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Talk:Pagan survivals

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Is this related to the "Jesus = Mithras" stuff? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:49, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Quite possibly, but it's more a folklore subject. Might have more to do with the interpretive history of cave art. (Look. Cave people were drawing pictures of caribou and bison. This must have been some kind of magic ritual for them, because we can't figure out any other reason why they'd have done it.) - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 03:57, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Santa Claus - utter crap.[edit]

The article says: "Santa Claus is imagined to be Odin in disguise by some, despite being a nineteenth century American invention. (Charles Dickens helped, with his Ghost of Christmas Present; but Father Christmas had to be reworked quite a bit before being transmogrified into the jolly old elf.)"

Santa has multiple European roots (including the once-separate being Father Christmas) which pre-date the current US idea. See for example Sinterklaas Maybe the statement in the article is some reference to well-know urban myth that Santa was invented by coca cola.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 12:01, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Santa does in fact trace back to Nicholas of Myra ... just. Wikipedia:Santa Claus is pretty exhaustive - David Gerard (talk) 12:56, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
OK, I've zapped it. If anybody wants to argue that Santa was invented in the US in the nineteenth century no doubt they will turn up here.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 14:32, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Focus wrong[edit]

I think the whole focus of the article is wrong. Of course religions, practices and customs are influenced by what has gone before and what is happening in other cultures and religions simultaneously. It would be most odd if Christianity alone was free from such influences.

It will, I suppose, be quite difficult to know without any shadow of a doubt exactly which bits of early or later Christian belief were influenced like this but it seems pretty clear that there must have been influences.

In fact I would suggest that when Christianity finally disappears whatever religions take it's place will almost certainly have been influenced by it.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 17:09, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Rather, the focus is different. The article I'm trying to put here is much less about actual pagan survivals and more about the nineteenth and early twentieth century fad for uncovering "pagan survivals" in all sorts of popular customs. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2014 (UTC)
Well, it's all going t be speculative. How would you demonstrate one particular religion wasn't influenced by an earlier one? It can only be balance of evidence.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 14:26, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
It's not so much that religions were or weren't influenced by previous ones. It's that ancient and banished religions survived, furtively or unwittingly, in other customs, including many that aren't specifically religious. Evidence that this is so must be teased out by people with the right arcane knowledge. It's very close to a conspiracy theory. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:08, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Turning into a solid article, BUT...[edit]

The phrase "Pagan survival" ("in quotes") gets me 3,780 results, and most of the prominent ones are Amazon, etc. links to a book titled "The Small-Town Pagan's Survival Guide: How to Thrive in Any Community," which looks like an epic crapfest with very little to do with the intended subject of the present article. So, my question -- is this the best possible title for the article? Father Vivian O'Blivion talkModerator 04:01, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

I'd certainly be opening to moving it .... to what? Google's Ngram viewer shows peak use between 1910 and 1975, which is more or less the heyday of the theory's popularity. [1] "Pagan survivals" seems to be the usual phrase; it may have been supplanted more recently by a different use, but I'm fairly confident most of the earlier ones are about something related to this. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:16, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
"Continuity of pagan traditions" perhaps? If the topic is what I think it's shaping up to be, maybe "Claimed continuity of pagan traditions" would be more like it. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 04:28, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
If "pagan survival" was the actual term used for this sort of thing, I think we should stick with that rather than inventing a neologism. Can note this is the term for it in the first para as needed - David Gerard (talk) 10:15, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
If it's all going to be as "good" as "Santa Claus was invented in the US" it's going to need a lot of fact checking.--Bob"I think you'll find it's more complicated than that." 14:23, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
Agree with David Gerard. In any case, "Pagan survival" is a lot less clunky than the other titles. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2014 (UTC)
I don't know. I kind of like "So your mom just said you belong to an unbroken line of kitchen witches stretching back into the mists of antiquity. What now?" Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 14:40, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

"Pagan survivals" gets more relevant google hits than the singular version. I'll move and leave a redirect. Father Vivian O'Blivion talkModerator 15:45, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Nitpick time: Maybe "Pagan survivals hypothesis" would be a tad more descriptive? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:14, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
"Pagan survival hypothesis" if you must - David Gerard (talk) 16:09, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Not sure adding "hypothesis" adds anything the title needs to say. It isn't like article titles need disclaimers or they turn real: astrology, leprechaun, God. A pagan survival hypothesis is a hypothesis about pagan survivals. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 17:31, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
Until authenticated pagan survivals turn up, I see no need to add "hypothesis" to the title. Anyone reading the first two paragraphs should easily get that it is a set of "imaginative explanation[s]" which have "fall[en] out of fashion" although it "became a stock literary trope, and under that guise continues to this day." Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 19:47, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Cutty Wren[edit]

Nice to see Padstow is now mentioned. Folk singer Dave Webber wrote a May song (Never let it come to pass-O, we should fail to raise a glass-O, unto those now gone away, and left us the Obby Oss to bring the May!) which the local folk came to believe was a survival from time immemorial.

In the genre of English ritual songs you will find plenty of wren carols which may fit this topic. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 16:09, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Think I can find a use for that. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:19, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

The Two Babylons[edit]

The text here is odd: "endeavors to prove that all of the world's non-Christian religions, and Roman Catholicism in particular, ...". Having not read the source material, sure maybe one can argue Catholics don't count as Real Christians, but as phrased it seems confusing to the layman. Nwnk (talk) 01:44, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Most pagan survivals[edit]

... are actually 'the plebs' finding an excuse to have fun, alcohol and games, and amusing themselves partly at the expense of 'the authorities' and 'folklorists willing to pay for such entertainments especially when provided with a suitable yarn.'

As such they have probably existed since traditions first got invented (and patricians had to be given excuses to). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 18:29, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

So the Maypole isn't a cock spraying spunk over little kiddies after all? Scherben (talk) 02:32, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Needs a clear definition.[edit]

The introduction states: "A belief that local customs and folklore concealed pagan survivals was a favorite hypothesis of nineteenth and early twentieth century folklorists, and lasted far longer among amateur enthusiasts. The basic idea was that local customs and stories could be interpreted as vestiges of pagan rituals that have either been repurposed or continued under invented rationales."

But the final sections includes in its first paragraph: The past continues to influence the present. In one sense, there are plenty of "pagan" survivals in religion and culture. All religions, including Christianity, share features with earlier faiths such as the use of altars, hymns, processions, and devotional images. When some Christian denominations use such things as incense or consecrated water, the people who Christianized these practices knew that they were used by other faiths

Which says that lots of things have, in fact, been repurposed. So what exactly is a "pagan survival" in the context of this article?--Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 14:16, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

I've just read the article again and I must say I have the same question. I'm assuming that "pagan" in this sense means "anything from a pre-christian religion". But pretty obviously Christianity didn't invent every aspect of the Christian religion. The very concepts of the existence of "God", "prayer", "miracles" or virtually any religious concept you might want to come up with existed before Christianity incorporated it.--Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:03, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
It's easier to get a feel for this through the list of examples. Basically, the assumption was that most folk customs should be interpreted as half-forgotten vestiges of fertility rites, with the stock characters of The Golden Bough featuring prominently. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 20:20, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
So ... there are plenty of "pagan survivals" - but most of them somehow exist within Christianity and not within society?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 08:08, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
All religions probably co-opt aspects of other faiths already extant in the locality/incoming faiths - especially if 'the locals' "have always done it this way/it is familiar" (which 'Dark Ages missionary' was advised to build churches on the sites of existing temples because people were used to going there?) or 'the other faith does this and are attracting the punters' etc. This will include co-opting "the peasants rituals" some of which probably have been around for millennia (sometimes for good reason - 'we have brought all the harvest in, let's have some fun' and all the other reasons we can think of); some will be back-formation explanations; some will be 'the religious books do not cover this option - what shall we come up with - the local cunning folk do this/have this story, let us co-opt it'; and some will be 'the academics and others trying to explain away what they don't particularly care for but which the proponents for some obscure reason wish to enjoy.' There will be a few cases of 'the locals' cocking a snoot at the authorities - the traditional story of 'fishing for the moon' (actually the smuggled goods and the customs officer), 'trying to appear so mad that the rulers decide #not# to build a palace in the locality and thus appropriate all your food and young persons' or even 'they will pay us good money for our stories, so we must cultivate this crop (of academics).' Anna Livia (talk) 11:34, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
The basic concept to refute here is the way 'pagan survivals' became a framework that all sorts of random things were stretched onto, in the entire absence of evidence that any of them could be traced back to a time when popular paganism was even plausible. - Smerdis of Tlön, LOAD "*", 8, 1. 03:45, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
There will always be 'local events, beliefs and activities which do not conform to the established religion promoted by the ruling and middle classes' - some will be of considerable antiquity (though may have evolved over time) - 'harvest festivals, equinoxes and solstices' and others of more recent development/arise for the reasons mentioned above and others (eg mumpsimus and suchlike).
The question is - do #the locals# regard the activities as 'pagan survivals' or as 'the custom of the place, and our ancestors did this because of (famous person saying so/granting the land if we do this) - and besides it is fun - and also we prefer academics to being the subjects of Midsomer Murder type events' or 'the academics and TV-series writers/authors seeking to get rich from describing an invented tradition.' Anna Livia (talk) 16:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)