Pagan holiday background question?

Question

My husband was raised as a Jehovah's witness, and all through his childhood he never celebrated Christmas because it was originally a Pagan holiday, so they just avoided it altogethr.
My mother-in-law told me that during the Pagan winter celebrations, men would beat their wives and have drunken sex with other men to celebrate. Is that true?
That sounds like a pretty crappy party to me.

Answer 1

Well, OK, your mother-in-law is only half-right.

The holiday she's referring to is the ancient Roman Saturnalia, which has been denounced as a drunken rape-and-sodomy-fest since the rise of Christiandom to basically make ancient Roman Christians feel better about themselves for converting -- think of it like how many Amerikan evangelical Christiand insist Wiccan rituals involve adults having sex in front of children (an outright lie -- though this is a cross-over from accusations about Aliestair Crowley, who was no role-model in his personal life).

Saturnalia was observed around December 17th, and at one time, extended to December 24th, making it a seven-days-long festival. The point was to relax and honour the God Saturn, the Roman equivalent of the Greek God Kronos, the God of Time. Pagan Romans, both citizens and slaves, would lay aside almost all rules of formality to feast, drink, exchange gifts, and yes, there were orgies and public nudity -- ancient Rome was pretty decadent. Was there gay sex? Sure, like I said, this is ancient Rome we're talking about -- most of it was probably consensual. Was there wife-beating and raping of women? Probably, but it wasn't the reason to have the festival, and you have to remember that women were not allowed to be Roman citizens -- but even so, Pagan Roman women were treated a lot better by their husbands and society than many Southern Baptist women are treated by *their* husbands and society -- at one time, ancient Jews and Christians felt it perfectly OK to stone children to death for talking back (and yes, that's even in the Bible), nowadays, even Christians who think it's OK to beat kids draw the line at killing them. So, yes, just because one or two or even twenty Roman women were given especially harsh beatings during this time does not mean it was a common occurance, or even accepted by most Roman citizens.

There were other ancient Roman holidays that became associated with Christmas. Sol Invictus honoured the Sun God, Sol (whose name is the root of words like "solar"), as well as other Sun Gods not of Roman origin. This was honoured on the then-date of the winter solstice, which was December 25th. These celebrations were a lot less debauche, as (especially when Saturnalia was a week-long festival), it marked a return to polite society with the annual "rebirth" or "healing" of the Sun God.

There was also a "mystery cult" to the God Mithras, and one of His holy days was Dec. 25th. Unfortunately, not much is known about this initiatory religion, as, well, it was a secret society that's shrouded in mystery, for the most part. Kind of like the Freemasons, I suppose.

But the idea that Saturnalia is all rape and wine and sodomy is purely a kind of early "propaganda" carefully designed to bring down polytheism in ancient Rome. It worked pretty well, and apparently, many people still believe this today. It worked well because it had a basis of reality that a "logical" (and I use that word loosely) conclusion could be drawn from. If an ancient Christian person came to Rome for the first time and saw all of this drinking and gluttony and nudity and informality, they may have assumed that nothing was going to stop rape of women or young men -- and if they saw even just two men having sex in public, they may have assumed that *all* Roman men were doing that.

Do these assumptions make sense? In a way, yes, a reasonable person could see how Christian A could arrive to Conclusion B.

Does the fact that it makes some sense make it right? No. After all, just because Fred Phelps believes in subjugating women and "God hates fags" does *not* mean that all Christians believe that way.

Answer 2

When the christians were converting many people they started placing certain religious holidays around the same time as the native people's religion. That way it would be easier to convert people to christinanity. For instance, Christmas is really placed during the Roman religious celberation of Saturnalia (Spelling?). This was a week long celebration of Saturn that pretty much was just an excuse for the Romans to get drunk and party like its 999 (ha get it, 999, its a bad corny joke). They moved it there because they figured that the Romans would be much more open to the religion then if it had the same holidays that they had. In reality it has been dated that the actual events of Christmas happend in the early days of the month of June, no ware near December 25. Also many of the people who practiced the old pagan religions where much more friendly than the christians. They also based many of their beliefs on nature and harmony with it. Christians tended to kill just about anyone who didn't agree with them. But i'm really glad that we now live in a world where different religious sects won't kill you just because your of a different relgious background....

Answer 3

OMGs NO! In most pagan households the Mother is revered for what she is ...The vessel of God that brings for life. I have Never met a true Pagan Man who would lay hands on ANY woman (even the Catholic who slapped a man with her bible (he just turned and walked away)) for any reason in anger.

The YULE tide as we call it is just as happy a time as Christmas! Many cultures around the world have had similar celebrations. Let's face it, you know winter is coming..long cold lonely and isolated. You get together with your neighbors and have a great feast. There was a lot of perishables that would not last the winter so all was shared together. Many believe Yule to mean "Last feast of the wheel" or last one before you all get snowed in (except New Year and that was celebrated in the spring)
Yes history shows that in our infancy Pagan were an angry lot towards the Christians, Jews and anyone who got in their way. Then the Christians came into power and persecuted anyone who did not fit their bill. And the growing Islam look over and said "those people are crazy and still like their Pagan ancestors still worshiping Idols. Then some people claimed pagans danced with the devil instead of the celebrated Great Mother and a bunch of us got hung.
And Now in the 20th century so many of us ALL stood by and let millions of Hebrews, Christians (who talked too much) and many more die at the hands of a Mad Man during World War II. And of course we all know about the current prejudices that have been brought about by the few extremists in the last few days.
Do not let the clouded, misinformed and extreme ideas of one group of people lead you into believing only Pagan men beat their wives. It may happen in the few rare cases. but it is those few rare cases that get a lot of press. i say this because I feel for the Japanese lady who finally had the guts to move out of her house and take her son with her after 8 years of her budist husband beating her.
There is No single group of people better than any other. We all have our good qualities and downfaults. If you personally do not know any Pagans well that is why you are asking your question here right? You never know until you ask....
and no matter what i or anyone else says here...until you have walk Several Miles in my shoes you have no idea what life on this side of the fence is like.
I do not pretend to know all there is to know about Paganism, Catholicism even though I been in both worlds. All I know is what I have experienced myself and with close friends (who include 7th Day Adventist, Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Hindu. Atheist, and Pagan) so I have a wee bit of understanding that I like them all....as Human beings

Hope this helped and Iam sorry if I at all sounded "preachy" I hate that.
So all
There is no Beating going on but there may be a few new babies after spring

Answer 4

No, that's false. They celebrated the re-birth of the Sun.

Sure, they probably got drunk. And there may have been sacrifices in some of the early pagan religions. (At least in the Mayan religion, and probably in the Celtic religious practices. But that's nothing new since Judaism also used to have animal sacrfices.) But mostly it was about watching the bonfires on the longest night of the year and hoping for the return of spring.

Answer 5

No! It somewhat started from a celebration of the the winter solstice. Back in the day all pagan meant was non-Christian. It wasn't witchcraft and tomfoolery. It was just common townspeople celebrating a new season.

Answer 6

Your "monster"-in-law is lying to you. It's unbelievable that JW need to use such a twisted lie to convince others to convert, and then dare to bash the "lies" preached by other religions. Ask her about all the "end of the world" false prophesies that the Watchtower Society have made over the years and why do they keep using the name "Jehovah" and preaching that is the name of God, when even in the own bible appendix they accept that is not the name of God.

Answer 7

No, that's not true... that's the typical pagan-bashing engaged in by many other religions. If the pagan holidays were so bad, why did Christianity copy them?

Answer 8

Beat their wives? Have drunken homosexual sex?

Oh, geez... no, there is no evidence that this happened (at least, no more than at any other time of the year).

Sounds like someone's been whacked with the propaganda stick. Here are some links with better information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_solstice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

http://www.spelwerx.com/yulehistory.html

Answer 9

I doubt Pagans displayed that kind of behavior anymore than anyone else. That's just silly.

Answer 10

I have learned to be very wary of JW's over the years. Your Mother in Law's ignorant bigotry is a perfect demonstration of how they earned my mistrust.