The Celtic & Germanic origins of Holiday traditions

Edred Thorsson presented a talk on the pagan or heathen origins of the customs, rituals, and beliefs surrounding our beloved Fall and Winter holiday traditions. These include the deep Celtic roots of the customs and rituals of Halloween, to the native Germanic origins of the Yule-Tide or Christmas traditions. From the jack-o-lantern to the Christmas tree most of our customs have their genesis in extremely ancient ways that go back in time well before the coming of Christianity.

For a long time I did entries on my Facebook page [Stephen Flowers] about the contents of the “Indiculus Superstitionem et Paganorum” (Index of Pagan Superstitions) issued by the Church sometime in the middle of the 8thcentury, probably around the 740s in Germany. It was originally a whole Latin text, but now only the table of contents survives. It is a valuable document that tells us many things about the early syncretic (‘mixed faith’) period and also certain things about the pagan time itself. I am taking the thread up here with the ninth item: De sacrificio quod fit alicui sanctorum, “Concerning the sacrifice/oblation that is made to some of the saints.” The use of the dative singular alicui implies that such a sacrifice was known to be made to certain individual saints, but not all. These would be those who had undergone an interpretatio germana, which equated them with traditional deities. This meant that, as we see in Afro-Caribbean syncretic religions, Christian saints had been equated with certain indigenous gods or goddesses, or conversely the people had in their own minds “canonized” their own heroic ancestors and continued to worship them as “saints” as they had before. - Edred Thorson

This was the first public lecture Edred has been able to do since the spread of Covid-19 and we are very excited to share it with everybody. The lecture was held on Nov. 19, 2021, at a local social house providing an intimate environment for a small crowd who came to learn and have a drink among friends. Please excuse the audio quality, it has been cleaned up as much as possible and will improve in the coming lectures!