoria um in England and he is from Germany and so he’s kind of credited with bringing some of the
Germanic tradition of the of the Tenon balb Christmas tree to English-speaking countries you can see uh a a firefighters dream real candles on a a cut tree was how it was done um that changed like in the late 1800s began to have some options for electric lights and uh so anyway but he
He brought over some of those Traditions um it you cannot discount the power that Dickens had on Christmas um this story he actually wrote Five Short novelas that are Christmas themed uh but a Christmas pural uh clearly is is at the center of it and um he helped people kind of get
Towards some traditions that were centered in family and um and and generosity was a big part of it too there had been some uh Traditions uh around like the upper classes giving to the lower classes and some of that had fallen away and Dickens really uh used Scrooge to help folks reimagine
That uh then you get to uh to this this f um that piece of art art is uh is something that I use without permission of the artist uh who happens to be in the room I don’t know if you want to identify yourself Bruce but oh Dar I
Just did uh when I sent out the email about the class um Bruce uh now hope I’m just warning you we’re just we’re having real adult talk here sorry we can find her group Fellowship ball fellow I mean I think it’d be all right but love you so
Anyway internet I hope you’re watching um that’s Bruce’s Santa picture so Bruce when I sent out my email Bruce sent that back to me and that’s that’s pretty amazing well done sir well done um so St Nicholas real historical figure we don’t know a ton about him lived in the 4th
Century um by the uh 8th Century there’s a pretty significant cult around him uh and during the Crusades actually his presumably uh his his physical remains were moved to Italy to be away from the heathens um two really big stories for him uh one is that uh he was uh you know
This all Legend no history but all Legend uh he was in an inn and somehow knew that the inkeeper had uh just murdered three young men and uh did what all of us do when we commit murder he pickled them and um and so Nicholas sniffed it
Out and resurrected him hipay so that’s one story that kind of made him Beloved the other one is the story of this um and this I’m actually glad Hope’s not here for this part um so this this uh man had three daughters and they were very very poor and um he had decided
That uh because he was so poor he could couldn’t afford to get them married because he couldn’t give a dowy so he he had made the decision to sell them into prostitution uh and Nicholas got wind of that and uh right when he was about to sell the first daughter Nicholas went
And threw a bag of gold in the window and uh so that saved the first daughter second daughter’s up same thing happens and then third daughter so that tradition of generosity of literally throwing bags of money blessing into someone’s house all of that led to him
Being now you know it’s hard there were not public opinion polls but uh Jerry B bowler says that he was the second most popular Saint in in the you know around 10,000 next only to Mary so huge following his feast day is in December and so Nicholas uh uh because of his
Legacy of generosity there really were true um uh gift giving in his name and he was also the patron s of children so all of that led to him being associated with Christmas time you know relatively close close to it and then in uh in 19th century America there was some similar
You know Ribble celebrating and people wanting it to be more of a family event and so several different things happened uh one of which was a book published the children’s friend which made uh St Nicholas kind of condense to a a Dutch phrase Santa Claus uh and this is one of
The first images of him in from 1821 that began to imagine him uh being tied to reindeer and chimney tops Etc and then of course probably someone in this room could recite the whole Dum thing uh but Clement Clark more presumably around the same time wrote it was a night
Before Christmas went all through the house there is no Santa and my daughter’s not here oh it’s the time sweetheart so um those kind of traditions began to emerge in Santa Claus St Nicholas just sort of took off from the mid 1800s uh he got a lot of assistance probably the biggest
Force of uh some of these more recent chrisan innovations that may or may not have anything to do with Jesus Christ are the department store uh it is a powerful force Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer was not dreamed up by a children’s book writer it was dreamed
Up by a marketing guy who worked for mcgomery Ward department store as a Christmas promotion that’s where Rudolph came from uh Santa uh was huge in department stores they uh and still is I think I don’t never go um but this is a quote from FW wellworth this Christmas
Season is our Harvest Time make it pay I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus said too um but Christmas gets materially uh utilized candy cane you all probably know this story but basically the the uh the theory is that it may have been created by a choir Master to make the
Children who are part of their live nativity be quiet um I like that theory all the stuff about it being like Jesus’s blood etc etc probably not true um those are our first Christmas cards pretty cool uh the one on the left was a private uh a man had them printed by an
Artist had a thousand of them made 1843 the first one that was more industrialized is the the one on the right um and sort of connected to the rise of of it being socially acceptable to to have pre-printed cards and today today we’re at about 1.3 billion maybe 100 more this year if
Sarah and I can get around to it um so just you know kind of neat to see the very first one on the top left now Christmas movies you all I’m sure may have watched one or two um uh I can’t remember what line was said when this
Seemed I’m try to remember can anybody though remember or anybody know what the very first Christmas movie was does anyone know off hand all right well guess what you get to watch it it’s it’s one minute but this is the very first Christmas movie Santa Claus to Christmas stocks check this one
Out see if you can spot the uh the mistake that happens here it’s quite cute e did you see what happened the tragedy the second sock he missed and and the gift falls on the ground it’s great the first blooper um obviously there’s been one or two thousand more since then um
And I won’t do there we go um another huge tradition is around games so I wanted to share with you a couple of really fun ones that you should try to do this year um the first one is hot coules has anybody ever played this one before it’s so much
Fun um what you do is you get on all fours and your friends surround you you you’re blindfolded and people start to hit you and you have to guess who hit you so highly recommend that one for this year again Jesus I Think Jesus made this one up um snap dragon pretty
Awesome too anybody play that one uh I’m pretty sure they do this at UNC in frat houses still um you you get a bowl you put a flammable substance that can be consumed in it and then you put fruit uh in it and you light it so it’s on fire and your
Job is to grab as many of the pieces of fruit out as you can and and eat them evidently as the boy on top is me so that’s a lot of fun Sarah loves that game Alexander tradition um a couple really weird ones from around the world uh John Cano is a
Caribbean tradition um and it picks up on and this is this is a tradition um that that certainly the English and others as well have had of kind of like social inversion so um there were some John canuk Traditions here in the United States there still are actually in the
United States States but it was um kind of a tradition around um the enslavement of folks where those who were enslaved had um around Christmas an opportunity to ask things of those who had power over them and so there was even some traditions of like uh that enslaved
Folks could ask those that have power over them for a gift and they were obligated to give on and and the John can tradition is similar there’s obviously some pretty wild uh costuming that happens with that um but that social inversion is just is just part of
There’s one tradition in in in England of I forget what they called it but basically it was um where school boys would lock out the Headmaster and so they would kind of take over the school and if the head if they could keep they would lock the
Headmaster out until he would say school is cancelled if the Headmaster was able to get in he would beat the snot out of them um and if he wasn’t able to get in then they would stay out of school I mean it’s just the love Christ pouring
Out with so many things it’s pretty amazing isn’t it um so another tradition uh if you are ever have the opportunity to travel to how do you say that oaka Mexico you can go to the night of the radishes where the whole town makes sculptures with radishes uh so those that’s I’m not
Kidding that’s if you look closely that is radish um and so all kinds of amazing artwork for from radishes they’ve expanded to um to Corn sculptures as well fascinating U but I think it’s like the 22nd of December but these Traditions that just sort of emerge and are so fascinating as
We continue to evolve and to imagine um things around Christmas uh everybody of course lives for the loot fish uh this is a Norwegian tradition they uh they cure the the cod with lie like as in the stuff we use for soap and so this wonderful song has been
Written by modern uh modern American Norwegians who it’s to the tune of oh Christmas tree l oh F how fragrant you’re AR so anyway sounds like something Thomas would um so these are some of the sources that um that I found helpful um uh Grant recommended the the um bowler books
That’s for those of you who like Kate bowler that’s her father who’s a a historian in Canada um the origins of Christmas is by Joseph Kelly do you know Joseph Kelly Grant okay um I know we’re good friends me and Joe um just kidding oh know at all but his book is excellent
And uh and really focuses more on kind of like the Christmas stories he he um it’s more about the history of what actually happened they less about Traditions uh and then the biography of Santa Claus is just kind of fun um and then the other gospels there’s there’s
Plenty of of uh sources for that but that’s just one that um Bart Aon back from UNC help put together it’s got several those older texts that didn’t make the cut into the Bible as a part of it but it includes both of the ones that I referenced tonight
Um okay I kind of flew through that um any any like questions comments any Traditions that you’ve got that you would like to share checkie in the story of the crown they had Prince Albert was worried about the fire hazard and he eventually hung the Christmas tree upside down so the
Candles were lit up but there weren’t branches falling on though I did not know that awesome any idea how mlet toe fits into all this mistletoe and point is yeah they uh mistletoe was actually used um uh to host a nativity scene and then and this is in England and then during the
Sort of puritanical Revolution they had to hide the uh the that the scene and so then there would be the tradition of kissing originally was with the crush team underneath there was some traditions that you would every time you did it you’d have to pluck a berry and
Then when the berries were all gone you could stop kissing underne so great question and poetas are um come from Mexico it’s a tradition yeah the they were brought from the farmers in San Diego who knew Johnny Carson and also knew Jerry Ford and he said can I
Bring a few of these flowers to decorate your scent to Johnny Carson he said sure bring them on down well everybody loved them he said the same thing to Jerry for can I decorate the White House he said sure that was a marketing genius wow yeah there’s 3,000 varieties of queenas today it
Worked great well the Methodist Church was founded on Christmas Eve 1784 now how come these guys aren’t home with their families because Christmas needs means nothing to at all in fact it’s a time of rry you want to discard it stay away yeah the uh there was a tradition really of watch
Services the methodists helped to start it was for that exact purpose uh you know we don’t want to get near any of the of the partying so we’ll have a watch service so we can hang out with holy people instead of partying I might have missed something
When I was walking hope down but what about what about this star I I thought there was some significance like historical significance with the bright star in the sky and that helped with the date um I can’t answer any of the history on that I did not look that up great question anybody
Know the the Magi were astrologers and worshiped the star but that I’ve only heard that through passing not through any legitimate study I’ve also heard that on that note that they saw that they would have had to see the star long before Jesus was actually born so that
They saw his sign come in the sky and then they traveled to him was the way yeah I I heard a talk by someone was and uh yeah it was very much long L it was astrology but I think also the Jews did not practice astrology very much and
So it would not have been something it was something only the foreign cultures would have been aware of the Methodist men had a several years ago had explained it and he said that it was in Chinese history it’s all written down it was a comet that they and it disappeared
While they were going and then when they got to to Jerusalem it popped back up so I don’t know I believe it the presumption is they were astrologers from Persia but and you know when you when you see this uh some Matthew in Matthew 2 when they
Arrive it says they ared the house it’s it’s not a cave it’s not an inn it’s at a house and it doesn’t call him a baby it calls him a child so presumably the star may have risen when he was either conceived or born and they made their
Way and then of course when Herod calls for the killing of all the kids he says kill those that are two and under um so presumably it took them quite a while but I don’t know the the history of the star I believe what Chucky he and and what planet
UNC has a very elaborate program about this I haven’t seen it for 10 years so but that’s was 10 years ago it was a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn Leo big de PLS together Leo that’s why nobody saw it because nobody was pay attention PL least and they thought you said
I believe it Well it Well could have been right that’s part of the challenges I mean even to the year we don’t know for sure what year so we you know you can look back at the astrological records and try to date it all through when there was an astronomical event
That could have drawn attention that’s one of the ways we could try to date it so yeah the one thing you had Josephus I think the one of things from Josephus if my understanding is right is that which doesn’t confirm but it sort of corroborates was in heral was like crazy
Like even all his contemporaries like he had his own children killed like like so things like let’s go kill all the babies and be like oh it’s another Tuesday for herry because doing all kinds of crazy stuff so yeah that one seems historically very possible which is just
So terrible but yeah you’re totally right totally right well you all have been awesome thank you for hanging out um we’re we’ve got a whole bunch of these kinds of things scheduled through the spring so I hope to get to see some of y’all through the spring and uh let us
Pray Lord thank you for sending your son help us to follow amen amen ho ho ho did I did it in email tell us it’s what Satan used to say in medieval PL when he came on the screen w Satan Santa Theory I’m telling you there’s something to it and on that
Note we ended the stream I love it it was good
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