theres a difference between what happened in europe to pagans and what happened in later imperialism, but you are ignoring a lot of very real and very violent cultural repression on the part of christians in this post. like theres documents where they talk about how they are going to infiltrate and break up local power structures. they hunted down and murdered religious and political leaders of the pagans. if you posted this about, for example, native americans losing large parts of their culture and heritage, it would be understood by everyone to be cringe imperialist both-sidesing.
‘shut up about ur lost culture and genocided population! life is change! culture is change! move on and just accept whatever the current hegemony is, because everything changes!’
why are ancient/medieval paganisms more important than the cultural innovations of the society after it was christian? why not the celtic paganism germans replaced in central europe? or the hunter-gatherer religions agricultural communities replaced?
The germans didn’t replace the celtic inhabitants of central europe, they WERE the celtic inhabitants of central europe. The tradition pictured on the article is an celtic tradition. Germanics in Central Europe had an hybrid culture with the celts they integrated, a lot of times the romans just put them into the wrong category and there are barely any other sources available, since the locals had an oral tradition (sound familiar doesn’t it?).
“Celtic” is an extremely sketchy grouping that encompassed many languages and cultures over a long period of time. It’s just a big basket for a linguistic group and spreads across an enormous area.
Modern laypeople make a lot more of “Celtic” culture than they should. There’s no meaningful connection between modern “Celtic” nations and the “Celts” running around in 0ad, not least because the “Celts” were a number of different linguistic and cultural groups, not a single culture. There’s some linguistic connections in Irish, Welsh, and Scots, but that’s it. AFAIK there isn’t even a really good consensus on what “Celtic” should mean. Like we’re literally basing all this on trends in 2,000+ year old pottery.
And the funny costumes are not “Celtic”, that’s ridiculous. It’s modern people dressing in funny costumes and ascribing meaning to them based on the mythology created for 19th century romantic nation-state building projects. What is this, a Krampus festival or something? Krampus is only attested from the 1400s.
It goes right back to post-christianization cultural practices that have elements of folk Christianity and local flavor. Like the christmas tree, like any number of things. ReligionforBreakfast has some superb videos on this exact thing. He just did one on the christmas tree, and his one on Easter is fantastic at cutting through the BS.
So many things are like this. We have 1 source for this 500 sq km region in the entire period from 324ad-545ad, so that source is definitely a smart informed correct guy and not just some shitposter.
theres a difference between what happened in europe to pagans and what happened in later imperialism, but you are ignoring a lot of very real and very violent cultural repression on the part of christians in this post. like theres documents where they talk about how they are going to infiltrate and break up local power structures. they hunted down and murdered religious and political leaders of the pagans. if you posted this about, for example, native americans losing large parts of their culture and heritage, it would be understood by everyone to be cringe imperialist both-sidesing.
‘shut up about ur lost culture and genocided population! life is change! culture is change! move on and just accept whatever the current hegemony is, because everything changes!’
why are ancient/medieval paganisms more important than the cultural innovations of the society after it was christian? why not the celtic paganism germans replaced in central europe? or the hunter-gatherer religions agricultural communities replaced?
The germans didn’t replace the celtic inhabitants of central europe, they WERE the celtic inhabitants of central europe. The tradition pictured on the article is an celtic tradition. Germanics in Central Europe had an hybrid culture with the celts they integrated, a lot of times the romans just put them into the wrong category and there are barely any other sources available, since the locals had an oral tradition (sound familiar doesn’t it?).
“Celtic” is an extremely sketchy grouping that encompassed many languages and cultures over a long period of time. It’s just a big basket for a linguistic group and spreads across an enormous area.
Modern laypeople make a lot more of “Celtic” culture than they should. There’s no meaningful connection between modern “Celtic” nations and the “Celts” running around in 0ad, not least because the “Celts” were a number of different linguistic and cultural groups, not a single culture. There’s some linguistic connections in Irish, Welsh, and Scots, but that’s it. AFAIK there isn’t even a really good consensus on what “Celtic” should mean. Like we’re literally basing all this on trends in 2,000+ year old pottery.
And the funny costumes are not “Celtic”, that’s ridiculous. It’s modern people dressing in funny costumes and ascribing meaning to them based on the mythology created for 19th century romantic nation-state building projects. What is this, a Krampus festival or something? Krampus is only attested from the 1400s.
It goes right back to post-christianization cultural practices that have elements of folk Christianity and local flavor. Like the christmas tree, like any number of things. ReligionforBreakfast has some superb videos on this exact thing. He just did one on the christmas tree, and his one on Easter is fantastic at cutting through the BS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW06pWHTeNk
So many people want to put all their faith in Bede being honest and correct. It is absurd
So many things are like this. We have 1 source for this 500 sq km region in the entire period from 324ad-545ad, so that source is definitely a smart informed correct guy and not just some shitposter.