 Hello people, I'm Ginny Metherill, I'm a fourth generation witch. It's getting close to that time of year again, when a Christmas is coming. Although people often say the Christmas is actually a Christian festival, us traditional witches know it to be something else. And so this is my pagan Christmas. Today's video is sponsored by the wonderful Purple Garden. So should you consider giving yourself a little Christmas present, I can thoroughly recommend this website. But more on that later. Let's have a look at what I mean by a pagan Christmas. So every Christmas morning people wake up, don't they, and they open their stockings which have been left there by Father Christmas. The indubitable Father Christmas. Wonderful, isn't it? I love stockings, they're actually my favourite part of Christmas. I love thinking about them, I love going out and looking for things that I might want to put in them, and I particularly love just Father Christmas. The Americans of course call him Santa Claus, and this is an Americanism. It comes from their own mythology. There is a Saint Nicholas in Northern and Eastern Europe. Germans love Saint Nicholas and so do the Scandinavian countries. However, the Britons are always about Father Christmas and that is what we call him. And this is because it's taken from the Anglo-Saxon old man winter. He was considered some form of deity that holds sway over the winter months, and his time of year was of course, Yule the Winter Solstice, which is when we worship Christmas. So we can actually say that Father Christmas, Santa Claus, is a directly pagan influence. And of course he is. Anybody who goes around flying about the place and spreading logets as they go with a bunch of reindeer? They've got to be some sort of pagan deity, haven't they? If you have a stocking on Christmas morning, then you're following the ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of old man winter. 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I don't understand it. So it was wonderful to go to Purple Gardens and use one of their astrologers. I was asking them about several questions during my life of which I know the answers because you know, she gets a bit boring when you know your future the whole time. So I try not to ask too much. However, this astrologer came up with the actual goods and I was really pleased that they understand what I was talking about and they gave me the correct answer. Anyway, let me know how you get on with today's sponsor, Purple Garden. So after opening your stockings, will you not come downstairs and gaze at the cutiousness of the Christmas tree? The Christmas tree, of course, is bought over to the UK by the Germans because they were very teutonic and had Christmas trees. However, before they bought Christmas trees inside, they decorated them outside and they were decorated with presents, fruits and nuts and sweeties. The British embraced the tradition of the Christmas tree with great aplomb and took it over mightily and I think we're only second place now to the Americans in our utter worship of it and if this is not more pagan, I don't know what is. And even if we didn't decorate a tree and bring it inside to our homes before the 1800s, we certainly bought in a lot of greenery. Greenery coming into our homes is very much a pagan tradition. It is particularly part of the druidic faith. So mistletoe was cut down at the winter solstice and bought it and held up above the doorways in your home. Now this is of course for protection but also because mistletoe is beautiful is it not? And when you kissed underneath it, you were expected to take one of the beautiful berries off the bush and discard it because that means you've taken a little bit of the mistletoe magic. Makes your kiss eternal. I mean mistletoe of course is one of the most sacred of the Druidic herbs and they did cut it down on the full moon of midwinter with their golden sickles to decorate their altars and use in their rituals and we bought it into our homes in honour for that. Underneath the Christmas tree you will see a lovely pile of presents. Presents at this time was a custom that's been going on for probably as long as we have been human. It was the time when the Lords of the Manor or the overriding kings of the nation would give presents to their subjects and so these were normally gifts of food such as nuts, seeds, hunks of meat which means that you would use them to have a feast and oh my goodness me is that not Christmas dinner? A massive time for a feast. Feasting at Christmas is really one of its main attractions. Henry VIII when he first came to the throne spent three quarters of his tax income so that's a vast amount. I mean we must be looking at millions on feeding 10,000 people at feasts over the Christmas period. It was a tradition of the time. Stock meat so meat from lambs or meat from sheep or cows or pigs was a rarity. There was of course a wild game and if I'm sure we all remember that rather wonderful nursery rhymes with four and twenty blackbirds baked in the pie the Tudors were incredibly good at theatre dining and they pretty much invented that theatrical dining experience and so the four and twenty blackbirds they obviously weren't baked into the pie they were just put into a dish with a pie cross put on top and when it was taken out they flew out. Once you've opened your Christmas presents you might well walk out and go and listen to some carol singers. Yeah carol singers. Yeah deeply deeply pagan the Puritans hated carol singing and decided that if a woman sang at carols she was definitely a witch. They were based on a lot of folk songs and so therefore they would have incorporated the pagan traditions that were every day at that time. So carols although now we have them as christian songs they definitely weren't to start with. And finally I'm going to talk about the holly wreath that wonderful piece of decoration on your door. The holly wreath has long been claimed by the Celts and the Druids as their own. The Romani nation hold it that you should have your holly wreath containing both prickly and smooth holly because this ensures that there is marital harmony within your house. If you just have prickly holly in your wreath that means that the man is going to rule the roost for the rest of the year and if you have smooth holly it's the woman has the trousers in this household. Domestic harmony of course calls for balance and so we should be looking for prickly and smooth holly in our wreath. The wreath itself is a warding symbol the round circle is a round circle of protection and you putting it against your door gives you the protection from the nastier elements that are out there. The holly itself is a protective and this holly wreath is therefore a true charm on your home. You have been celebrating a pagan Christmas throughout your lives and that fills me with great joy. Let me know what other traditions you do in the comments below. I really enjoy reading your comments so please do leave me one. My Patreon Coving Meeting is coming up so if you join Patreon now there's still chance for you to come to the Covent Meeting. I'm not going to be here for the next couple of weeks as I am on holiday excitingly seeing and arguing with my family no doubt. Can't wait it's going to be great and in the meantime have a very happy pagan Christmas so I will see you in a couple of weeks.