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Even with no snow on the ground.
Christianity started out as a tiny Jewish splinter group. Jesus probably looked more like Osama bin Laden than the almost Nordic Jesus that became common later.
Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century AD, but it took centuries more for the faith to spread to all of Europe.
As Europe became Christian, Christianity became European. The outward forms of today’s Christianity — especially Christmas — would have astonished Jesus and the early Christians.
During the first several Christian centuries, the most important holy day was Easter. No one is sure how December 25th became the official day for celebrating the birth of Jesus, but according to tradition, Pope Julius I chose the date, sometime around 350 AD.
The Bible doesn’t say when Jesus was born, but according to the gospels, shepherds were tending sheep that night. Some people say it’s too cold in Bethlehem to be out with sheep at night in the winter, but December 25 was a strategic choice. It meant Christmas could compete with non-Christian festivals. One was a Roman celebration called Saturnalia, or the festival of Saturn.
It was a week-long binge: eating, drinking, candle-lighting, and gift giving, and some of this was absorbed by Christmas. A mid-winter Christian holiday also could compete with the Nordic festival of Yule, that took place around the Winter Solstice.
Long before Jesus, Europeans celebrated the last of the darkest days of winter, and looked forward to brighter, longer days. Men brought home a Yule log, which might burn for as long as 12 days.
Norsemen believed that every spark from the fire represented a piglet or calf that would be born during the coming year.
None of this is Biblican, and none of it is Jewish, and these changes made Christianity more acceptable to Europeans. By the Middle Ages, most people celebrated Christmas — which means Christ’s mass. Believers attended church and then caroused the way people do during today’s Mardi Gras.
In England, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans didn’t like this kind of carrying on. When they took over in 1645, they banned Christmas, which they thought was decadent and non-Biblical. When Charles II returned to the throne, the “merry monarch” brought back Christmas.
The Pilgrims who came to America in 1620 had the same Puritan view and did not celebrate Christmas.
From 1659 to 1681 Christmas was banned in Boston, and the authorities punished anyone they caught with the Christmas spirit.
Christmas was celebrated in Jamestown, however, and was considered a British tradition. After the American Revolution, Christmas went into decline, as Americans turned their backs on British celebrations. Christmas came back, though, and by the late 1800s, Americans were celebrating more or less as they do today. Christmas did not become a federal holiday until 1870.
So, where did Santa and his reindeer come from?
The original Santa Claus was St. Nicholas, a monk who was born in Turkey, of all places, around 280 AD.
He is supposed to have given away all his inherited wealth so he could help the poor, and he became known as the protector of children. Here he is in a 14th-century painting, looking after two boys, while their father gives thanks on his knees.
By the Renaissance, he was the most popular saint in Europe, especially in Holland. The Dutch brought him to America in the late seventeen hundreds. They called him Sint Nikolaas, or Sinter Klaas for short — and Sinter Klaas became Santa Claus.
Sinter Klaas seems to have become associated with the Wild Hunt of Odin, in which the Norse god flies through the air, accompanied by spirits, Valkyries, angels, and even the devil.
In Holland, Black Pete traveled with Sinter Klaas, and helped the saint decide which children had been good a deserved a treat, and which had been bad. Black Pete is still part of Christmas celebrations in Holland, but he is now, of course, thought to be racist. Here he is with Sinter Klaas, dressed in his traditional bishop’s gown.
Santa Claus became firmly associated with Christmas in America through the poem, “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” which an Episcopal minister Clement Moore wrote in 1822.
Moore drew on older traditions to popularize the idea of a jolly man who delivers toys from a sled driven by reindeer, and who magically goes up and down chimneys.
Our image of Santa Claus wasn’t firmly established until 1881, when cartoonist Thomas Nast based a drawing on Moore’s poem.
Europeans have many Christmas myths. In Switzerland and Germany and in parts of Eastern Europe, Christkind — the Christ child — rides with St. Nicholas and delivers presents.
In Scandinavia a jolly elf rides around distributing gifts, in a sleigh pulled by a goat.
In France, Père Noël, or Father Christmas puts presents in children’s shoes.
Christmas meals vary by country. In Sicily, you eat seven different kinds of fish, and in Central Europe, the Christmas meal is fried fish.
Christmas trees are recent, first apparently used by German Lutherans in the 16th century, and Germans took the tradition to the United States.
Evergreen boughs are a much older pagan tradition from the Winter Solstice. They represent the continuity of life through the winter because they are green all year, and are associated with pre-Christian tree worship. Holly and mistletoe are also pagan traditions.
Christmas cards are a British invention, with the first commercial cards produced in 1843. They carried the now-traditional greeting: “Merry Christmas and a happy new year.”
Christmas Cards were introduced in the United States in 1875 by Louis Prang.
The snowy scenes we now see on Christmas cards are a long way from Bethlehem.
Christmas carols were originally European folk songs sung at harvest time, but also at Christmas. “Good King Wenceslas,” “The Holly and the Ivy,” and “Good Christian Men, Rejoice” go back to the Middle Ages, and are among the oldest songs people still sing regularly.
“Joy to the World” was composed in 1719, “Silent Night” in 1818, and “Away in a Manger” in 1885. Christmas Carols weren’t sung in church until the mid- to late 19th century.
All this means that aside from the manger scene, the angels, and the wise men, just about everything about how we celebrate Christmas is European.
So this winter, you can celebrate the birth of Christ, Yuletide, or the Winter Solstice. You can even go all out and have your own Saturnalia, Covid be damned. However you celebrate, you will be steeped in European traditions, many of them older than Christianity itself. And that is why you can always have a white Christmas — even if there is no snow on the ground.
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Jared isn’t hiding his contempt for Christianity, suggesting Osama Bin Laden for his potential resemblance to Christ on Christmas. Is he out of his mind?
Jew-ridden Jared comparing Christ to Osama. What a fool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_Pantocrator_(Sinai)
Thank you. That was informative.
Merry Christmas.
R.C.
Correction: Constantine enacted toleration of Christianity. It was the emperor Theodosius who made it the official religion of the empire and closed the pagan temples, ended the pagan religious celebrations and closed the pagan schools of philosophy.
It’s not surprising that WNish followers of Yeshua ben Yosef would have a hard time accepting it, but what reason is there to think Taylor is actually wrong about the likely racial resemblance? (He wasn’t comparing their deeds, just their appearance.)
Osama Bin Laden looked like a Punjabi and saying that Jesus looked like that is just conjecture on the part of Jared Taylor. The people of the land of Judea were much more European looking 2000 years ago due to the back and forth movement in the Mediterranean of peoples. The peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean only became what we see today after many centuries of Islam bringing in the much darker peoples from areas like India and Pakistan on pilgrimages and trade routes. I would suggest Mr. Taylor look at this article from his own website American Renaissance in 1994. https://www.amren.com/news/2018/04/what-race-were-the-pharaohs/
Jared you are blaspheming filth and henceforth I won’t be visiting AmRen.You mock our Lord Jesus by comparing him to racial garbage.Perhaps you were thinking of your Heb hag wife instead.It is obvious to me you are a Jew puppet.The Bible describes Jesus as having flaxen hair and blood in the face(ruddy cheeks)which only Nordics have.You sound just like a Christ hating Jew when you use such lies about our Lord.But you’ll keep moaning about prison rape and black crime when they are merely tools the Jews use against us.You are dumb as dirt Jared.F… you!
Well said and agree Joe.Jesus was clearly described in the Bible as Nordic(flaxen hair and ruddy cheeks).I guess Jared’s Jewess of a wife told him the best way to mock our Lord is to compare him to her foul race.
Silvio you sound like a hasbara airhead.Noone but you noses call anyone ben Yosef,thats your jibberish and doesn’t register with humans.
Please, book, chapter and verse for your “flaxen”.
JT is like a one-note flute. He seems incapable of any subtlety. Blathers on about whites vs blacks, and never mentions what’s really important. Honestly, I am starting to really dislike him. What a tool.
As for Jesus, not that it matters, but obviously the population in the region at the time was much different than it is today. And of course Jews then were not today’s Ashkenazis. In any case, He would have no similarity to a mixed-race Punjabi. Wtf?
He is described as having light hair and blue eyes in Lentulus’ letter. Apocryphal or not, it matches the shroud of Turin and other descriptions.
Actually my father was a large cat.
Jesus with flaxen hair —blue eyes—sings English lullabies– carries a luger–Amen.
This seems like delta variant thinking to publish an article stating Judaism birthed Christianity through a cave-dwelling CIA operative, but apparently you know your readers!
Firstly, I’m no yid.
Secondly, “Yeshua ben Yosef” really gets under the skin, doesn’t it. (And to think, I was tempted to write Yeshua bin Yusif, lol.) It really shouldn’t, since it’s a perfectly legitimate way to refer to Jesus – actually, more legitimate, since if he actually existed, that’s what he would have been called. You just don’t like it because it reminds you that you believe a Jew was your savior.
Fortunately, it’s most likely the case that Jesus never actually existed, and if that’s true, then it would actually make Christianity a more reasonable religion, something easier for intellectuals to accept than the cockamamie stories of walking on water – indeed, everything contained in that pile of garbage called “the bible,” which is far and away the dumbest thing about Christianity.
If it wasn’t for the bible, a bare-bones Christianity consisting of salvation through faith in a redeemer figure, which pardons us for our relentless fuck-ups (“sins”), would actually be a pretty cool religion – especially if it recognized and defended separate ethnic identities. (“There is both Greek and Jew, and a whole lot else besides.”)
The letter of Lentulus was written centuries after Christ was alleged to have been born. The shroud of Turin was in color??? This is just bullshit religious dogma.
Troll.
“Christianity started out as a tiny Jewish splinter group. Jesus probably looked more like Osama bin Laden than the almost Nordic Jesus that became common later.”
Umm, NO.
Mr. Taylor- You may be well-read, but in this instance, you are woefully ignorant, or merely being judaized… which is much the same thing. [Ps. 119:100] OR you are purposefully dissembling, because you, yourself HATE Jesus Christ. And you want to keep His Racial Identity as far from YOUR perversion of same, as possible. Strangely enough, there are [white] people out there, who do this very thing. One thinks of Stormfront, and other idiotic sites.
1) Adam, as the summum bonum of Creation, was created specially. We all know that part- Genesis 1, etc. What we don’t know (or have not been told/i.e., were lied to) is that He was the LAST in a long line of hominids on this plane, at least from the evolutionary/anthropological record. Caucasoid CIVLIZATION only appears roughly 4-6,000 years ago. We cannot date honestly before that, as carbon-dating presumes much that it cannot prove. But the fallacy that Adam was the ‘father of all hominids’ flies in the face of sanity, genetics, and DNA recombination, no matter how much the ‘Out of Africa’ theory has been debunked. Adam is the FATHER….. of ADAMITY, and none other.
2) Records of people from this period, show clearly WHITE/Caucasoid features- Blue eyes, Blond/Red hair of those who WERE THE ARISTOS of the age. Not a coincidence. Why?
3) Because the word ‘Adam’ in the Hebrew (per the Strong’s Concordance) means ‘fair, ruddy, able to [visibly] blush.’ Even Talmudic apocryphal legend corroborates this idea, when talking about NOAH: “Jewish Apocryphal legend represents Noah at his birth as having a body white like snow, hair white as wool, and eyes like sunbeams….” – http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11571-noah
[BLOND hair in full sun appears as white, and sunbeams come from a sky of BLUE.]
The Apocryphal Book of Enoch confirms this:
“Lamech, frightened at this sight, went to consult Methuselah, telling him that his grandchild resembled an angel more than a child. Lamech further informed his father that he foresaw some accident would befall the earth during the lifetime of his son; he therefore asked Methuselah to consult Enoch, who was then among the angels, and who consequently would know what was to happen. Methuselah, accordingly, went to the ends of the earth to confer with Enoch, who announced to him that a flood would destroy the world, that only the new-born son and his future sons, three in number, would survive. Enoch also told him to name the child “Noah,” inasmuch as he would console the earth for its destruction (Enoch, cvi.-cvii.).”
4) Christ both identified with Adam, and is the immaculate fruit of Parthenogensis (another stumbling block to the unbelieving) which means his GENETICS are divinely chosen. And, as St. Paul says Christ is the ‘Last’ Adam [I Cor. 15:45] – that word ‘last’ in the Greek is ‘eschatos’ – or the “Eschatological Adam” – the Recapitulation of all Adamic Humanity past, present, OR Future! Christ (as Megyn Kelly was brave enough to articulate) is WHITE, because He is Adamic!
Moreover, the description of the RISEN CHRIST in Revelation is corroboration. White Hair, Skin like Bronze, and Eyes of Fire [cf. Dan. 10:6, Rev. 2:18] a) As I’ve noted: Blond/Light hair in full Mediterranean Sun, appears almost White (like wool) Ever hear of “Towhead” Blonds?!? b) only CAUCASOID skin can TAN like Bronze/brass! And, c) most importantly, the chemical composition of fire and the ‘eyes like fire’ must be noted. In most fires, where the fire IS HOTTEST, the flame burns BLUE! Not demonstrably dark brown, or eyes like some demon- but BLUE like the Son of God’s eyes SHOULD be!
5) Your next comment: “As Europe became Christian, Christianity became European. The outward forms of today’s Christianity — especially Christmas — would have astonished Jesus and the early Christians,” presumes far more than it actually corroborates. Hilaire Belloc, a Catholic (and therefore, ‘universal’ Christian) wrote in the 1920’s, ‘Europe is the Faith; the Faith, Europe.”
And therein lies the nugget you don’t wish to discover.
6) Christendom IS the ‘Ecumene’ or the ‘Inhabited [sic] WORLD’ of the Apostle’s and St. Paul’s day.
St. Paul makes this geographic delimiter clear in Romans 1:16-17 ‘To the Judean first, and then to the Hellene.” In the Greek, these are GEOGRAPHIC and not necessarily ‘racial ingroup’ descriptors-
7) Lastly, even by St. John’s writing of the Apocalypse, the early Church knew that the Jews ‘were not Jews, but merely a synagogue of Satan.” [Rev. 2:8,9] So, already there was a RACIAL SEGREGATION divinely going on, between the adulterous Pharisees and the simple ADAMIC Christians! This event was corroborated all over Europe. It was the ADAMIC ‘lost tribes’ (another witness, for another column or site like) that converted to Christianity, not some swarthy, adulterated miscegenated Arab underclass that later all converted to either Talmudism or Islam.
Even the Pope of Rome, when seeing the first English Christians, said they looked like ANGELS- again, that blond hair/blue-eyed genome of the Adamic Humanity.
Please, take your judaized mythos, and tell it to the AshkeNAZIS. Real Christians know that Christ is one of US, and we are of HIS BODY, the ‘fair, pure, WHITE’ Body of Christ… and not the miscegenated Mischling GOLEM of a post-schismatic Rome or Protestant universalist heresy.
Quoting the Bible as a source of fact.LOL
Religious fanatics have the best way of mocking your Lord. You do realize the foul race you speak of is the one the proprietor of this website belongs to???
Mind you, I don’t deny that the bible has its moments, especially when vested in the splendor of King James English. (“For they sow the wind and shall reap the whirlwind” – magnificent!) The problem is even the best bits are typically bookended by long stretches of nonsense, so unless you’re already convinced it’s a guide to divine reality, you wouldn’t dream of reading it for sheer pleasure.
Silver- That’s a YID Last name, isn’t it?
Every. Single. Time.
Go crucify some other god…. again.
St. Nicholas was not born in turkey.
Utter, ahistoric garbage.
I do admire Mr. Unz for allowing content that would be taboo elswhere, but this is just a rant by someone who hasn’t understood the history of asia minor.
Oh damn, I never thought of that. I guess the jig is up then.
Roger Ebert, in his original review of “The Graduate,” referred to “the forgettable music of Simon and Garfunkel.” In his later years, Ebert graciously acknowledged that “I was wrong.” He had tried to be a music critic.
I’ve tended to see Christ as resembling the EEF e.g. like a modern Sardinian. I think this is what people in 1st century Levant looked like.
There are very poor records for the origin of folk traditions – people usually didn’t record these sorts of details. E.g. the Christmas tree – there are pre Luther trees that seem to come from medieval passion plays and represent the tree of knowledge. They were hung with fruit and wafers representing the Eucharist. Pagan germanics tended to venerate broadleaf trees like oak and ash not evergreens.
Mistletoe is one of the christmas traditions that is unambiguously pagan in origin.
How dare you show a Santa decked out in red and white in images dating BEFORE Coca-Cola started their classic ad campaigns. Don’t you realize this undermines the beloved “Coke created Santa” tradition started decades ago by countless snarky self-appointed mythbusters?
Very good, Jared Taylor, for pointing out the way Europeans took a Middle Eastern sect and after centuries tamed it and made it palatable.
But weren’t we all better off as tree worshiping nature lovers, who kept home, hearth, and border separate from the savage and callow non-European world?
Seriously: Dwelling on the evergreen on the shortest day of the year in the upper latitudes is as solid a way of glorifying creation as anything some Levantine preacher might have to offer.
Give me the European trappings — take JC and the Band back to Palestine!
LOL.
“Sell your cloak and cheap Bersa .380 and pick up a Luger.” Was that the verse?
Interesting Jared Taylor after years of crying boo hoo about big corporate censorship you finally removed your comment section after your articles on Amren.
UNZ “moderates” every comment (which means they post it if they get around to it)
Takimag moved their comment to facebook where EVERY comment is reported as hate speech by rabid leftists
Occidental Dissident blocks you if you dare to talk bad about White trash behavior or mention the Jews
Now Amren after years of whining that big companies are censoring Race Realists have now censored all their readers.
Pretty hard to take Taylor seriously or basically anyone on the right these days. Seems to me the “far right” has turned into a bunch of bitches.
“St. Nicholas was not born in turkey. Utter, ahistoric garbage. I do admire Mr. Unz for allowing content that would be taboo elswhere, but this is just a rant by someone who hasn’t understood the history of asia minor.”
Sez you. Nicholas of Myra was a historical Bishop in the Orthodox Church. His icon (Drawn from life) clearly shows a man who many would easily see as Santa Claus.
The only ‘utter ahistorical’ garbage is your lawful patrimony, I’m willing to bet.
Not true at all. Hunter has one of the most lenient moderation standards out there. If Hunter blocks you, it’s overwhelmingly likely the problem is you.
I was banned last year for asking why a guy was best friends with a jew yet still on this website.
Seems to me if you have a jew best friend and are on far right websites something is very fishy about that.
Why do you assume that he assumes you were trying to hide your ethnicity?
Because in the post he replied to, I had already stated that I’m not Jewish. So he’s assuming I’m lying. Well, that kook can believe whatever he wants, and so can you.
You beat me to it with your correction, which is entirely accurate but largely unknown today. One other minor correction I would make is that the typical manger scene we see today bears little resemblance to what it would have originally looked like, with the stable being more like the living room of the house and the “inn” being more like the upstairs bedrooms.