12/12- Colours- The Spread Of Christmas

Non-fiction

The colours of Christmas date even back to Pagan and Celtic traditions.

Here, we meet The Holly King and The Oak King. The Holly King ruled the winter, his power strongest at the solstice, before being taken over by the Oak King, who would proceed to rule over the warming months. They would, in myths, fight for control, and would rise and fall during the solstices, not in a battle of good and evil, but of light and dark, life, death and rebirth.

The Winter Solstice is called Yule (fun fact!), which links these old traditions to new ones: a traditional Yule is made of Oak, Ash, Birch or Cherry wood. Holly branches reflect The Holly King and now adorn our houses at Christmas.

This is one of the many reasons for red and green as Christmas colours.

But they were forgotten for many years, until the glorious Victorians revived the Christmas colours. Oh, the Victorians. So many Christmas traditions come from them: from excessive gift-giving to Christmas trees being spread across the world. We have much to thank them for.

Especially the Christmas tree (from German traditions passed along by Queen Victoria's husband, Albert), which is a major contribution to the revival of the colours. You don't really need an explanation; it's a green Christmas tree. They also had a lot of plants that grew naturally in winter, decorating their houses (like holly and mistletoe), which also had green and red.

Victorians also used the colour red as a symbol for Christ's blood.

Speaking of religion, a man named Bucklow was researching rood screens (an old form of art which was used in medieval churches) to figure out where the colours of Christmas came from. Within these pieces of art, there was a lot of red and green.

Now, you have to pay attention, because there are a lot of connections to go through.

People used to understand what cultral artifacts were made of (on the contrast, I found this is the opposite today. For example, most of us don't understand how our phones work) and knew that red would be from iron and green from copper. Iron was associated with the planet Mars, and copper was associated with Venus.

The planet Mars got its name from the Roman God of War, and Venus got its name from the Roman Goddess of Love.

In poetry, Mars is associated with red (blood, war, etc. Makes sense.) and Venus with green (because the Goddess was associated with rising from the sea. A cool, more modern fact is that sometimes Venus appears to cause 'a green flash' from our perspective, because Earth's atmosphere acts like a prism).

Through astrology, alchemy, mythology and biology, Mars became a symbol for masculinity, and Venus a symbol for femininity. Love vs War, if you will.

In this Medieval Christmas artwork, artists didn't want to favour one colour (thus, gender) over another, so they became intertwined together. Especially since many religious texts talk about equality being needed to enter heaven.

Through the rediscovery of these roods in the 18th century, Victorians found another reason for red and green to be the colours of Christmas.

And now we're in more modern times: 1931. (You might even know someone who lived through this part of history!)

We're talking about Coca-Cola hiring an artist to advertise its product at Christmas. Haddon Sundblom created a large and joyful man who wore red. This was a complete change, because before then, "Santa" was skinny and wore white, blue or green robes.

It probably wasn't a coincidence that the new Santa wore the colours of the Coca-Cola logo. But the colour, finally, stuck.

To me, this is a lesson that everything has a lot of meaning and history behind it. Don't you agree?

Thank you for reading. I hope you got a little Christmas joy from this story. Here, for anyone who wants it, is the maintenance.

If you enjoyed this story, please, please, please (I can add a cherry if necessary) like, comment, rate and share. It really helps me out and allows others to see these (hopefully decent) stories. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.