American Pagan Holidays American pagan holidays refer to the celebrations and observances that are rooted in pagan traditions and have been adapted and integrated into the cultural fabric of the United States. These holidays draw inspiration from ancient European and indigenous pagan practices and beliefs. One of the most well-known American pagan holidays is Halloween, also known as Samhain in pagan traditions. Celebrated on October 31st, Halloween is a time when people dress up in costumes, engage in trick-or-treating, and decorate their homes with spooky themes. It originated from Celtic traditions of Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the dark winter months. Halloween has evolved over time to become a popular holiday in the United States, embracing both pagan and secular elements.

Pagan Holidays II

Back in the fourth century, Constantine “professed” Christianity, making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. The benefit to Christianity of this historical episode has been as dubious as Constantine’s conversion. (Constantine delayed his baptism until his death bed believing that baptism would wash away all his sins and wanting all of his sins to be covered just before death so he would go to heaven. After his conversion his power politics remained unchanged and the way he disposed of rivals etc., testified that his morality was little changed.) To accommodate the flood of nominal pagans entering the church now that Christianity was in favor, the Roman Catholic Church made a lot of adjustments. Pagan temples, loaded with the relics of pagan idolatry, became Christian churches. Statues of Zeus were renamed as statues of Peter. Statues of female deities were now adored as statues of Mary. And the great pagan festivals of the Roman world were renamed and incorporated into the church calendar of this bastardized Christianity. One such festival, the Roman Saturnalia, became Christmas.

A key part of this pagan festival was the rebirth of the sun god which was celebrated at midnight at the winter solstice. The Romans called it the birthday of the invincible sun. To facilitate the incorporation of masses of nominal pagans into the church, Rome taught that Christ was born at midnight at the time of the winter solstice. The pagans could keep their favorite festival and their pagan practices as long as they observed them in the name of Christ, as a celebration of his birth. Rome instituted a special mass, observed at midnight on December 25th to celebrate Christ’s birth. This is the origin of the term Christmas, a corruption of Christ’s mass. Now the Romish mass is in itself an exercise in pagan magic, superstition, and idolatry. Through the words of institution, Hoc est corpus meus, Latin for this is my body, (This is where we get the phrase hocus pocus, representing a magical incantation) the priest pretends to transform the elements of bread and wine into the actual physical body and blood of Jesus Christ. This is, of course, an exercise in pretended magic, that by a magical incantation such supernatural effects can occur at the instigation of and by the power of the priest. The priest then sacrifices the elements in a fresh sacrifice for the ongoing sins of the people. As such it is rejection of the once and for all sacrifice for sin that Christ made on the cross, and substitutes the sacrifices offered by the priests of Rome for the finished work of Jesus Christ. The elements, now pretending to be the body and blood of Christ, are raised for the adoration of the people. Such is the idolatry and superstition of this gross and unscriptural practice of Rome. The Reformers considered the Romish mass a blasphemy against Christ. Yet evangelicals are willing to adopt all this baggage and celebrate a pretended birthday of Christ on December 25th and call it Christmas, Christ’s mass, as if nothing is wrong. To compound this travesty of pretended worship of God and pretended honoring of Christ they add other accoutrements of pagan and Romish practice and traditions. They sing Silent Night Holy Night, a hymn composed by a Catholic priest, designed to be sung at a midnight mass, Christ’s mass, on Dec 25th to commemorate the birth of Christ just as the pagans commemorated the birth of the sun god at the same time in the same way. There is no Scriptural basis for the belief that Christ was born at night. And there is no basis for the belief that it was a silent night. It was so busy in Bethlehem that there was no room for them in any of the city’s inns. This was probably because it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles and the city was crowded with pilgrims coming to nearby Jerusalem for the feast, as all the Scriptural clues to the timing of Christ’s birth point to that time of year. And of course December 25th is not holy in God’s sight, but only to the pagan sun worshippers of the ancient world, and to today’s deluded evangelicals. They also sing It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, written by a Christ denying apostate, a Unitarian, who denied the deity of Christ, but perpetuated the notion that Christ was born on midnight December 25th. And when evangelicals are confronted with these things, what is their response? They say they don’t care. They say it doesn’t matter who wrote it. They say it doesn’t matter what the original meaning of the words were. They are celebrating Christ’s birth and that is what it means to them. This is of course the essence of America’s new faith in the post-Christian age, New Age religion. In that religion all that matters is sincerity. It doesn’t matter what you believe, or who you believe in, just that you believe, that you believe sincerely. You can adopt all these pagan practices and offer the words of infidels up to God in praise, but it doesn’t matter as long as you are sincerely celebrating Christ’s birth. In light of all the above how are Christians supposed to have a merry Christ’s Mass? What are Christians supposed to think when other professing Christians come up to them and wish them a merry Christmas? How are they supposed to respond when they get Christmas cards that wish them a merry Christmas? When informed Christians who are offended by these things attempt to discharge their conscience they are met with a range of reactions. These go from incredulity, to scorn, to anger. The truth of the matter is that although Christians have a right to be horribly offended, as God is, at these practices, it is those bringing these pagan customs into the church who take offense. I have seen people literally driven out of churches for questioning these practices. The truth is that most evangelicals would prefer to give up their Bibles and its teaching on this subject than to give up their attachment to Christmas. For Christians who love God and seek to worship him according to the Scriptures rather than by what pleases them, the Christmas season is a difficult one, marked by the scorn and rejection of other professing Christians. It is not a merry time!

Christmas Trees

The pagan practice of setting up “Christmas trees” goes back to ancient Babylon. They are mentioned in Jeremiah’s prophecies. There, the Lord speaking to Israel through Jeremiah, condemns the practice.

1Hear ye the word which the LORD speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not. 5They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good. 6Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee, O LORD; thou art great, and thy name is great in might. Jeremiah 10:1-6

Notice three things here. First God commands Israel “Learn not the way of the heathen.” We are not to adopt pagan ways and heathen customs. We are not to “Christianize” them and offer them to God in worship. Secondly, God says, “For the customs of the people are vain.” God considers the customs of the heathen to be vanity. God condemns them. We are not to introduce them into his worship. These are both general precepts. Then God moves to a concrete example, the practice of ancient sun worshippers to set up an evergreen tree, decorate it, and render homage to it as a symbol of the sun god. The evening before the winter solstice, being the shortest day of the year was considered the death of the sun god. This was represented by the barren and dead Yule log, which was cast into the fire. Then the next day, as the days started lengthening again, the evergreen tree was set up. This represented the resurrection, the rebirth of the sun god. It was an evergreen tree to represent the everliving sun, the invincible sun god that would live forever. Now there is a direct lineage between this practice of ancient sunworshippers in Babylon, Egypt, and Rome, etc., and today’s Christmas trees. By two precepts God condemns this practice. Then by specific reference he condemns it again. Yet, evangelicals think nothing of setting these monuments of idolatry up in their homes. They even set them up in their churches. And while they do not worship them, yet it is reminiscent of the idolatry of Old Testament Israel. Repeatedly the prophets condemned Israel for committing idolatry under every green tree…under evergreen trees reminiscent of the everliving sun god.

Irony

We are living in a post-Christian America. Christianity has been driven out of the popular culture and banished from our nation’s public institutions. Prayer and Bible reading, long banished from the public schools, are systematically driven out of all public discourse. Christians are being marginalized and their views are being excluded from the marketplace of ideas.

So what is their response? Do we battle for the right to proclaim God’s truth? Do we maintain a struggle for the right to publicly preach the gospel to all men? No! What they do is to demand the right to set up displays expressing pagan customs and traditions that are condemned by the word of God. They want to set up manger scenes and Christmas trees in public places. Annually we go through this charade. Evangelicals take the right to set up Christmas displays as the touchstone of their right to express their faith publicly. They forget that in Cromwell’s England, and in Puritan New England, celebrating Christmas was a civil offense that was punishable by the civil magistrate as an act of idolatry. So Christian lawyers are recruited, briefs are filed, court cases are adjudicated, as Christians fight for the right to practice pagan customs. What a travesty of the Christian faith. The Battle of Trenton and Christmas. Most evangelicals consider themselves patriots. They love their country. The Biblical definition of patriotism is, “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” Frequently evangelicals seem to forget this and rather than condemning their nation for its sin and wickedness seem to operate on the principle, “My country. Right or wrong, my country.” And as we discus the issue of Christmas observance there is a historic incident that they ought to consider.

During America’s war for independence, for their historic and constitutional rights as free Englishmen against the usurpations of crown and parliament, they were fighting against long odds. They were battling Great Britain at the height of her power, when she was the superpower of the age. Their trust was not in the arm of flesh but in divine providence. They were a godly people who believed that God would vindicate their cause and uphold them in the unequal struggle. And their faith was sorely tested as there were many dark days in the long struggle when the outcome seemed not only uncertain, but seemed to portend certain defeat.

One such time was just before the Battle of Trenton. The Americans had suffered a string of defeats. Victory seemed impossible. Many were dispirited. The enlistments in Washington’s continental army were expiring. With morale down it was a real possibility that the army would melt away. If the Americans were to prevail something dramatic had to turn the situation around. The Americans desperately needed a victory. Washington decided on a bold strike. He would go over to the offensive. He would direct a surprise attack on the Hessian mercenaries garrisoning Trenton. And he decided to launch his attack across the Delaware on Christmas eve so as to strike the Hessians on Christmas morning.

Now it is important to understand that at the time most Americans did not observe Christmas. For starters two thirds of Americans were Calvinists at the time. And Calvinists at that time were still faithful to the Reformation. In that Reformation they had been delivered from all these Romish idolatries and superstitions and they rejected extra-scriptural holy days of pagan origin. In some of the colonies, especially in New England, it was actually illegal to observe Christmas and its observance was punishable by imprisonment. Unless it fell on a Lord’s Day, stores and businesses were required to be open to ensure that people did not clandestinely observe such pagan customs and bring God’s wrath down upon society. Only Roman Catholics, two percent of the population at the time, Episcopalians, another minority, and the Lutherans celebrated Christmas at that time in America. By contrast the Hessians were Germans. Almost all Germans celebrated Christmas whether they were Catholic or Lutheran.

And we all know the historic result. The Hessians, because of their feasting and carousing in the true spirit of Christmas as representing the continuation of the scandalous Roman Saturnalia, were in no shape to fight. The American soldiers were probably proud to show their contempt for this pagan Romish holyday by attacking on that day. And the Hessians were slaughtered. The Americans went on in the aftermath of the battle, to again prevail at the Battle of Princeton. Morale soared. Enlistments were renewed. And America went on to prevail in the struggle and humble the mighty British Empire.

This historic turning point in the war was due to the blessing of God. It was by a gracious providence that the Americans prevailed in the battle and went on to prevail in the war. However, it must not be overlooked how God brought about this victory. In his holy judgments he allowed the Hessians to be slaughtered in an unequal contest where they had no hope of victory. They paid a heavy price for their observance of pagan customs that God finds so offensive and condemns in his word. By contrast, God blessed the Americans who disdained to observe such heathen customs and trusted in God for their deliverance. It can be said, without too much exaggeration, that the Americans refusal to observe Christmas was a significant element in their triumph in their war for independence. As evangelicals ponder the history of their country this is something that they ought to consider.

Evangelical Reaction

Now evangelicals don’t really dispute any of the above facts about the nature and origin of Christmas. How can they? Historically the pagan pedigree of Christmas is undeniable. Instead they just ignore the facts and pretend that it doesn’t matter. They say it is what it means to then that counts, and to them they are merely celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. There are several problems with this approach.

First of all, it is not what it means to you, it is not how you perceive Christmas that matters. What matters is how does God perceive it. And God indicates in his word that he hates the customs of the heathen and that he rejects all idolatrous practices incorporated into his worship. When at Sinai the children of Israel worshipped God by means of a golden calf they were condemned for it. We are not to worship God according to the customs of the heathen but according to the way that he has commanded us in the Scriptures. When Cain brought a sacrifice to the Lord according to his own perceptions of what was acceptable he was rejected. To attempt to worship God and celebrate the birth of his Son by means of the customs of the heathen is offensive to God. He hates it and he rejects it.

Secondly, God has give us the means by which he has commanded us to celebrate the birth of his Son. He has instituted the Lord’s Supper where we have a memorial of Christ’s incarnation in the bread and the wine. Just as every Lord’s Day we celebrate the resurrection of Christ, who arose on that day, so that we do not need to drag the pagan festival of Easter into the Church of Jesus Christ, so every time we celebrate the Lord’s Supper we celebrate the incarnation and the atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ. Celebrating Christmas and Easter undermines the divine institution of the Lord’s Day and the Lord’s Supper.

Thirdly, nowhere in Scripture are we commanded to set apart a day and celebrate the birth of Christ. To do this on mere human authority is to deny the headship of Christ over his church. It is to presume that we can invent and devise holydays and worship practices that please us apart from any authorization by Christ the Head of the church. If God had wanted us to do such a thing and to set apart such a day he would have commanded us to do so. And he would have instructed us how to do it. And he would have told us what day to observe. The fact that evangelicals have chosen the great pagan holyday of the ancient world must be extremely displeasing to God. And of course God nowhere states in his word when Christ was born, a strong indication that he does not want us to celebrate his birthday. There is no precedent and little encouragement in the Scriptures to observe the birthdays of kings. The Jews never celebrated the birthdays of their kings. There are only two birthdays of kings mentioned in the Scriptures, Pharaoh’s and Herod’s. They were both murderous affairs with Pharaoh hanging his baker and Herod executing John the Baptist. To institute a celebration of Christ’s birth has proven to be a presumptuous affair, denying God’s prerogatives in his church, and constitutes an unauthorized introduction of pagan customs into his worship.

Conclusions

Evangelicals need to rethink their commitment to Christmas. As in the days before the Battle of Trenton, these are again dark days for America. In fact they are much darker. Then it was only a military struggle for physical control of the nation. Today it is a spiritual struggle for the soul of America. And we are losing that struggle. But then we ought not to be surprised. We have the same handicap as the Hessians. American Christianity is laden down with unscriptural practices and pagan customs not the least of which are the observance of Christmas and Easter. Reformation begins at home. Judgment begins at the house of God. It is hypocrisy to call others to repentance while we insist on practicing our own sins. As Christ said, we need to extract the splinter out of our own eye before we insist that our neighbor extracts the log out of his. Until American Christianity gets its own house in order its efforts to reclaim American culture for Christ will be in vain.

American pagan holidays

Family decorating Christmas tree at home together. (d3sign/Getty Images)

As we close out 2023, the last two months of the year, November and December, have many religious, spiritual, and cultural holidays.

Learn more about the holidays that happened in September and October and check out some of the holidays being celebrated in the coming weeks.

Some holidays happening in November and December are:

Samhain: A Pagan and Wiccan festival marking the end of the harvest season, considered the Wiccan new year.

All Saints Day: Also known as All Hallows Day, is a day to honor all saints from Christian history, understanding that there is a spiritual connection between heaven and earth.

Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead): T raditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2 in contemporary Mexico and among those of Mexican heritage in the U.S. On this day, souls of the dead return to visit their living family members, with many people celebrating by visiting the graves of deceased loved ones and setting up ofrendas (altars) with their favorite foods, drink, and photos. A few prominent symbols related to the Day of the Dead include calacas (skeletons) and calaveras (skulls). You can wish someone a happy Day of the Dead by saying, “Feliz día de los Muertos.”

November 12

Diwali: A 5-day festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains. Diwali focuses on celebrating various gods and goddesses. The day before Diwali, homes are cleaned and decorated with flowers, and white is painted on the front door to bring good luck. The Festival of Lights features lamps lit everywhere for the entire five days to ensure that Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess that brings good fortune, finds her way home.

Read: Queering Deepavali By Raja G. Bhattar

In celebration of Divali, a family lights lamps around rangoli made using petals. (Mayur Kakade/Getty Images)

November 27

Jain New Year: A day celebrated on the first day after the month of Kartika and the ritual of Snatra Puja, where supreme beings are praised, is performed at the temple.

November 27

Guru Nanak Ji’s Birthday: A day commemorating the birth of Guru Nanak Ji who founded Sikhism

November is Native American Heritage Month which celebrates the contributions — including cultures, traditions, and histories — of Indigenous people to the United States.

December 3-24

Advent: (originates from the Latin word, adventus, meaning “coming”) A season observed by the Christian calendar as a time of waiting and preparation for the birth of Jesus (celebrated at Christmas on December 25).

December 7 – 15

Hanukkah (Chanukah): An 8-day celebration in the Jewish faith that is the “festival of lights,” during which gifts are given, and each day a candle of the Menorah is ritualistically lit. Other observances include dreidel games and serving of the traditional latke pancake.

Extended Jewish family celebrating Hanukkah at dining table, lighting candles in menorah. (Drazen Zigic/iStock/Getty Images Plus)

Feast of the Immaculate Conception: The day that Roman Catholics celebrate Mary’s conception without original sin.

Bodhi Day: The Buddhist holiday that commemorates the day that Gautama Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, also known as “bodhi” in Sanskrit and Pali. Bodhi Day generally is observed quietly, and may include meditation or chanting practices, bodhi tree decorations or simple tea and cookies.

December 12

Our Lady of Guadalupe (Feast Day): Commemorating the appearance of the Virgin Mary to St. Juan Diego, an Indigenous man, in Mexico in 1531. The feast day is an important holiday in Mexico as well for Mexican Americans to celebrate their religious and cultural identity.

December 16-24

Las Posadas: (“The Inns” in Spanish) A religious festival celebrated in Mexico and parts of the U.S. during the Christmas season, commemorating the journey that Joseph and Mary made to Bethlehem where Jesus was born. Each evening during the festival, a child is dressed as an angel and leads a procession through the streets of the town.

December 21 to January 1

Yule: A Pagan and Wicc an holiday that celebrates the winter solstice, where themes of light, fire, and feasting are common threads.

WILTSHIRE, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 22: Participants enjoy the sunrise at Stonehenge on December 22, 2021 in Amesbury, United Kingdom. The event is claimed to be more important in the pagan calendar than the summer solstice because it marks the 're-birth' of the Sun for the New Year. (Photo by Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images)

December 22

Guru Gobind Singh’s Birthday: Commemorates the birth of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru and spiritual leader.

December 25

Christmas: An important Christian holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus.

December 26

St. Stephen’s Feast Day: The day commemorating St. Stephen’s life and service to the poor as he became the first Christian martyr.

December 26 – January 1

Kwanzaa: Kwanzaa is an annual celebration of African American culture, with a communal feast called Karamu, usually on the sixth day. Traditions often include combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations as well as songs, dances, storytelling, and a shared meal.

Pagan roots? 5 surprising facts about Christmas

When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.

The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, a modern incarnation of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter. Getty Images stock

When you gather around the Christmas tree or stuff goodies into a stocking, you're taking part in traditions that stretch back thousands of years — long before Christianity entered the mix.

Pagan, or non-Christian, traditions show up in this beloved winter holiday, a consequence of early church leaders melding Jesus' nativity celebration with pre-existing midwinter festivals. Since then, Christmas traditions have warped over time, arriving at their current state a little more than a century ago.

Read on for some of the surprising origins of Christmas cheer, and find out why Christmas was once banned in New England.

1. Early Christians had a soft spot for pagans
It's a mistake to say that our modern Christmas traditions come directly from pre-Christian paganism, said Ronald Hutton, a historian at Bristol University in the United Kingdom. However, he said, you'd be equally wrong to believe that Christmas is a modern phenomenon. As Christians spread their religion into Europe in the first centuries A.D., they ran into people living by a variety of local and regional religious creeds.

Christian missionaries lumped all of these people together under the umbrella term "pagan," said Philip Shaw, who researches early Germanic languages and Old English at Leicester University in the U.K. The term is related to the Latin word meaning "field," Shaw told LiveScience. The lingual link makes sense, he said, because early European Christianity was an urban phenomenon, while paganism persisted longer in rustic areas.

Early Christians wanted to convert pagans, Shaw said, but they were also fascinated by their traditions.

"Christians of that period are quite interested in paganism," he said. "It's obviously something they think is a bad thing, but it's also something they think is worth remembering. It's what their ancestors did." [In Photos: Early Christian Rome]

Perhaps that's why pagan traditions remained even as Christianity took hold. The Christmas tree is a 17th-century German invention, University of Bristol's Hutton told LiveScience, but it clearly derives from the pagan practice of bringing greenery indoors to decorate in midwinter. The modern Santa Claus is a direct descendent of England's Father Christmas, who was not originally a gift-giver. However, Father Christmas and his other European variations are modern incarnations of old pagan ideas about spirits who traveled the sky in midwinter, Hutton said.

2. We all want that warm Christmas glow
But why this fixation on partying in midwinter, anyway? According to historians, it's a natural time for a feast. In an agricultural society, the harvest work is done for the year, and there's nothing left to be done in the fields.

"It's a time when you have some time to devote to your religious life," said Shaw. "But also it's a period when, frankly, everyone needs cheering up."

The dark days that culminate with the shortest day of the year ­— the winter solstice — could be lightened with feasts and decorations, Hutton said.

"If you happen to live in a region in which midwinter brings striking darkness and cold and hunger, then the urge to have a celebration at the very heart of it to avoid going mad or falling into deep depression is very, very strong," he said.

Stephen Nissenbaum, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Battle for Christmas" (Vintage, 1997), agreed.

"Even now when solstice means not all that much because you can get rid of the darkness with the flick of an electric light switch, even now, it's a very powerful season," he told LiveScience.

3. The Church was slow to embrace Christmas
Despite the spread of Christianity, midwinter festivals did not become Christmas for hundreds of years. The Bible gives no reference to when Jesus was born, which wasn't a problem for early Christians, Nissenbaum said.

"It never occurred to them that they needed to celebrate his birthday," he said.

With no Biblical directive to do so and no mention in the Gospels of the correct date, it wasn't until the fourth century that church leaders in Rome embraced the holiday. At this time, Nissenbaum said, many people had turned to a belief the Church found heretical: That Jesus had never existed as a man, but as a sort of spiritual entity.

"If you want to show that Jesus was a real human being just like every other human being, not just somebody who appeared like a hologram, then what better way to think of him being born in a normal, humble human way than to celebrate his birth?" Nissenbaum said. [Religious Mysteries: 8 Alleged Relics of Jesus]

Midwinter festivals, with their pagan roots, were already widely celebrated, Nissenbaum said. And the date had a pleasing philosophical fit with festivals celebrating the lengthening days after the winter solstice (which fell on Dec. 21 this year). "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born … Christ should be born," one Cyprian text read.

4. The Puritans hated the holiday
But if the Catholic Church gradually came to embrace Christmas, the Protestant Reformation gave the holiday a good knock on the chin. In the 16th century, Christmas became a casualty of this church schism, with reformist-minded Protestants considering it little better than paganism, Nissenbaum said. This likely had something to do with the "raucous, rowdy and sometimes bawdy fashion" in which Christmas was celebrated, he added.

In England under Oliver Cromwell, Christmas and other saints' days were banned, and in New England it was illegal to celebrate Christmas for about 25 years in the 1600s, Nissenbaum said. Forget people saying, "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," he said.

"If you want to look at a real 'War on Christmas,' you've got to look at the Puritans," he said. "They banned it!"

5. Gifts are a new (and surprisingly controversial) tradition
While gift-giving may seem inextricably tied to Christmas, it used to be that people looked forward to opening presents on New Year's Day.

"They were a blessing for people to make them feel good as the year ends," Hutton said. It wasn't until the Victorian era of the 1800s that gift-giving shifted to Christmas. According to the Royal Collection, Queen Victoria's children got Christmas Eve gifts in 1850, including a sword and armor. In 1841, Victoria gave her husband, Prince Albert, a miniature portrait of her as a 7-year-old; in 1859, she gave him a book of poetry by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

All of this gift-giving, along with the secular embrace of Christmas, now has some religious groups steamed, Nissenbaum said. The consumerism of Christmas shopping seems, to some, to contradict the religious goal of celebrating Jesus Christ's birth. In some ways, Nissenbaum said, excessive spending is the modern equivalent of the revelry and drunkenness that made the Puritans frown.

"There's always been a push and pull, and it's taken different forms," he said. "It might have been alcohol then, and now it's these glittering toys."

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Halloween has evolved over time to become a popular holiday in the United States, embracing both pagan and secular elements. Another significant American pagan holiday is Yule, which corresponds with the winter solstice. Yule celebrations are often observed from late December to early January and are a time to honor the cycles of nature, renewal, and the return of light.

Many Americans incorporate Yule traditions into their Christmas celebrations, such as the decorating of evergreen trees and the exchange of gifts. Beltane, celebrated on May 1st, is another American pagan holiday that originated from ancient Celtic traditions. It is a time to celebrate fertility, the arrival of spring, and the energy of new beginnings. Many modern celebrations of Beltane in the US focus on nature, symbolized by the Maypole dance, where ribbons are woven around a tall pole to celebrate the union of male and female energies. Imbolc, also known as Candlemas, is a holiday dedicated to Brigid, the Celtic goddess of healing, poetry, and inspiration. Celebrated on February 2nd, Imbolc signifies the anticipation of spring and the awakening of nature. In the United States, Imbolc is often celebrated through rituals involving candles, purification, and the honoring of Brigid. These are just a few examples of American pagan holidays that have deep roots in ancient traditions. While these observances may have evolved and incorporated different cultural elements, they continue to serve as a way to honor nature, cycles of the seasons, and the sacred connections that humans have with the natural world..

Reviews for "Imbolc: The American Pagan Festival of Light"

1. Sarah - 2 stars

I found "American pagan holidays" to be quite disappointing. While I appreciate the effort of exploring lesser-known cultural traditions, the author's lack of depth and research was evident throughout the book. The information provided was shallow and seemed to be based on Google searches rather than true understanding. Additionally, the writing style was dry and monotonous, making it difficult to stay engaged. I was hoping for a more insightful and comprehensive exploration of American pagan holidays, but unfortunately, this book fell short of my expectations.

2. John - 1 star

I regret purchasing "American pagan holidays." The book seems to be more of a biased critique of pagan practices rather than a genuine examination of American pagan holidays. The author's disdain for these holidays is evident in their writing, which makes the book come across as condescending and judgmental. Moreover, there was a clear lack of research and understanding of the subject matter, resulting in inaccuracies and misinterpretations. I would not recommend this book to anyone genuinely interested in learning about American pagan holidays.

3. Emily - 2 stars

I was excited to delve into the topic of American pagan holidays, but this book failed to provide the comprehensive and unbiased information I was looking for. The author seemed to focus more on debunking and dismissing pagan practices rather than objectively exploring their significance and cultural roots. This biased approach greatly diminished the value and credibility of the book. Furthermore, the writing style was lackluster and failed to retain my attention. I would have preferred a more balanced and informative perspective on American pagan holidays.

Honoring the Spirits: American Pagan Holidays and Rituals