Q&A Forum - January 2009 (best of Elise)

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Q. Dear Elise, I read your book and I was having a debate with a friend about the origins of Christmas and I remembered what you mentioned in your book how December 25th was really a Goddess女神 — a woman treated as divine worship崇拜侍奉 — adoring service holiday, and not the birthdate of Christ. She didn’t believe me and I gave my copy of your book to a different friend. I was wondering if you could go over that again, seeing we are entering into the Christmas Holiday.

I also found your analogy about the three wisemen and male traditions to be interesting as well.

A. Many of our western Christian Holidays were in fact founded as Goddess女神 — a woman treated as divine holidays. The Christmas holiday is an adaptation of the pagan winter solstice rites. Called Yule, it was one of the traditional Celtic fire festivals and marked the return of the light after the longest night of the year. Pagans (peasants, rustic people) in northwestern Europe conducted a yearly celebration, which is remarkably similar to the Christmas we know today. The Christmas Tree is left over from the pagan winter solstice rites. As Europe was evangelized by Christians, the pagan holiday was replaced with a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. Many Biblical scholars believe that Christ was probably born in September, but since there was already a celebration in December, Christmas was substituted for Yule.