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| The Midwinter Horn |
In fact, we encounter the Christmas story so often we’re convinced we know all the details of what happened that night. But many of the things we think we “know” about the Christmas story turn out to be incorrect.
Here are five common misconceptions. Read More
In the 1980s I attended a seminar on the origins of the liturgical year (also known as the Christian Year and the Church Year) given by Dr. Thomas J. Talley, an internationally renowned scholar on the liturgical year, and sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana. Dr. Talley took issue with the popular claim that Christmas was originally a pagan holiday and showed from his extensive research how the early Christians had actually decided upon December 25th as the date for the celebration of the Feast of the Nativity. He published his conclusions in his opus, The Origins of the Liturgical Year. Despite Dr. Talley's seminal work on the origins of Christmas and other major church festivals, many Christian pastors and writers who should know better continue to perpetuate the myth that Christmas has pagan origins.
Among the various Advent and Christmas customs found around the world is the Dutch and North German custom of sounding the midwinter horn from the beginning of Advent to the Feast of the Epiphany. While some claim the practice, like Christmas, is pagan in origin, the folklorist J. J. Voskuil traced the origin of the practice to medieval nativity plays that were popular in the region and which depicted horn-blowing shepherds. Here, here, and here are videos of the sounding of the midwinter horn.
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