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From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas
Most people enjoy Christmas, but few understand the true origins of the celebrations centred around this time of year. This book looks at the archaeological and historical evidence for ceremonies at the winter solstice which date back more than 5000 years to the Stone Age and traces how these celebrations changed and evolved with the arrival of first Roman and then Christian beliefs. It also looks at the origins of the modern-day Christmas, many elements of which were unknown prior to the nineteenth century, and that most famous of Christmas figures, Santa Claus, while highlighting elements of continuity from the pagan origins of the festival that are still part of today's celebrations.
- GenresNonfiction
218 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
4 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Paul Frodsham
17 books1 followerPaul Frodsham studied archaeology, anthropology and geography at the University of Durham, gaduating in 1985. He worked as an archaeologist in Cumbria, London and Berkshire before being appointed as the Northumberland National Park Authority's first archaeologist in 1992. He currently lives in Weardale, County Durham, and is employed as the North Pennines Area Outstanding Area of Natural Beauty Partnership's Historic Environment Officer.
He has published numerous academic papers and popular articles and has written several books including Archaeology in Northumberland National Park, In the Valley of the Sacred Mountain - an Introduction to Prehistoric Upper Coquetdale (2006), Yeavering - People, Power and Place (2005), and From Stonehenge to Santa Claus - The Evolution of Christmas (2008).
He has published numerous academic papers and popular articles and has written several books including Archaeology in Northumberland National Park, In the Valley of the Sacred Mountain - an Introduction to Prehistoric Upper Coquetdale (2006), Yeavering - People, Power and Place (2005), and From Stonehenge to Santa Claus - The Evolution of Christmas (2008).
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 2, 2018
I'm mad.
I'm mad at myself, for thinking this book would be worth reading; for giving it a chance; for letting it waste my time.
I'm mad at the publisher(s) and editor(s), who seem to have talked Paul Frodsham out of the book he actually wanted to write ("Stonehenge and Other Ancient European Monuments: How They Relate to Christmas") and into the paperback-bound mess I held in my hands.
But mostly, I'm mad at Frodsham himself. He never took a step back to consider who he was writing for (archaeology junkies, who want to know the specific dimensions of every major henge-type monument in the British Isles? Christians who know nothing about Christianity? Agnostics? People who want to know more about henge-type monuments but won't be bored by endless figures and a lack of sketches?). He has no respect for disciplines other than his own, and when I say that, I mean specifically that he has no respect for religion, theology, and history as fields of study.
I'm instantly wary of books that want to discuss religious history when the authors in question don't have an academic background in history OR religion, AND don't have the appropriate linguistic background (i.e.: for this book, if you can't read Latin, ancient Greek, and Hebrew, you can't read primary religious sources on your own, or a lot of early Church documents, etc.). I assume Frodsham would be wary of a book about ancient archaeology if the writer had read a few books about the subject--not even bothering to speak to any archaeologists, or see if the topic had been covered--and called it a day. And yet that's exactly what he did here, with respect to religion, theology, and history. The whole "hey, this Christmas story we tell doesn't line up with the Biblical nativity narratives!" deal is well-trod ground, but he comes at it like he's the first person to notice that Matthew and Luke tell different stories about the birth of Jesus. His grasp of biblical authorship and development theory is minimal at best. And despite the lack of tools at his disposal, he still manages to drag the sections on the Gospel narratives out so much longer than he needs to.
Have you heard the university definition of a freshman: the only person who thinks a sophomore knows something? The only person who will think Frodsham knows anything is one who knows absolutely nothing about the Bible--or is, at best, only passingly familiar with it.
This part of the whole mess could have been avoided if he'd talked to even one person with an academic background in theology and religion. But he did not acknowledge that there might be things that he didn't know, and that he couldn't learn from reading an Ehrman book or two. And he certainly did not acknowledge that some of this ground may have been covered already.
Eventually, after boring me to death with his meter-by-meter dissection of various henges, and boring AND annoying me to death with his bush-league attempt at biblical criticism, Frodsham trotted out the line that facts "simply do not matter" to Christians. He then followed it up by getting a very basic historical fact wrong (if you're curious: no, the emperor Constantine did NOT make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, and even Wikipedia knows it).
This is when I gave up. This is a very, very basic fact. It is not okay to get it wrong when you are writing a history book, especially not when you're also pretending to be a biblical scholar AND a historian. So I'm done. SUPER done.
This book gets one star and a kick in the groin.
tl;dr The author, an archaeologist, makes the archaeology boring. Instead of staying in his lane, he pretends he's a theologian and a historian; he is bad at those things. Also "northern Europe" is not the same as "the whole world" and someone should maybe let him know.
I'm mad at myself, for thinking this book would be worth reading; for giving it a chance; for letting it waste my time.
I'm mad at the publisher(s) and editor(s), who seem to have talked Paul Frodsham out of the book he actually wanted to write ("Stonehenge and Other Ancient European Monuments: How They Relate to Christmas") and into the paperback-bound mess I held in my hands.
But mostly, I'm mad at Frodsham himself. He never took a step back to consider who he was writing for (archaeology junkies, who want to know the specific dimensions of every major henge-type monument in the British Isles? Christians who know nothing about Christianity? Agnostics? People who want to know more about henge-type monuments but won't be bored by endless figures and a lack of sketches?). He has no respect for disciplines other than his own, and when I say that, I mean specifically that he has no respect for religion, theology, and history as fields of study.
I'm instantly wary of books that want to discuss religious history when the authors in question don't have an academic background in history OR religion, AND don't have the appropriate linguistic background (i.e.: for this book, if you can't read Latin, ancient Greek, and Hebrew, you can't read primary religious sources on your own, or a lot of early Church documents, etc.). I assume Frodsham would be wary of a book about ancient archaeology if the writer had read a few books about the subject--not even bothering to speak to any archaeologists, or see if the topic had been covered--and called it a day. And yet that's exactly what he did here, with respect to religion, theology, and history. The whole "hey, this Christmas story we tell doesn't line up with the Biblical nativity narratives!" deal is well-trod ground, but he comes at it like he's the first person to notice that Matthew and Luke tell different stories about the birth of Jesus. His grasp of biblical authorship and development theory is minimal at best. And despite the lack of tools at his disposal, he still manages to drag the sections on the Gospel narratives out so much longer than he needs to.
Have you heard the university definition of a freshman: the only person who thinks a sophomore knows something? The only person who will think Frodsham knows anything is one who knows absolutely nothing about the Bible--or is, at best, only passingly familiar with it.
This part of the whole mess could have been avoided if he'd talked to even one person with an academic background in theology and religion. But he did not acknowledge that there might be things that he didn't know, and that he couldn't learn from reading an Ehrman book or two. And he certainly did not acknowledge that some of this ground may have been covered already.
Eventually, after boring me to death with his meter-by-meter dissection of various henges, and boring AND annoying me to death with his bush-league attempt at biblical criticism, Frodsham trotted out the line that facts "simply do not matter" to Christians. He then followed it up by getting a very basic historical fact wrong (if you're curious: no, the emperor Constantine did NOT make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, and even Wikipedia knows it).
This is when I gave up. This is a very, very basic fact. It is not okay to get it wrong when you are writing a history book, especially not when you're also pretending to be a biblical scholar AND a historian. So I'm done. SUPER done.
This book gets one star and a kick in the groin.
tl;dr The author, an archaeologist, makes the archaeology boring. Instead of staying in his lane, he pretends he's a theologian and a historian; he is bad at those things. Also "northern Europe" is not the same as "the whole world" and someone should maybe let him know.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews