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Christmas traditions include a variety of customs, religious practices, rituals, and folklore associated with the celebration of Christmas. Many of these traditions vary by country or region, while others are practiced virtually identically worldwide. Traditions associated with the Christmas holiday are diverse in their origins and nature, with ...
Worship of heavenly bodies. The worship of heavenly bodies is the veneration of stars (individually or together as the night sky), the planets, or other astronomical objects as deities, or the association of deities with heavenly bodies. In anthropological literature these systems of practice may be referred to as astral cults.
Christmas tree decorated with lights, stars, and glass balls Glade jul by Viggo Johansen (1891) Typical North American family decorating Christmas tree (c. 1970s). A Christmas tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen conifer, such as a spruce, pine or fir, or an artificial tree of similar appearance, associated with the celebration of Christmas.
Modern paganism in the United States is represented by widely different movements and organizations. The largest modern pagan (also known as neo-pagan) religious movement is Wicca, followed by Neodruidism. Both of these religions or spiritual paths were introduced during the 1950s and 1960s from Great Britain. Germanic Neopaganism (also known as Heathenry) and Kemetism appeared in the US in ...
Christmas lights (also known as fairy lights, festive lights or string lights) are lights often used for decoration in celebration of Christmas, often on display throughout the Christmas season including Advent and Christmastide. The custom goes back to when Christmas trees were decorated with candles, which symbolized Christ being the light of ...
The English word Christmas is a shortened form of 'Christ's Mass'. [3] The word is recorded as Crīstesmæsse in 1038 and Cristes-messe in 1131. [4] Crīst (genitive Crīstes) is from the Greek Χριστός (Khrīstos, 'Christ'), a translation of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Māšîaḥ, 'Messiah'), meaning 'anointed'; [5] [6] and mæsse is from the Latin missa, the celebration of the ...
A similar custom was observed in north Wales [63] and in Brittany. [65] James Frazer suggests this may come from "an older custom of actually burning them" (i.e. human sacrifice) or it may have always been symbolic. [66] Divination has likely been a part of the festival since ancient times, [30] and it has survived in some rural areas. [67]
Heathenry is a modern Pagan new religious movement that has been active in the United States since at least the early 1970s. Although the term "Heathenry" is often employed to cover the entire religious movement, different Heathen groups within the United States often prefer the term "Ásatrú" or "Odinism" as self-designations.