Joint Contrast

Before settling in to celebrate the holiday, Joint Contrast contributor Dank Lucas dug deep to uncover “The 9 Lil’ Known Wiki-facts of Christmas.” They are Included below for your holiday amusement. “I mean, it’s according to Wikipedia,” said Lucas of the list. “Take it for what it is. You didn’t actually think I was going to put in any real work over Christmas did you?” (Typical Dank… Enjoy!)

9.) Jesus Christ’s real name is believed to have been Joshua Bin Yosef - Some say Jesus probably lived in Galilee for most of his life where he spoke Aramaic and Hebrew, and that the name “Jesus” comes from an alternate spelling of the Latin “Lesus,“ which in turn comes from the Greek name “Lesous.” It’s since been translated into English as “Joshua” by way of the Greek’s transliteration of the Jewish Scriptures (Hebrew/Aramaic), where the name became “Yeshua”, as in “he will save.” Scholars believe that one of these was likely the name that Jesus was known by to his peers. “Christ” (which is a title and not a part of his name) is an Anglicization of the Greek term for Messiah, literally meaning “anointed one.”

8.) December 25^th was a holiday long before Christianity - “Sol Invictus” or ”Unconquered Sun” was the Roman state-supported sun god created by the emperor Aurelian in 274. It is said that the Romans held a festival on Dec. 25 called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the unconquered sun). Dec. 25 apparently was the date after the winter solstice with the first detectable lengthening of daylight hours. When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 BC, Dec. 25 was noted as the approximate date of celebration. In modern times, the solstice falls on Dec. 21 or 22. 

7.) Yule or Yule-tide was a Germanic midwinter pagan festival involving a sacrificial feast that was absorbed into Christmas - The pagan Germanic peoples celebrated Yule from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar, but the festival was placed on Dec. 25 when the Christian (Julian) calendar was adopted.

6.) Saint Nicholas of Myra is the primary inspiration for the Christian figure of Santa Claus - They say he was a 4th-century Greek Christian bishop of Myra in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Anatolia which is now in Turkey. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes.

5.) Images of Santa Claus were further popularized through Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of him for The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising in the 1930s - The popularity of the image spawned urban legends that Santa Claus was in fact invented by Coca-Cola or that Santa wears red and white because they are the Coca-Cola colors. In reality, Coca-Cola was not the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image of Santa Claus in its advertising. White Rock Beverages used Santa to sell mineral water in 1915 and then in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923. Furthermore, it has been said that the massive campaign by Coca-Cola simply popularized the depiction of Santa as wearing red and white, in contrast to the variety of colors he wore prior to that campaign.

4.) The Puritans of 17th-century England and America banned the holiday as either pagan or Roman Catholic - Following the English Civil War, under Oliver Cromwell’s government, Christmas was banned. Then following the restoration of the monarchy, and with Puritans out of power in England, the ban on Christmas was satirized in works such as Josiah King’s The Examination and Tryal of Old Father Christmas.

3.) Christmas is bad for the economy - Christmas is typically the largest annual economic stimulus for many nations. Sales increase dramatically in almost all retail areas and shops introduce new products as people purchase gifts, decorations, and supplies. An economists analysis calculates that Christmas is a deadweight loss under the orthodox microeconomic theory, due to the surge in giving gifts. This loss is calculated as the difference between what the gift giver spent on the item and what the gift receiver would have paid for the item. It is estimated that in 2001 Christmas resulted in a $4-billion deadweight loss in the U.S. alone. Because of complicating factors, this analysis is sometimes used to discuss possible flaws in the current microeconomic theory.

2.) Santa and Baby Jesus are in cahoots! - The current tradition in several Latin American countries (such as Venezuela and Colombia) holds that while Santa makes the toys, he then gives them to Baby Jesus, who is actually the one that delivers them to the children’s homes. This story is meant to be a reconciliation between traditional religious beliefs and modern day globalization, most notably the iconography of Santa Claus imported from the United States.

1.) Xmas has been an alternative spelling of Christmas long before current religious debates over the abbreviation - Some believe that the term is part of an effort to “take Christ out of Christmas” or to literally “cross out Christ”. It is seen as evidence of the secularization of Christmas, as a symptom of the commercialization of the holiday because the abbreviation has long been used by retailers. Some say the word “Christ” and its compounds, including “Christmas”, have been abbreviated in English for at least the past 1,000 years, long before the modern “Xmas” was commonly used. “Christ” was often written as “XP” or “Xt” as referenced in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as far back as AD 1021.