3 fun facts that you didn’t know about Christmas
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This special date is coming and we bring you three fun facts to surprise everyone at Christmas dinner
December is a month of joy and celebration. Year after year we celebrate in different ways depending on our customs and traditions. What many of us have in common, though, is that it is a time to meet with family and friends to end the year.
Leer en español: 3 datos curiosos que no sabías a cerca de la navidad
But, have you ever wondered why we celebrate and how we celebrate it? What is the origin of the traditions that now seem so natural to us? Why do we decorate how we do it? We bring you some curious facts here to surprise everyone at your Christmas dinner and so you know a little more about the origin of these festivities.
The Christmas tree is a pagan custom
That's right; this custom that we usually associate with Christmas is not of Christian origin. The first Christians, in fact, criticized it strongly for being adoration to a worthless object and not to the true God. According to the National Geographic magazine, decorating a tree for these times was a pagan custom. The Babylonians were the ones who put gifts under the tree.
The Romans illuminated the streets and hung laurels in the frames of the doors during the winter festivals. The Celts adorned an oak tree with fruit and candles. So this tradition was anything but Christian. Then, Christianity adopted and transformed this custom of tree worship IGNORE INTO a tradition of worship of Christ.
Read also: To dance! Music to listen in December that are not Christmas carols
Red and green the colors of Christmas
According to the BBC, it has always been thought that we associate these two colors with Christmas because of a Victorian tradition. And it is from that time, in fact, that this association can be traced. However, Spike Bocklow, of the Hamilton Kerr Institute of the University of Cambridge, says that this tradition has an even more remote origin.
According to Bocklow, the colors green and red would be in the minds of the Victorians because those were the colors that decorated the panels of the high choirs in the structures of the altars during the Middle Ages. These two colors are the ones that survived the most through time, and that is the reason why Victorians associated them with Christianity and Christmas. A color palette that was simply more practical now became the center of this era, which we adorned with mistletoe and Christmas Eve flowers.
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A Christmas dinner around the world
Although we usually think of Christmas dinner as something generic, it is not like that in every country in the world. The films usually feed this general idea of the Christmas dinner, since most of the films we see are American. But the truth is that not all families celebrate Christmas with a turkey or a pig at their table. According to the website Travesías, the Christmas dishes can radically change around the world.
In England, for example, although they also celebrate with the traditional turkey with sweet fruit sauces, what changes is the dessert, since it is customary to eat 'mince pies' (small cakes of nuts, liquor, and spices). In Italy, depending on the region, the protagonist of the Christmas dinner is the sea: fish salad, pasta with tuna, clams and other seafood. Also, the typical Christmas bread is essential in the holiday cuisine of this country. How you celebrate it in your country, how you decorate and celebrate in your family?
LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Rodríguez Pabón
Translated from: '3 datos curiosos que no sabías a cerca de la navidad'
