Talk:Pagan survivals/Archive1

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Mithras

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.

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

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...

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 talk 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 talk 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

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

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)