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The council responded to the criticism by stating that Christmas-related words and symbols were prominent in its publicity material: "there was a banner saying Merry Christmas across the front of the council house, Christmas lights, Christmas trees in the main civil squares, regular carol-singing sessions by school choirs, and the Lord Mayor ...
Mōdraniht or Modranicht (pronounced [ˈmoːdrɑniçt]; Old English for "Night of the Mothers" or "Mothers' Night") was an event held at what is now Christmas Eve by Anglo-Saxon pagans. The event is solely attested by the medieval English historian Bede in his eighth-century Latin work De temporum ratione. It has been suggested that sacrifices ...
Significantly, for Asterius the Christian feast was explicitly an entry from darkness into light, and although no conscious solar nature could have been expressed, it is certainly the renewed light at midwinter that was celebrated among Roman pagans, officially from the time of Aurelian, as the "festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun".
Christmas is a blended event that mixes traditions from pagan winter festivals, the Christian commemoration of the birth of Christ, and the legend of Santa Claus.
The persecution of pagans under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign as co-emperor in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated the ban of Constantine the Great on animal sacrifices, prohibited haruspicy on animal sacrifice, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce anti-pagan laws, broke up some pagan ...
[227] [228] Celebrating Christmas is banned in the Jehovah's Witnesses, as the Governing Body believes that Christmas is originally pagan and again that it is without basis in Scripture. [229] Christmas celebrations have also been prohibited by atheist states such as the Soviet Union [ 230 ] and more recently majority Muslim states such as ...
[146] [147] Christmas celebrations ceased in 1928 after a radio broadcast and Golden Age articles on their pagan origins. [ 148 ] In 1929, Rutherford announced that the vindication of God's name—which would ultimately occur when millions of unbelievers were destroyed at Armageddon—was the primary doctrine of Christianity and more important ...
According to Atlas Obscura, also on Christmas Eve, some families believe in appeasing the nisser—barn-dwelling house elves that are said to help residents survive tough winters—and many ...