Joniversity | The Christmas Tree New Year Meme @Joniversity | Uploaded December 2010 | Updated October 2024, 11 minutes ago.
Side note: Music of the short clip by MasheSun
youtube.com/user/MasheSun
Well hello there my YouTube gang and welcome to my cheerful and colorful Christmas new-year's special.
While most normal human beings just say Marry Christmas and Happy New Year I decided to take the opportunity of this interesting time of year to A) deal with Memes and Memetics and B) uncover for you the mysterious rituals and customs of the Christmas tree, the Yule log, Santa Clouse and many other pagan relics that we still cherish today - trying to bundle it all with explaining how a decorated evergreen associated with a Christian holiday got to be erected in the house of an Israeli Jew... well, that's memes for you.
What are memes? Well in general they are packages of cultural information that can be transmitted from one human to another and thus replicate while obeying, like their biological ancestors - the genes - to the strict yet flexible laws of natural selection and by that evolve, mutate, die off and mix with other memes.
When examining the memetics construct of Christmas and New years time is first of all draw parallels between the ancient pagan rituals to the stuff we do today.
For instance the 25th of December of the Julian calendar marked the winter solstice - AKA the dead of winter - a time celebrated as the birth dates of many gods (Jesus no being one of them). Including Dionysus, Attis, Ba'al and Mithras.
The winter solstice was also the time of festivals around the world as ancient peoples including Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, the Druids, Celts, Germanic and Nordic Tribes regarded this time as extremely crucial since gods must be pleased and worshiped for this dreaded time of year to pass and for winter and spring to come back.
This is also why evergreens, like the conifers used for Christmas/Yule trees, were revered as containing spiritual and magical beings and powers that allowed them to remain green even in this most harsh of times - and mistletoes? Well they were seen as evergreens on steroids as they managed to give fruit in the dead of winter.
In order to track back the memes of Christmas I also go back to the roman festival of Saturnalia and the Germanic / Nordic festival of Yule - AKA Yuletide.
And finish off by quickly reviewing the memetics origins of Santa clause starting from the Turkish priest saint Nicholas who captured the devil who later transformed into the daemon like creature from German mythology -- Krampus or Ruprecht who was later mixed with gnome elf like characteristics and converged with Sinter Clouse - the Scandinavian name of Santa Clouse. Which combined with the gods and spirits of the hearth going up and down chimneys, as well as Pasqua Epiphania who filled children's stockings with candy and the chief Norse god Odin who rode his horses from heaven and had a long thick white beard who later became father Christmas also known as grandfather frost with his horned goat all of which managed to finally come together into one mythical being, first in Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall and later in the book A Visit from St Nicholas - better known as the Night Before Christmas - with the appearance that was cooked up by Thomas Nast in hundreds of cartoons portraying Santa Clouse...
So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Meme to you all.
Side note: Music of the short clip by MasheSun
youtube.com/user/MasheSun
Well hello there my YouTube gang and welcome to my cheerful and colorful Christmas new-year's special.
While most normal human beings just say Marry Christmas and Happy New Year I decided to take the opportunity of this interesting time of year to A) deal with Memes and Memetics and B) uncover for you the mysterious rituals and customs of the Christmas tree, the Yule log, Santa Clouse and many other pagan relics that we still cherish today - trying to bundle it all with explaining how a decorated evergreen associated with a Christian holiday got to be erected in the house of an Israeli Jew... well, that's memes for you.
What are memes? Well in general they are packages of cultural information that can be transmitted from one human to another and thus replicate while obeying, like their biological ancestors - the genes - to the strict yet flexible laws of natural selection and by that evolve, mutate, die off and mix with other memes.
When examining the memetics construct of Christmas and New years time is first of all draw parallels between the ancient pagan rituals to the stuff we do today.
For instance the 25th of December of the Julian calendar marked the winter solstice - AKA the dead of winter - a time celebrated as the birth dates of many gods (Jesus no being one of them). Including Dionysus, Attis, Ba'al and Mithras.
The winter solstice was also the time of festivals around the world as ancient peoples including Egypt, Mesopotamia, Rome, the Druids, Celts, Germanic and Nordic Tribes regarded this time as extremely crucial since gods must be pleased and worshiped for this dreaded time of year to pass and for winter and spring to come back.
This is also why evergreens, like the conifers used for Christmas/Yule trees, were revered as containing spiritual and magical beings and powers that allowed them to remain green even in this most harsh of times - and mistletoes? Well they were seen as evergreens on steroids as they managed to give fruit in the dead of winter.
In order to track back the memes of Christmas I also go back to the roman festival of Saturnalia and the Germanic / Nordic festival of Yule - AKA Yuletide.
And finish off by quickly reviewing the memetics origins of Santa clause starting from the Turkish priest saint Nicholas who captured the devil who later transformed into the daemon like creature from German mythology -- Krampus or Ruprecht who was later mixed with gnome elf like characteristics and converged with Sinter Clouse - the Scandinavian name of Santa Clouse. Which combined with the gods and spirits of the hearth going up and down chimneys, as well as Pasqua Epiphania who filled children's stockings with candy and the chief Norse god Odin who rode his horses from heaven and had a long thick white beard who later became father Christmas also known as grandfather frost with his horned goat all of which managed to finally come together into one mythical being, first in Washington Irving's Bracebridge Hall and later in the book A Visit from St Nicholas - better known as the Night Before Christmas - with the appearance that was cooked up by Thomas Nast in hundreds of cartoons portraying Santa Clouse...
So Merry Christmas and a Happy New Meme to you all.
