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Yes, it counts. If you look at most modern traditions, 90% of them are less than 100-150 years old. Christmas today looks nothing like Christmas in 1900, acros
by oblio 3y ago
Yes, it counts. If you look at most modern traditions, 90% of them are less than 100-150 years old.
Christmas today looks nothing like Christmas in 1900, across the world.
Most of the foods today (and I'm not talking about fast food) were invented in the same period. At least their modern incarnations, sometimes they have really old names but the old versions had very little in common with the current food.
- Retric 3y agoI disagree, Tinsel is at the edge of that 150 year window only going back to 1890’s, but Christmas hasn’t changed that much from 200 years ago. If you look at old pictures Christmas trees taken in 1900 it looks basically the same as one today except for the LED lighting showing how slowly things evolved. Documentation isn’t that great, but back in the 1450’s people decorated fir trees with apples alongside other ornaments which is the origin of modern round ornaments. By the 1530 there where rules limiting people to one tree in their homes. Massachusetts outlawed Christmas celebrations back in 1659 outside of Church attendance. The tradition had spread well outside of Germany even back in 1841 Winser Castle had a Christmas Tree.
- oblio 3y agoYou're talking about Central and Northern Europe (+ their colonies). Christmas in Eastern Europe and most other places looked nothing like that. Heck, Seychelles and Hawaii decorate their local trees like they're fir trees in Scandinavia.
- Retric 3y agoYes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either. Traditions diffuse across generations, cultures, and geographic borders that doesn’t somehow make them new or fake.
- oblio 3y agoI don't recall where I read it, but: > Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either. Yes, they do :-) The vast majority of people, especially in underdeveloped or developing countries, DO live in the general area where their ancestors moved during the last migration, which for some was thousands of years ago. People really don't move away unless it's easy or they're forced to. And my comment also included stuff like food. Most current food is modern.
- Retric 3y agoMost people have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, etc out to several generations before incest kids in. Many of those people stayed in place, but when you’re talking hundreds of thousands of people they aren’t all sedentary. Even just within Africa there’s been a huge amount of migration recently. Not all of this was even voluntarily. I have ancestors that trace back to Spanish Armada in 1588 getting stuck in England. > Most current food is modern. Only by the strictest interpretation of recipes. Most food is remixes of ancient staples like bread and cheese, or like tomatoes local plants that spread hundreds of years ago. You could get a cheeseburger, as in ground beef topped with cheese served on a bun, going back to antiquity. Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802. Thin sliced potatoes boiled in oil may have first entered the western diet all the way back in 1623, but we don’t know what "papas fritas" means. Staples like rice are obviously ancient and still make up a large part of peoples diets.
- oblio 3y agoSpices are new to most of the world outside of elites. Food used to be very bland for most people. Meat was super expensive for most people, it was hardly a mass market thing to be eaten every day. I could go on and on :-) Thomas Jefferson was an American elite. Americans have had it much better, or at least richer, than most of the rest of the world, for far longer.
- 3y ago