About American Popular Culture - Christmas

2371 Words10 Pages
Christmas Rite of Season – winter, may be the beginning. (It’s the date of celebration of the Roman winter solstice.) Rite of unity – family will gather together, sometimes other social gathering. Secular – both a religious holiday and a worldwide cultural phenomenon. Christmas is celebrated generally on December 25 by millions of people around the world and is an annual commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Christmas is not just a single day but actually a season of the year. In most Western church traditions the season begins at sunset on Christmas Eve, December 24, and lasts through January 5. Christmas is the most observed and most popular holiday in most parts around the world, and a civil holiday celebrated by an increasing number of non-Christians. History: It’s controversial about the date of Jesus’ birth, but if named the day Christmas is certainly on December 25. The earliest evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus from Chronography of 354 AD (wikipedia). It’s started in Rome, celebrated on the date of the Roman winter solstice. Western Christians first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in 336, after Emperor Constantine had declared Christianity the empire's favored religion. The December 25 celebration was imported into the East later in Antioch by John Chrysostom towards the end of the 4th century, and in Alexandria only in the following century. (wikipedia) The popularity of Christmas grew until the religious Reformation of the 1500s, but also the Reformation got Christmas forbidden for a time in some regions of the world. In American, it was not until 19th century that Christmas was revived, with the warm-hearted story in Washington Irving’s books. Many popular customs of Christmas developed independently, and changed and created over time so that there are so many

More about About American Popular Culture - Christmas

Open Document