Talk:Christmas ham
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[edit] Saturn
Wouldn't the Christmas ham be an ancient Roman tradition in honor of god Saturn, later adopted elsewhere too but forgotten in most parts? Petteri Punakuono 03:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Recipe
The recipe should bot be here, but rather in the Wikicookbook. Recipes do not belong in Wikipedia. Israelite9191 05:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Stonehenge
I only found this from the net, it has been verified by archealogical findings of pig bones from the sites of worship that Tammuz was celebrated by eating pig - as has been verified by archealogical findings that the ancient builders of Stonehenge ate boar - do not have the magazine or English historical books available: However, Tammuz and the religious sacrifices is common knowledge which even I with my bad memory remember from school history lessons. From an April 14, 2003 article by Lowell Ponte in FrontPageMagazine.com:
“…In the religious mythology of ancient Mesopotamia are found Tammuz, lover of the goddess of love and sex Ishtar (one of several related names of Euro-Mediterranean pagan goddesses – Astarte, Ashtoreth, Isis, Eostre – who may be the namesake for Easter). Tammuz at age 40 was killed by a wild boar, but as a deity of vegetation he is restored to life each springtime. At this time of year in the ancient Middle East, women would weep for 40 days over the death of Tammuz, a pagan practice that the Prophet Ezekiel warned (Ezekiel 8:14-15) was happening next to God’s temple in Jerusalem. The lover of Tammuz, Ishtar (daughter of the Moon god Sin) had arrived on Earth inside a giant moon egg that spashed down in the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. (Thus it was taught in the Ishtar cult mythology of the ancient Queen Semiramis.) Ishtar was accompanied by a hare (mistakenly called a rabbit) that had been a bird before she magically transformed it into a symbol of fertility and fecundity, a proto-Playboy Bunny. This magical bunny retained its birdlike ability to lay eggs. And so it was that in the ancient pagan Middle East, springtime was celebrated by people giving one another brightly-colored eggs. They made baskets of river reeds to carry these eggs and spring lilies. Women wore new hats shaped like what we call bonnets. They ate hotbreads stamped with the X-symbol of Ishtar (Jeremiah 44:17). Bunnies were a symbol of Ishtar, whose worship took the form of ritual prostitution. Those not under Jewish Kosher laws ate ham to end the weeping 40 day “Month of Tammuz,” thereby symbolically devouring the beast that killed Tammuz. And on that celebratory morning early in the fourth month of the year, men and women would look to the east and celebrate the rising of the Sun God, another pagan act beside the Temple condemned by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8:16). You might notice some parallels here – to Easter eggs and their roll on the White House lawn, to Easter ham, to Easter lilies and baskets and bonnets and bunnies. Lent, like the weeping for Tammuz, lasts 40 days leading up to this celebration of resurrection. Many churches in a few days will be holding “Easter sunrise services,” even though Christian scripture says nothing about sunrise as the women go to Jesus’ tomb. Celebrating the sunrise in this way is not Christian; it is from ancient pagan Mesopotamia.”
So, Lazarus Sunday replaced Tammuz’s rite of spring and Lent was reinvented from its original cultural identity as a women’s lament for the loss of Ishtar’s potent lover; eating a cured ham was a ritualized form of revenge against the species that devoured poor Tammuz; the Easter bunny was an icon of a metamorphosis from an ancient egg-laying (pre-historic?) bird…apparently, “easter bonnets” were worn in Mesopotamia but I’m going to have to do some more research to find out about the ritualized prostitution…that’s one activity which doean’t seem to have survived the pagan-to-Christian transition, although one suspects the puritans hated Easter’s ‘wantonness’ & attavistic pagan connotations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IndianaJonesy (talk • contribs) 11:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
Found some info about the pigs and stonehenge from the net:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/mediacentre/2005/406.html Analysis of pig bones found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near to Stonehenge, shows that the pigs were most likely to have been slaughtered in winter. This suggests that our ancestors were taking part in a festival, feast or ceremony around the time of the winter solstice. By looking at ancient pigs' teeth found at the site, researchers discovered that most of the pigs were less than a year old when they were slaughtered.
Dr Umberto Albarella, a bone expert in the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, explains: "Pigs in the Neolithic tended to be born in spring, which would mean, if killed as part of a feast or ceremony at eight to ten months old, they would have died in December or January - at around the time of the winter solstice.
- Apparently the normans only took up the local custom of eating pig during winter solstice? Also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7078578.stm http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2201086.ece By any standards, it was a wild party: piles of half-eaten pig bones were flung to the floor by revellers who then smashed their food bowls into a "filthy" mud floor.
Add to that the fact that this bash took place 4,600 years ago, less than two miles from Stonehenge, and the result is a dramatic step forward in the quest to trace the origins - and purpose - of the world's most famous standing stones.
Archaeologists have revealed the discovery of a huge ancient settlement in Wiltshire used by the builders of Stonehenge and their descendants to celebrate life and death with lavish feasts of freshly slaughtered livestock. .. "The dating of the pigs' teeth suggests they were killed at nine months in time for the midwinter solstice. It would have been a sort of Neolithic Christmas - they had a really good party." —Preceding unsigned comment added by IndianaJonesy (talk • contribs) 11:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
- Hello there. Please keep in mind that this information is about a specific custom in Scandinavia and in England by way of Scandinavia. I don't think it's problematic to state that your source above states that pig bones were consumed at stone henge and it's theorized that pigs were consumed on the winter solstice. However, this ham we're talking about is a specific cultural custom seemingly brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons. Obviously, pig consumption in Northern Europe did not originate amongst the Germanic tribes. :bloodofox: (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Freyr
Hello bloodofox, I can see you have asked others to find booknotes (from your earlier edits) to support the claim that eating Christmas ham is a custom that originated from the devotees of Freyr. Also I can see from your edits that you kinda seems to like Freyr. Maybe the god is a matter of somewhat national pride to you, I do not know. If so, it is however very probable that you do not share many genes to people of that time, it is only custom and those before you who have eaten Christmas ham that drive your interest in the matter, I am guessing (and only guessing) here. When did people start to eat Christmas in Sweden (and I am only guessing you are Swedish, from the article about Freyr which names Freyr to be a 'Swedish' god. Did people already eat ham when the country of Sweden became to be? Earlier than that? Later?)
But the custom was NOT speficic to anglo-saxons but originated before them as well as before the time of Jesus. Now that you have noticed this, why keep the article such as it is? Seemingly only Swedes and Australians still follow the custom, but it's origins lie elsewhere and therefore it should be said int he article that "Swedes consider the custom to started with..", "the Australians consider the custom.."
Where is the evidence that pig was eaten during winter solstice by the Freyr supporters? Any such available? Did they not eat pig during many other occasions as well? And if so, would it not be incorrect to call the custom of eating Christmas ham to have originated with them? Stonehenge, on the other hand, was prerry much BUILT in order to celebrate the solstice, that was the most important feast of the year for them. The advanced culture of the time was knowledgeable of the calendar etc.
If you have the time to find booknotes - earliest known pig eaters _during Christmas_ in England were the builders of Stonehenge. In Europe, see above about Tammuz. Those are only the known ones.
Alas this whole page seems to be a joke, a joke that people from other cultures or children from any cannot understand: It says Christmas ham - but in reality is about a violent god that nationalists of one country like to support. The devotees of Freyr, an insignificant god of not many supporters, do not care about history.
Ham explained: What is a Christmas ham? The ham eaten duting Christmas. Once popular througout Europe but nowadays replaced by other Christmas dishes, which are considered to be better tasting by the people in most countries as habits have evolved since the middle ages.
Freyr explained
The devotees of Freyr claim origins of Christmas ham to have started at a specific time and place, both wrong. Why so? The nationalists, after nationstates emerged wanted to explain the international customs be somewhat local in order to gain support for their nationalist causes and thus they made up stories of how a specific custom would be local in origin. (Used to be so that people could wander around, no passports, no borders.) The modern-day counterparts of such nationalists, despite themselves knowing better than what they claim, now wish to do the same on an international scale: to explain that ham eating on Christmas came from a place that was only, most probably, populated a very long time after people already hams during the winter solstice. Some supported one god, some another, yet others none.
Alas I am too busy with my work to look into the matter further, so have to stop now. --IndianaJonesy (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
- Hell Indiana. Most of my edits are on articles relating to Germanic paganism, this is true. It seems to me you have a poor understanding of this subject matter and I would recommend that you read into the subject more. For example, while Freyr - the name which basically means "lord" - is associated with the royal line in Sweden, most of our information regarding the figure is from Iceland and it would appear that he was known under different names to the various Germanic peoples.
- I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic tribe that formed England. They originated in southern Jutland and it is due to this foundation that we are speaking English, a Germanic language, now. We have retained numerous traditions from this period, such as Anglo-Saxon law and the English language. Later, the Norsemen repeatedly invaded and conquered areas of what we now know as the United Kingdom, bringing with them many aspects of their customs, traditions and language as well. The Normans, also of Scandinavian origin though Latinized, then conquered England. During all of this, it would seem logical that the Yule log and Christmas ham survived as the tradition would likely continue to be re-inforced.
- The whole section is sourced. On Wikipedia, information requires solid sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
