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Does anyone here have any thoughts on the occult aspects of Christmas. First of all, we have the Christmas Carol by Scrooge, which includes spirit visitations, with an OBE/NDE like live review. Then we have a ritual for the spirit of Saint Nick, which involves milk and cookies. And the angels of Capricorn are surrounding the earth, bringing about peace, love, and family.

Do any of you have any estoeric practiced at Christmas?

Yes.But for me it's Yulemas.Yule is the ancient Northern festival of Midwinter.It is at this time of year that we have visits from the ancestor spirits and it is also a celebration of the soon to come end of Winternights and the return of the Sun.Our feasting is to celebrate the ending of the hardships of the dormant season.[though nowadays that dosen't apply,with modern supermarkets and all,it is still done in remembrance] We celebrate for two weeks starting on the Solstic and on the eve of Solstice I keep vigil,by candlelight.We have many customs here including the good old one of Hogmanay.First footing at this time is an ancient custom too.

My celebrations and remembrances are not Christian.

Christmas is a trippy tradition. I'm definately doing it unconventionally this year. But I feel obliged to give some background first before explaining:
It originated in ancient mesopotamia as the 12 day Zagmuk festival. Santa originated from the babylonian god of fertility Marduk, (thought to be where the beard and hat may have originated) later evolving into the roman saturn, the norse odin, and eventually he was rebirthed again as an invention of coca-cola (with some other stuff in between of course). Marduk was worshipped during the winter solstice to ensure his victory in the battle against degradation and chaos, so that the sun would return and the world would not die. The core of the ritual was human sacrifice. The actual kings were sacrificed, until they realized that was wastful and they started sacrificing fake kings. The evolution of this celebration in ancient rome was Saturnalia. Saturn being the god of death, memories and the past, you can see how this plays out in in the Screwge story 'A Christmas Carol.'
Saturn devoured babies from birth, and Saturnalia was also known as the 'Festival of children' during which children were sacrficed for him and for the crops, as it was commonly believed at the time that childrens blood was the most fertile for crops. The tradition of 'wassailing' or "chistmas caroling" comes from the norse (whose winter tradition melded with the romans). Originally wassailing was running around town drunk while drinking a bowl of human blood. wassail meant "well health".
The Roman catholic church couldnt really have the population running around sacrificing children, So they outlawed the celebration, which did nothing to curtail the festivities. They did not manage to halt the practices until a hundred or so years later, when they figured out it would be more effective to absorb the holiday, hence making the 25th christs birthday.
The Tradition of gift giving to children (and traced back, Santa's sack) was put in place by the church as a reversal of child sacrifice, the sack of gifts having once been the sack of human remains.

The state of christmas now is kind of hilarious, with the commercialism and materialsm and overconsumption. In old europe, as winter was a time of darkness and scarcity, the hanging of wreaves became a feature of the celebration, the wreaves bearing fake painted fruit- to make people feel like it was summer again. I personally draw a parallel here to the empty and obligatory gift giving of useless crap.
WHen looking at christmas currently I see a society driven made by its own emptiness and disconnection, and when I look back at the oldest traditions I see cultures driven mad with fear of the worlds natural cycles and therefore engaging in psychotic behaviors to try and control their enviornment.

This christmas is differnt for me. I have a craving for cleansing, releasing, disowning, as a rebellion against emptyness and materialsm and trying to fill the emptiness with"fake fruit". The natural cycle of winter tells me this is a time for rest, abstention, and clearing, basically, detoxifying from all the negative shit in preperation for the new year. I;ll be making many trips to the dump and the goodwill getting rid of stuff. Im beginning a 40 day fast the day after christmas. Yes, im feeling very christ-y.
ALso there are some strong similarities between Christ and Marduk, which i just discovered after I had already made my resolutions:
As the Mesopotamians saw it, in the struggle of the New Year man faced a three-fold problem: to purify himself of the evils which his sins of the past year had brought upon him; to renew the strength which the year had drained away; and, if possible, to find a substitute who could take the consequences of the sins which he had committed. Hence the annual sacrifice of the "mock king". Christ however did the reverse in that he took responsibility for the sins of everyone. It is my belief that this "system" is the most basic powerful and effective way of magick. It is very similar to the ancient Hawaiian practice of Hooponopopo.

http://www.hooponopono.org/

I have heard of Marduk being a lot of things...from Sitchin's ideas of an Alien God, to possibly being Michael the archangel.
I have never heard of Marduk being Santa Clause though.

I do know there was a Saint Nicholas........I also believe there was origins in Christmas with Amantia muscaria mushrooms :

Here are some facts from (http://www.iamshaman.com/amanita/truemeaning.htm)
1. Saint Nicholas is the Patron Saint of Children (in Siberia)
2. The Reindeer Eat The Mushrooms.. Hence the Flight.
3. The Mushrooms Grow under Pine Trees in nature (nearly Exclusively)
4. The Mushrooms are Red and White.
5. The Mushrooms Were Typically Dried by Hanging them on the Hearth of The Fireplaces on Strings. Stocking Stuffers anyone??
6. They are Gathered in Sacks.. Santa's Bag.
7. The Very Name Christmas.. Is A Holiday Composing of the Words
...Christ (meaning the Anointed with the Magical Substance)
...Mass (a Special Service of the Sacramental ingestion of the Eucharist) the Body of Christ. In the Catholic Tradition this Substance Has been replaced by the Doctrine of Trans-substantiation, Whereby (By magical Ceremony) The Priests Claim the Ability to Transform A Cracker into the Literal Body of Christ.. Placebo!!

This is also very interesting:

Christmas Observations

by Anonymous of www.entheology.org

Christmas today is the best conglomeration of things that turn of the century New York retailers could put together, and its resemblance to anything before that time was purely for their convenience. For example, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented by a department store to boost sales. His red nose is unlikely to have any relationship to Amanita.

Tree worship has enormous and wide-ranging pagan background quite independent of mushroom proximity. One anthropologist proposed that our habit of decorating trees with lights (only recently indoors) can be traced all the way back to ceremonies originating with Man's learning to use fire.

The fact that Santa's suit is red and white actually has a startlingly modern origin: Coca-cola commissioned an advertisement, with Santa wearing their colors, in 1931 to try to boost their child market. (It was illegal for them to show children actually drinking Coke in advertisements, since Coca-cola originally contained coca, but that's another story) In the 19th century, "Father Christmas" was usually considered to wear greenish "forest" colors. Red was increasingly a popular Santa color in the early 20th century, but red and white together was due to Coca-cola's advertisements.

"Saint" Nicholas was considered the "patron saint" of many things, including sailors, merchants, and children - but "he" wasn't from Siberia. Actually, "Saint" Nicholas was most likely a combination of two historical characters, one of which was from Asia Minor (Turkey). Recently, the Catholic Church announced that there was never any official "Saint Nicholas", attributing the character to pagan sources. Claiming the Eucharist is built around mushrooms is without justification, thus breaking the word "Christmas" down for us is not too meaningful.

However, many religious traditions do have origins clearly linked to entheogens, which did get replaced with a "symbolic" ceremonial placebo.

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Ya, theres an overwhelming amount of history and influences there, to much to list in a single post. The Siberian shaman aspect of santa's origin with the mushrooms and the flying reindeer and everything is beautiful, the stuff of dreams.

I'm sure there's a plenty. To do with Christmas, I know people hold different beliefs with some of the traditions that go on. For instance, with the Christmas tree, some people view that the star placed on the top of the tree is symbolic of the light that led the wise men to baby Jesus, and that the baubles symbolise the planets, and the lights wound arond the tree, as the stars.

Actually, some Christians even believe that there were more kings than three, and although they were led by a light that was present in the sky during that time, the kings were present there with gifts before baby Jesus was born.

For this to happen, then it suggests that this major occurrence was predicted.

There are twelve holy nights around and after Christmas where some people believe that the dreams people have when they're asleep are suppose to help give the dreamer indication of what might happen in the new year. Of course, not everything is set in stone though.