The Importantification of Christmas

It's not that serious.

Have you ever noticed that holiday traditions are almost never something that was started on a whim in 1847 by a guy named Pete, who did it simply because he thought farts were funny?

With every holiday, the most important traditions are all seemingly based in something very solemn or sacred, which arose ages and ages hence. So many are supposed “ancient pagan rites” or “pre-Christian celebrations,” all from a time (conveniently) before written history. Even when there is recorded history of the origins of these traditions, rumors persist of secret, hidden meanings and cover-ups.

Have you stopped to consider that maybe all of this importantification of our holiday traditions is, in fact, total bullshit?

I know, I know: this is rich coming from me. But I started this blog to dive not only into factual history, but also social history: the legends we tell ourselves about our past are often far more fascinating than the cold, hard truth – and often, more telling about who we are as weird little beings.

But to ignore our penchant for overly-legitimizing our celebrations would be ignoring our fundamental weirdness. And that, I can not do.

While we have always embellished history and used tenuous factual connections to try to make our own lives seem grander than they are, this odd hobby really took off in game-changing ways beginning in the 19th century. It became quite fashionable – and profitable – to “discover” hidden history, from sunken land masses to ancient rites and religions. The authors, researchers and “historians” participating in this trend would take a nugget of fact and then use it to make many wild assumptions and shaky connections, write it up into a book and publish it posthaste. They often made a tidy sum doing so, but unfortunately, also made a lot of fake “facts.”

Among these “scholars” was Jakob Grimm – yes, that Grimm. Ol’ Jakey G. was obsessed with German folklore. He believed that by collecting and compiling stories from the mouths of common people, he could uncover the remains of ancient religions. Because he was certain that all of the folk stories he heard were simply diffused allegory, just waiting to unveil ancient Germanic cults and religions.

Do you see the many problems with that? He presupposed that these stories were ones handed down to the peasants from the (upper) religious class to be told and re-told more or less intact. He assumed that the lower classes were entirely incapable of making up stories to tell around the hearth or of embellishing and revising them to be more entertaining; the stories in his time were surely just carbon copies of stories told centuries prior. If he heard a story more than once in two separate places, he would note it as truth, sometimes adding to the still-standing lore of Germanic gods and goddesses.

He was just one of many crackpots who was stating as fact tons of supposed pre-Christian history, based largely on nothing. Their bad scholarship generally began with finding a single text or folktale that supported their preconceived notion. They were then doing absolutely nothing to verify or question the source – which was often someone doing the same damn thing. And future “researchers” would use the new statement of “fact” to do the same damn thing again; a single attestation could turn into a domino effect of misinformation. They were all frequently making logical leaps that would’ve flunked any of us, but which made them longstanding experts in the fields of folklore, myth and ancient religion. (It’s good, being a wealthy white man.)

But were they maliciously misinforming others? Probably not in a twisting-his-mustache-villain way. I imagine they were thrilled by the possibility of discovery and drawn in by the very human lure of connection.

The notion that there is a thread connecting our Christmas celebrations to generations tracing back to the earliest humans is a beautiful one, a tantalizing one. It can be fun to imagine that beneath our tinsel-covered holiday traditions lies a secret world, a hidden history just waiting to be unearthed. And when you get your hands on a little nugget of that secret magic, it can feel thrilling and even powerful. It’s the kind of thing that kickstarts a very weird Substack.

But that enjoyment was not their only motivation, unfortunately. They also wanted to document a history wherein their ancestors were upright, elegant. They wanted to imagine them mirroring the divine rather than getting drunk and jolly. They were looking for ways to explain away misrule as a stage production of ancient customs, an attempt (by the upper classes) to enact the freedom, generosity and equality that the gods wished for us here on earth (I’m lookin’ at you, Saturnalia). Whereas peasants would always show their boorish natures given the chance, the legitimate, stately predecessors of these guys were surely above all that! It was gods and goddesses, ancient tradition and unbroken bonds! Never just drunken folks being silly during the long, cold nights of winter, nosiree!

But across cultures and time, our celebrations surrounding Yule have – as best we can tell – always carried mirth and mischief, jollity and jest, generally with an undercurrent of monsters, magic and (light-hearted) terror.

Importantification of these traditions often essentially erases any hint that all of these people were doing what they were doing for fun. And, forgive me, but I am deeply suspicious of that. Aside from classist implications, it is also effectively an argument that people have always craved solemn, reserved, gentlemanly religious practice in their daily lives as opposed to community connection, festivity and joy. I think the two can go hand-in-hand for people of all social classes, thankyouverymuch. From the history that we have pieced together, it seems that even the most sacred rituals were generally followed by feasting and heavy drink, where no doubt, folk stories were told – and reshaped to thrill the captive audience.

And we know that some of the traditions we have were pure importantified invention because we’re still doing it. Candy canes are shaped like J for Jesus, no wait, they’re shepherd’s crooks! We hang pickle ornaments because Saint Nicholas revived children who were pickled in a barrel, no wait, because a soldier survived eating pickles! Tinsel is just spiderwebs from Jesus! We want to retcon silly habits and frivolous fun into something grander because the idea that we’re just little magpies who like shiny objects is too much of a burden to bear.

Holiday traditions can be meaningful (and enjoyable!) to us without somehow being a link in a chain connecting us to our ancient ancestors. Holiday traditions don’t need to predate recorded history to be significant, powerful and important. They certainly don’t have to be serious or inherently divine in nature to matter, either.

(And in terms of social history, “pre-Christian” is honestly not all that impressive; there are trees that are pre-Christian, okay?)