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Christmas-odd
 Christmas Facts That May Shock
What if it were against the law to celebrate Christmas? It was in the mid-17th century! The Puritans outlawed Christmas, blasting it as another one of those idol-worshipping religious festivals well worth expunging. Reformist Protestants even levied fines on those individuals who dared to miss work on Christmas Day. That's the word from Anthony Aveni, a Colgate University professor and author of "The Book of the Year: A History of Our Holidays," which explores the myths and origins of the December 25 holiday extending back to Neolithic cultures.
Here are some other myths, facts, and fables about Christmas, uncovered by Aveni:
--The Bible does not supply concrete information on exactly when Christ was born. No astrological indicators exist that point to December 25. The earliest record comes from a 354 A.D. calendar description of a holiday in which Romans lit candles to celebrate the sun's birthday.
--Church officials, "impressed with the ritual's symbolic bringing back of light into the world," claimed the date of December 25. Roman Emperor Constantine officially recognized it as the celebration of Jesus' birth in the 4th century A.D.
--The Middle Ages marked the origin of many traditional Christmas symbols such as the Yule log, holly, and caroling. The burning Yule log (Yule comes from the Scandinavian jol or jul which means "jolly") symbolized the time in which bonfires raged to "beckon the reappearance of winter's holy light."
--The Farmer's Almanac also got its start in the Middle Ages during the 12 days of Christmas. People used these days to predict weather by recording sunny and snowy days in a system that became the precursor of the modern day Farmer's Almanac.
--In the early 19th century, German and Dutch Protestant immigrants resurrected the Christmas holiday to its original status. St. Nicholas also gained prominence during the Victorian era.
--Originally Santa Claus was not regarded as the rotund gift bearer in an airborne sled that we all know today. It was Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem that first promoted this image.
--Santa's Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer sprang from a commercial endeavor in 1939. A Montgomery Ward employee wrote the original story as part of a promotional "giveaway" program. The song gained prominence in the late 1940s.
"The paradox of Christmas today lies in the confrontation of the consumer's strong materialism sense and the decidedly nonmaterialistic values of religious celebrants," Aveni explains. "But obviously Christmas is a reinvented tradition. Our capacity to change its meaning to suit the times is the force that keeps it alive."
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