Christmas trees aren't a Christian symbol. They were a pagan symbol, appropriated by Christians and applied to a Christian holiday, trying to rebrand the pre-existing pagan tradition.
Similarly, cherubs aren't a Christian symbol. They were pre-existing figures in ancient Roman art, that pre-date Christianity. Their widespread use in Christian art and iconography are just an appropriation.
Just like how images of crucifixion aren't Christian but are appropriated from pre-existing images of Dionysus, who was part of a trinity and did miracles associated with wine. Christianity isn't actually Christian. . . .
Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green
in reply to Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green • • •Dave Griffiths
in reply to Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green • • •I think as well most of the ancient Roman and Greek practices like this are considered to come from unknown prior cultures.
It would be amazing to go back to the bronze age and see how much of this sort of stuff was recognisable.
draco
in reply to Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green • • •actually, the roots of the Christmas tree are far more recent than historic pagan practice. Here's an explainer by a scholar whose opinion seems pretty solid: youtube.com/watch?v=m41KXS-LWs…
That said, most of the modern pagan holiday calendar is somewhat … recent, especially when it comes to traditions that draw from Northern European cultures.
While I personally celebrate the Winter Solstice, it's also not my "substitute for Christmas".
- YouTube
www.youtube.comCharles ☭ :trans: is a Green
in reply to draco • • •@draco
My (possibly garbled) point is that the tree is a symbol of a religious holiday and saying it's "not Christian" is absurd.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green • •@Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green to be fair, there are no traces of Christmas trees before the 1500, centuries past any survival of paganism in the German speaking areas where the Christmas tree started, and there are no sources for customs that are significantly close to Christmas trees in the European pagan traditions that we know of (other than the fact that of course people would decorate their environment with whatever was seasonally available, and what was seasonably available wasn't *that* different between the Roman era and the Middle Ages (things started to change later, but slowly))
there are more details on talesoftimesforgotten.com/2018…
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green likes this.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green • •@Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green I'm also not sure about the relationship between the crucifixion and Dionysus: he was related with trees, but that feels a bit of a stretch.
As for being related to wine, he was indeed the one who discovered it, but that part would have more parallels with Noah rather than Jesus, and those stories may have influenced each other, or they may have developed independently.
As for the trinity, I see on wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aventine…) that the term is a modern one; of course it's a parallel with other triads, known in Antiquity, that involved different gods. But the concept of a Triad is quite different from that of the Trinity: the former is made of three quite distinct gods, while the latter is very much “it's complicated”. The concept of the Trinity did however develop in an Hellenistic culture, and may have been influenced by the importance of the number three in that tradition.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • •@Charles ☭ :trans: is a Green There is a depiction of Jesus that is pretty much taken from pagan artwork, and that is the Good Shepherd, extremely common (much more than the crucifixion) in early Christian contexts, taken basically from Hermes Kriophoros.
I think that the context is different, with the Kriophoros being related to the sacrifice of a sheep, rather than to a parable about somebody who saves sheep from the wolves, but the images are pretty much the same (to the point where there are multiple examples where we have no idea which one of the two the artwork was supposed to represent.
On the other hand, it feels quite fair to me that somebody who had converted to a new religion would be taking artwork tropes from their own culture and adapt them, especially in the context of a pagan culture where syncretism was the norm, and vaguely similar deities from different cultures were routinely associated with each other.