Frosty Returns

"Don't worry Trump knows about the bad guys he's hiring...he's hiring them to trap them."

People often say the Christmas tree tradition is rooted in paganism. And many cynics look at Christmas traditions and say what does this have to do with Jesus/Christianity? This is one of those bullshit internet factoids that people make up because they want to be clickbaity and inflammatory. For most cultural things we don't actually know how they started or why because rarely is there ever a defacto I invented this...so let's all do this moment. Things just sort of catch on and by the time they become tradition it's origins are lost if they were ever known at all. And in most cases they probably don't have just one origin because sometimes a simple idea is had by many people. There are plenty of claims of "the first instance or the first image or the first cultural mention...but these are all just the first known instances and can't be treated as actual origins.

So what some people do is they look into the past as far as they can for a practice that resembles the one in question and then just blindly claim it as an origin. They do it for Christmas traditions, halloween traditions, they do it for inventions and all kinds of crap and it always pisses me off. It's like the people who claim China invented pizza because at one time they put some sort of fermented milk product on a piece of bread so that means Pizza is not actually Italian. They do the same with Christmas trees. At some point there were other beliefs that involved bringing trees inside but these were not the origin of the Christmas tree tradition.

I don't even really necessarily believe the Lutheran origin of the Christmas tree either, but that story could be a major reason why the practice did catch on in Christianity at the very least. The point is at some point Christians started decorating trees to celebrate Christmas and we liked doing it so much we kept doing it.

Still the history we do know of it is interesting, like did you know that the tree used to be in church rather than in the home. People would go to church Christmas morning and the Christmas tree would be there, and the gifts would be on the tree rather than under it. And after the service gifts would be passed out. Gifts would be simpler back then so it was things like a scarf wrapped around the tree or some simple little wooden toys...it wasn't until presents started being wrapped and placed under the tree that ornaments became a thing...which is why things like tin soldiers, nutcrackers are common Christmas ornaments even today...because they were replacing the actual gifts which used to hang on the tree. And the gifts themselves are because of the gifts that were brought to Jesus when he was born and the Christian edict to treat even the least of people the way you would treat Christ. When the tree tradition was first started in North America it was mostly the church giving gifts to people in the community who needed them because they were still settlers and often had very little.

I'm just guessing about this part of it but I'm guessing tree's being in the home rather than in church was the start of wrapping presents...because now you needed a new way to hide the surprise for Christmas morning since the gifts would be in your home now rather than in the church. Which would then leave the tree looking bare so they started to decorate it with ornaments.

It's crazy to me that they actually used to light trees with candles.

And it's bizarre seeing advertisements for switching from candles to electric lights.

For those who don't know Canada Post workers are on strike and it is in fact the Christmas season. Also for anyone who doesn't live in shit ass Ontario all liquor sales are run through the government meaning you can't buy it anywhere but at a government run liquor store...well in the middle of summer those workers went on strike as well. In both cases the most common take was "they shouldn't be allowed to go on strike."