Religious Transformation: How Pagan Harvest Festivals Shaped Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated in the United States and Canada, traditionally seen as a time to gather with loved ones and express gratitude for blessings and abundance. However, upon closer examination, it becomes clear that Thanksgiving has pagan roots and connections. The origins of Thanksgiving can be traced back to ancient harvest festivals celebrated by pagan societies. These festivals were held to give thanks to the gods for a bountiful harvest and to ensure future prosperity. The pagan belief was that by expressing gratitude and offering sacrifices, they could appease the gods and continue to receive their favor. One of the earliest recorded instances of such a harvest festival is the ancient Roman festival of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture.

Yule logs might be my favorite long standing Winter Solstice tradition because of all the lore and ritual surrounding it. Yule logs are a symbol of the darkness shifting into light, they are burned to provide light and warmth for the home during the darkest night and season. For this ritual, you will want a log (or a bundle of split wood or sticks) and to decorate it with herbs, spices, dried fruits, and greenery that represent hopes and dreams for the coming year. On the night of the Winter Solstice, gather your family or friends to each write their indiviaul hopes and dreams for the coming year on slips of paper to then fold up and place into/onto the log. Once the log is lit, the wishes for the new year will be burned and delivered to the universe. Be sure to keep a small part of the Yule Log to help kindle the fire for next year’s log and take the burned ashes to spread on your garden for good luck with the spring crop.

Usually falling on the 21st or 22nd of December for those of us in the United States, the Winter Solstice is, in terms of daylight, the shortest day and longest night of the year. Certain Wiccan claims had seemed plausible, not to mention appealing my sister s high school uses a textbook that teaches this myth of a prehistoric woman-centered culture.

One of the earliest recorded instances of such a harvest festival is the ancient Roman festival of Ceres, the goddess of agriculture. This festival, known as Cerealia, was held in honor of Ceres and included feasting, parades, and the offering of sacrifices. The participants would give thanks for the abundance of crops and pray for a prosperous future.

Witches’ Brew at Winter Solstice

Christmas and Hanukkah may be the most well-known end-of-year religious holidays, but each December, Wiccans celebrate winter solstice, which marks the shortest day of the year. In a “Faith-Based” article originally published in 2005 and reprinted below, Mark Oppenheimer argued that the pagan celebration relies on false historical claims—undermining Wiccans’ attempts to gain some credibility. If, as linguists say, a language is just a dialect with an army, then a religion is just a madman’s fantasy that has failed to die out. Religions gain legitimacy by lasting, and by that measure Wicca is well on its way to being mainstream. Now 50 years old, the earth-centered faith (also known as paganism or witchcraft) has thousands of adherents and many more occasional dabblers in the United States and Europe. Dozens of new Wicca books are published every year. There are dozens of Wicca conferences and retreats. And solstice celebrations are now seen as normal in the United States—and in freethinking Unitarian churches, practically required.

But Wiccan teachings are for the most part a stew of demonstrably false historical claims. There’s no better time to examine this penchant for dissembling than at winter solstice on Dec. 21, which Wiccans say has been their holiday for thousands of years. For it’s just such unfounded claims to old age and continuous tradition that may keep Wicca from growing to be truly old.

Wicca is not a unified movement; it comprises “good” witches who use spells and charms, feminist worshippers of a monotheistic Goddess, and earth-cultists who propound nature worship. But the many strands overlap. They’re gynocentric; they’re all concerned with nature; they all celebrate eight holidays, or “sabbats,” that include the equinoxes and the solstices. Adherents typically say that those eight holidays were celebrated by ancient Wiccans or pagans, primarily Celtics or Romans, whose traditions the contemporary Wiccans are carrying on. These seasonal festivals, they add, have been co-opted by Christians, who turned Samhain into Halloween and Yule into Christmas. The rare Wiccan belief that pans out is that Christmas is an adaptation of a solstice celebration. We have no way of knowing when Jesus was born. Scholars generally agree that by the late fourth century his birthday was figured for Dec. 25, because that was already the day of the Roman feast of Sol Invictus (the “undefeatable sun”), a solstice holiday, as well as the time of Saturnalia, the festival for Saturn.

But in reaching for a usable past, Wiccans trumpet numerous other historical claims that are entirely without merit. The central claim that Wicca is descended from pre-Christian cultures and that it was driven underground by violent Christians was popularized by the writer Starhawk, whose 1979 book The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess is a foundational text for contemporary Wiccans. Starhawk based her teachings on the work of, among others, Marija Gimbutas, a UCLA anthropologist who in the 1970s and 1980s argued that in pre-Christian times there existed a unified, female-centered, Indo-European society that worshipped a Goddess. Recent scholars, however, have shown that there was no prehistoric Goddess-centered matriarchy. They’ve also concluded that the Celts probably did not celebrate eight seasonal sabbats, and, alas, that contemporary Wicca was invented in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner, an English civil servant with a deep interest in the 19 th -century occult. One can read the brutal truth about all of these debunked theories in a fine article by Charlotte Allen in the Atlantic Monthly (available to subscribers only) and in The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, a superb book by Cynthia Eller.

Wiccans heaped scorn on Eller, attacking her book as an unforgivable act of anti-Wiccan bigotry, even female self-loathing. By marshalling evidence against so much of the Wiccans’ claimed history, Eller was hitting a young religion where it hurts. Certain Wiccan claims had seemed plausible, not to mention appealing—my sister’s high school uses a textbook that teaches this myth of a prehistoric woman-centered culture. So, adherents had based their faith on what they considered a verifiable back story. Wiccans had believed, and built their faith around, shoddy feminist scholarship that had itself become an article of absolute belief. Faced with Eller, Wiccans could have taken an honestly religious position—”We have faith, Cynthia, and your facts can’t shake it.” Instead, they attacked her.

And therein lies the problem for Wiccans: Religions tend to succeed to the extent that they are not subject to tests of proof. They are based on beliefs in invisible deities and on mystical experiences that can’t be explained by one person to another but must be experienced for oneself. So, the more obscured by time or erosion a religion’s possible proofs are, the more freely the religion can succeed as a matter of faith. Mormonism could never flourish so long as Joseph Smith could be interrogated, face to face, about his visions. He needed to become a mythic—that is to say, long dead—figure. Jews should pray that we never find the Ark of the Covenant; the truth of a religious system should not be subjected to carbon-dating the tablets.

So long as Wiccans are hung up on whether Christmas is derived from old solstice rites (it is) or whether Christendom murdered 9 million alleged witches from the 14 th to the 18 th centuries (not even close), the religion will seem a little absurd. It’s one thing to have faith in things unseen; that’s human. It’s a whole other thing to have faith in an easily disproved historical conceit.

There’s evidence that many Wiccans may be wising up. Starhawk has backed off her boldest assertions and now concedes that some part of her original historical matrix may not be true. The debatable notion that Hanukkah is also based on solstice celebrations has been floated but has not caught on, even among diehard Goddess worshippers. Both Starhawk and Carol Christ, another prominent Goddess evangelizer, told me they had no reason to believe the Hanukkah theory. Chastened by the attacks on their bad historiography, Wiccans are growing more likely to say that their faith is based on a love of Wiccan practices, rather than on particular historical claims. It’s a heartening development when religious belief isn’t dependent on the latest archaeological findings. Wiccans might no longer have to sacrifice intellectual rigor to get their spiritual sustenance. Become a fan of Slate on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter.

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Similarly, the ancient Greeks celebrated a festival called Thesmophoria, dedicated to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and fertility. This festival involved a three-day gathering of women, during which they would engage in rituals, feasts, and ceremonies to honor and give thanks to Demeter for a successful harvest. Even in ancient Celtic societies, harvest festivals were a prominent feature of their culture. The festival known as Samhain, which marked the end of the harvest season, was considered a time of thanksgiving and paying homage to the gods for the abundance of food. This festival also served as a way to honor and remember the deceased. It is clear that the tradition of celebrating harvest festivals and giving thanks has ancient pagan origins. The practice of expressing gratitude to a higher power for abundance and blessings was deeply ingrained in these societies. The modern-day Thanksgiving holiday, although stripped of its overtly pagan elements, still carries echoes of these ancient traditions. Although Thanksgiving has been embraced by Christian communities as a time to give thanks to God, its pagan roots cannot be ignored. The act of gathering together with loved ones to share a meal and express gratitude dates back centuries and has been adapted and incorporated into various cultures and religious practices. In conclusion, Thanksgiving, despite its Christian associations, has deep pagan roots. The concept of giving thanks and celebrating abundance has been present in human societies since ancient times, as evidenced by the harvest festivals of various pagan cultures. While the modern-day celebration may have evolved and changed, the essence of expressing gratitude remains a significant part of Thanksgiving..

Reviews for "The Pagan Underpinnings of Thanksgiving: A Look at the Ancient Symbols and Customs"

1. Robert - 2/5 stars -

I was really disappointed with "Thanksgiving and its pagan background." As someone who loves Thanksgiving and enjoys the traditional celebration with family and friends, this documentary left a bad taste in my mouth. It focused too much on the history of the holiday and its possible pagan origins rather than celebrating the spirit of gratitude and togetherness that Thanksgiving represents. I understand the importance of knowing the history, but I was expecting a more uplifting and positive exploration of the holiday.

2. Sarah - 1/5 stars -

I found "Thanksgiving and its pagan background" to be extremely biased and misleading. The documentary presented a one-sided view of Thanksgiving, painting it as a purely pagan festival with no acknowledgement of its cultural and historical significance. The lack of objectivity was disappointing, and it felt like the filmmaker had an agenda to discredit and undermine Thanksgiving rather than providing a balanced and informative perspective. I would not recommend this documentary to anyone seeking a fair and accurate understanding of Thanksgiving.

3. John - 2/5 stars -

I was hoping to learn more about the origins of Thanksgiving in "Thanksgiving and its pagan background," but unfortunately, I was left unsatisfied. The documentary presented a lot of theories and speculations without substantial evidence to support them. It lacked concrete historical facts and relied too heavily on assumptions. I think the concept of exploring the pagan influence on Thanksgiving could have been intriguing, but the execution fell short. I would have preferred a more scholarly and rigorous examination of the topic.

4. Emily - 1/5 stars -

"Thanksgiving and its pagan background" was a complete disappointment. Instead of being informative and thought-provoking, it came across as incredulous and sensationalized. The documentary seemed more interested in generating controversy and stirring up a debate rather than offering any valuable insights. I felt like my time was wasted watching it, and I would not recommend it to anyone seeking a nuanced and balanced understanding of Thanksgiving's history.

Giving Thanks to the Harvest Gods: Exploring the Connection between Paganism and Thanksgiving