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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a history PhD who taught in many colleges and universities over the years, it saddens me to see how many people here don't have any understanding of how folk beliefs like Santa come to be.  The folks (including me in some cases) posting about ancient gods with flying reindeer are trying to show what any person with a college education should know - that holiday celebrations and folk beliefs evolve over time and absorb bits and pieces of many past  traditions.  The roots of Santa are ancient.  No one said the Slavic sun goddess was the original Santa - what a sad lack of reading comprehension on the part of the PP who claimed that.  It was one of many examples given of Santa features that pre-date Christianity itself, thus clearly showing (or it should be clear, anyway) that Santa as we know him is not wholly, or even mostly, derived from Christian texts or a saint.

I can't even remember the original point of this thread, but [b]I think it had to do with non-Christians celebrating Christmas, Christians popping up to claim they basically have a monopoly on Christmas [/b]and that it's disrespectful for others to celebrate it, and then people trying to show that the most popular Christmas traditions aren't rooted in Christianity in the first place.

But unfortunately, as usual on dcum, ignorance reigns supreme and many posters are either trolling or just incapable of understanding history.  How sad for those of us who have spent out lives trying to teach it.[/quote]

Nope. It’s rich that you’re accusing others of lack of reading comprehension. Please point to the post that said Christians have a monopoly on Christmas. Look, it’s great you have a PhD in modern European or Slavic history or something, but your insults and distortions suggest you’re not an academic at all.

[b]What you’re missing/refusing to understand is that a vomit bucket of posts from places like Mongolia, cut and pasted from an atheist blog, just isn’t persuasive and barely constitutes argument.[/b] Were those yours? How embarrassing for you.

You’re also missing that nobody here seems to care that Santa is a myth, and that he may even come in part from earlier myths. But Santa also brings new things to the folklore, such as 1) St. Nicholas around 300AD and 2) the gospel’s wise men who brought gifts to the baby Jesus. THAT’s how history works, sorry someone on DCUM needs to explain it to you.

— A history major from a great college who got a graduate degree and now does research in a different field [/quote]

I have a similar background in the study of history to you and I had the same reaction; it's odd that a history Ph.D would either post or at a minimum defend arguments based on unsourced blogs and dumping large cut and paste jobs from similarly unsourced Wikipedia pages. I'm pretty familiar with the primary sources for Odin mythology for instance, and I don't see those blogs citing those sources (the Eddas, the Heimskringla, etc.). It's possible that stuff's there, it's been a while since I sat down and read them, but actual primary sources are convincing and a public library reciting stuff it got from a blog called "Sons of Vikings" (which in turn seems to have gotten it from other blogs) isn't.[/quote]

I'm the PP with the PhD, but I didn't post any cut and pastes.  There is at least one other poster trying to show pre-Christian influences on Santa and Christmas in general besides me, probably more than one.  Anyway, it's an anonymous forum, so I don't blame anyone for not wanting to dig out their academic citations for a thread where people will just reject it anyway.  And it looks like some things are being deleted now, who knows why, so maybe the moderation isn't familiar with some of these concepts either.  It just feels kind of hopeless and frustrating to know something so well, and understand all the argumentation behind it, and run up against complete ignorance wrapped in over-confidence.  I have to remind myself that the understanding I have of the history of Christianity and holiday celebrations is the result of decades of intense study, in multiple languages in multiple countries, and maybe it just isn't possible for other people to grasp it.  And of course, if it challenges the narrative they've grown up with, then they are even less likely to give it consideration.  But that's even sadder somehow.  [/quote]

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