In this volume I have tried to show how Christmas is or has been kept in various lands and ages, and to trace as far as possible the origin of the pagan elements that have mingled with the Church's feast of the Nativity.
Christmas in Germany
For poets, priests, and politicians--and especially ordinary Germans--in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the loving nuclear family gathered around the Christmas tree symbolized the unity of the nation at large. German Christmas was su
Christmas in Germany
For poets, priests, and politicians--and especially ordinary Germans--in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the image of the loving nuclear family gathered around the Christmas tree symbolized the unity of the nation at large. German Christmas was su
The Christmas Tree Is One of the World's Oldest and Most Evergreen Traditions
Long before your living room's seasonal centerpiece, cultures around the world marked the darkest time of year with palms, pines, and other greenery.
The Final Christian Generation? - Mockingbird
What we can learn from the century that saw the sun set on the “final” pagan generation
Weekly Scroll: Eternal September
Plus: A little TPOT and a very good Christmas song
Bacchanalia
The Bacchanalia were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.
A Little Christmas Market
Collect coins, buy stalls, decorate, make the perfect Christmas market
Display Animated Christmas Tree In Terminal (2026) - OSTechNix
This brief guide talks about a cool Bash script to display an animated Christmas tree in Terminal in Linux operating systems.
Advent Incremental
An incremental game you play a day at a time, leading up to Christmas!
Advent Incremental
An incremental game you play a day at a time, leading up to Christmas!
Christmas Star Decoration Project – The Sewing Directory
Sew a simple patchwork Christmas star decoration with this tutorial from Helen Rhiannon at All Sewn Up.
What Did Folklore Do?: The Social Functions of Tradition
Cambridge Core - Cross-Discipline History: General Interest - What Did Folklore Do?
6 reasons why I'm not Roman Catholic
Esotericism in One Piece: Navigating Magic, Symbolism and Spirituality
Introduction Idea Presentation
Another year: 2025
For the last ten years on Christmas Day I've written a retrospective on the past year. This year's is a public post.
Entangled Magic in the Medieval Latin West
This article focusses on the history of learned magic in late medieval Europe, breaking a period of about 500 years into chronological stages to explore how medieval supporters and critics of magic represented the art and responded to each other’s arguments, then reframed their own in a continuous dynamic entanglement. In this period learned magic texts from diverse religious and cosmological traditions (primarily Christian, Jewish, Arabic and Greco-Roman) circulated among people familiar with, and emotionally invested in, a great variety of institutional and informal rituals. Sources reveal a vibrant culture of exchanges of texts between members of religious orders, physicians and lay men, clerics and lay women – a culture of entanglement: discussion, borrowing, critique and adaptation alongside practitioner-client relationships and necessary secrecy and concealment.