Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide

First, this book is written by two German anthropologists and was only recently translated into English. The research is very thorough and objective. I'm sure someone would argue with this assertation, but I don't think I'd want dispute anthropologists who study ethnobotany and art history as well. They are more qualified than I am.Second, the book is not really a how-to book as far as rituals and such. This is more about the traditions and symbolism which we believe to be Christian and part of Christmas observance. Imagine telling someone that Santa Claus is really the personification of a hallucinogenic mushroom, the fly agaric, often used in shamanic religious practices. St. Nicholas' sack has pagan symbolism. The Christmas tree was the Christian church's response to the pagans who worshipped the living tree, so cutting down and killing the tree would be the ultimate insult. Plants and recipes involving particular spices are also mentioned in here. The living evergreen wreath is exceptionally symbolic as the circle of life and the wheel of the year. Buying gifts and decorating like mad is a new phenomenon during the Christmas season as is evident in poems, stories, and sayings from as late as the early 1900s.I believe this book would be educational and would benefit almost any reader. Pagans and Christians should all read this book. Some extremists wouldn't like it as it is in direct conflict with their beliefs.I say buy the book or borrow it from a library for its educational value. If it had been available in English, I would have bought it sooner. I've been looking for a book like this for years.

I got this book, I guess, hoping to see how the Pagan crowd decorated their tree. Silly me! A lot of this book covers the different plants and flowers that are more or less identified as having Pagan "roots", so to speak. There are a few pictures of trees, but they mostly concern decorating witih polka-dotted mushrooms and trolls instead of traditional balls, decorations, and tinsel. It is a nice book to flip through, but I probably won't spend a lot of time using it as reference, as I have my old-fashioned decorations and holiday books. Buy it if you can get it cheap, otherwise check it out at your local library if they carry it.

I have studied this subject for many years, yet this book showed me how much I did not know. Very informative, thorough, and clear in its language, I highly recommend this book for someone who would like in-depth knowledge of the plants of Christmas, as well as the customs surrounding this joyous holy day.

This book is exhaustive and you can easily get lost in the details. It was translated from the original German and occasionally some of the main ideas appear oddly expressed, indeed "lost in translation." It would be of great benefit to have a slightly less dense version of this book to appeal to those of us unfamiliar with the ethnobotany of Christmas. Having said that, this book opened my senses to a hidden and sometimes frightening world of pagan deities, demons, and fairies; the complex associations between them and their connection to plants, fruits, nuts, and trees. Upon completion of this book I had several ideas on how to expand my family's observance of the winter holidays to strengthen the bonds of our distant ancestry.

Kudos to the author! At last a book about pagan winter celebrations and the origins of Christmas that a thinking pagan can sink his or her teeth into! The author is an anthropologist and an ethnopharmacologist. This book goes far beyond the fluffy books on Yule that are on the market and shows you amazing things! Of course you really need to read the whole thing. A cursory glance will cause you to think it's all about magic, mushrooms, and sex, but, hey -- it's pagan isn't it? I picked it up with the ho-hum attitude of "I probably know everything it's going to say," and was immediately mesmerized with the layout, the pictures, the information, everything! And the little known esoterica brought out here makes it really worth reading. Worth reading on many, many levels.

A quick note to clarify that this book is primarily concerned with the PLANTS related to early pagan and later secular, pagan and religious observations of the Solstice and Christmas season. Ratsch is an ethnobotanist and psychopharmacologist, and as such focuses on the importance of plants in the rituals and customs. Very interesting stuff. I saw him speak many years ago at the Telluride Mushroom Festival, and I can tell you that he was way out there. He made the other guys seem tame by comparison, especially in his promotion of psychoactive plants as a means to reconnect with the spirit of the world. This work contains much on psychoactive plants, but also on other edible, decorative and generally interesting plants. Profusely illustrated. I highly recommend this book.

Good if you already know a lot about botany and such, but if you are completely ignorant on the subject (like me) it can be rather stale and some of the conclusions (ie that colors of red and white being a subliminal and ancient harkening to psychedelic mushrooms) can seem rather like a stretch. That being said using the history of the herbs and plants and whatnot in order to prove the broader point that Christmas is rather an amalgamation of ancient holidays is an interesting angle and it is well argued. Pictures are cool too. IF PURCHASING I would recommend buying a solid copy. I bought the Kindle version but I think the hard-copy is probably better laid-out, pictures didn't always sync up on the kindle. Read for an episode of my podcast, Hard Fried History.

Arrived fairly quickly, its ok but if id been able to look through it i wouldnt have been willing to pay this much to be honest. Its ok, but not fab

The second book about Christmas lore I own but definitely not the last. I want to know what we really celebrating but not what we are told. Definite buy for any seeker of true knowledge.

Fab book with lots of information I didnt know.Its given me ideas for next Xmas

An enlightening read. Educational.

Good