Customer Reviews

4,000 Years of Christmas

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I bought 4000 Years of Christmas because I'm very interested in the history of Christmas and winter solstice celebration and wanted some background on where it all began. Carl and Alice Count's book, 4000 Years of Christmas, answered much for me. It linked the pre-Christian Mesopotamian 12 days of merry-making and their need to have a rebirth of their king each year to fight the old gods who were reclaiming the earth in order to renew the land. The Counts then explained how these celebrations were adopted by the Greeks and Romans, and how separately these early Mesopotamian celebrations moved north via trade routes up the Danube River to an emerging Northern culture. The Counts further reveal that Christ's birth day was not celebrated for nearly 400 years, and that the Roman Saturnalia celebration -- a celebration developed out the Mesopotamian one, was held at the winter solstice to honor the renewing of light and the end of the long nights -- and that 4th Century Christians chose the finale day of Saturnalia (December 25) as the day of Christ's birth in hope of garnering peasant support. The interesting tie they make is that of the change in the perception of Gods -- from ones that are abitrary and sometimes vindictive to one like Jesus Christ who offers love, grace, kindness to all -- including children. After exploring the Christian development, the Counts explore the development of the Germanic god Woden and the Scandinavian god Odin, explaining how they evolved into Santa Claus and mixed with the Christian celebations, and how the history of St. Nickalus was developed. In short, this is good reading and it offers a nice, short synopsis of the development of our familar winter Christmas celebrations and how Christian and early pagan celebrations evolved.

This is a delightful, well-rounded explanation of the development of the holiday we know as Christmas. Readers interested in learning about the origins of our celebration will likely be well pleased with what these authors have to offer. Those who seek reinforcement of their own viewpoints or advocacy of particular religious interpretations of the season might look elsewhere.

A quick, fascinating read into the anthropology of religion as seen through the lens of a single holiday. As Joseph Campbell would illustrate in much greater detail in his landmark work,"The Hero with a Thousand Faces," Dr. Count demonstrates the underlying unity in all the divergent historical religious sources of Christmas traditions. Humankind has shared common hopes, fears, and the need for redemption throughout history, which share resolution in remarkably parallel religious practices around the date set for Christmas. Rather than see this as a challenge to Christian primacy, Count sees the parallel hopes and fears behind these divergent practices finding their most complete resolution in the context of the Christian celebration. It is as Phillips Brooks wrote, "The hopes and fears of all the years are met [in Bethlehem]," in the birth of the Christ Child.

The authors state in the Prologue to this 1997 book, "This is one of the world's greatest stories. We do not know its beginning, and it has not yet ended. Much of the story is not known---for instance, we do not really know when the Christ Child it venerates was born; or the time and place when Christmas was first celebrated; or exactly how it was that, over the centuries, a bishop-saint of Asia minor and a pagan god of the Germans merged to become Santa Claus. Although the Christmas story centers in the Christ Child of Bethlehem, it begins so long before his coming that we find its hero arriving on the scene after more than half of the time of the story has gone by."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Mesopotamia is the very ancient Mother of Civilization. Christmas began there, over four thousand years ago, as the festival that renewed the world for another year. The 'twelve days' of Christmas; the bright fires and probably the Yule log; the giving of presents; the carnivals with their floats; their merrymakings and clownings, the mummers who sing and play from house to house; the feastings; the church processions with their lights and song---all these and more began there centuries before Christ was born." (Pg. 24-25)
"The habit of Saturnalia was too strong to be left behind. At first the Church forbade it, but in vain... The Church Fathers now sought to point the festival toward the Christian Sun of Righteousness." (Pg. 36)
"To celebrate (Jesus' birthday) would have seemed at best pointless, and at worst an evil thing. By the third century, however, many people were coming to the notion that his birthday should be observed..." (Pg. 40)
"We know almost nothing about the man who some day was to become 'Saint' Nicholas." (Pg. 65)
"We do know that the tree is part of what the common people contributed to Christmas; the Church not only did not create it, but frowned upon it when it first came to attention." (Pg. 85)

I have an interest in traditional Christian rituals that can be traced back to pagan origins. So I bought this book as a gift for friends. Unfortunately, I was greatly disappointed in one ancient belief that the authors had left out. That is the old belief of the great Goddess and of her son/lover. At the end of each year the son died and was reborn. This theme has been shown in many old religions. How could this missed? Goddess, Mary, son, Jesus, sun? Get it? SEBrooks

In this small, brief book, the late Earl W. Count and his widow Alice tell the story of how the celebration of Christmas evolved from pagan winter festivals in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, and northern Europe. In their narrative, the Counts write in passing about the origins of Christmas customs and symbols (just a few are covered, actually), including Santa Claus, who may have evolved from a Norse god as well as from the real-life St. Nicholas. I got the impression that the authors did not make the point of exalting Christmas more strongly against its pagan ancestors; based on the book's title, the Nativity of Jesus Christ appears to be treated as just another winter feast in a series spanning 4000 years of recorded history (considering that Earl Count was an Episcopalian priest, the authors should have known better). Now, there is nothing problematic about time-honored Christmas customs and symbols that, while pagan in origin, are wholesome and do not contradict Christian teaching; that certain pre-Christian elements were adopted as part of the celebration of the Nativity is a historical fact. However, implying that what was celebrated in the pagan world before the birth of Christ somehow equates with Christmas itself simply misses the point; to a Christian, celebrating the coming of the Savior far outweighs and supplants any pale imitations of ages past. The book does not enjoy the benefit of a bibliography, yet a listing of other titles by the publisher includes selections on apocryphal Gospels and controversial theories about Christ.