I’m really enjoying this discussion. It’s wonderful. Where I live Christmas is a bigger deal than Thanksgiving. We, too, had ham and also turkey for our Christmas meal.
This interview is incredible, I've listened to it twice now and still gotten new things from it. Aki really has a handle on the importance of ancestral Traditions and is such a wealth of knowledge. More of this please!
I really like Aki Cederberg, read and thoroughly enjoyed his book "Journeys in the Kali Yuga", this will be an interesting listen. This year I still celebrate Christmas, but next year might try Yule!
I think it's a really great interview -- entirely because Aki is so interesting. In regard to celebrating Christmas versus Yule, I believe Aki is okay with you doing either, just depending on what your tradition is.
You mentioned Christmas meals in different countries. In America, actually Christmas is the most important holiday of the year and the most common tradition is to eat a big leg of ham (Thanksgiving is major, but it's probably like the second or third most important). The Christmas ham is in line with much of northern Europe. IIRC, turkeys only came to Britain after their colonization of the US, and before that, ham was the Christmas meal of the wealthy in England too. This of course, has its roots in the ancient Yule ham in homage to Ingui-Frea/Yngvi-Freyr and his boar Gullinbursti.
Thanks. I've been in the U.S for twenty years, but I live in NYC, which is probably very different to other, more traditional and more family-oriented parts of America (and to the U.S. of a few decades ago). But, in my experience, here Christmas is not as much of a big deal as Thanksgiving, partly because people normally get two days off for Thanksgiving while it's not unusual to only get one day off for Christmas. Also, hardly anyone says "Christmas" here; it's "happy holidays," which is meant to include other religious holy days. Good to know about the tradition of eating ham in the U.S. Thanks again.
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos Oh, that's quite interesting. The cool thing about NYC is it's much more culturally and religiously mixed than most of the country, and it kind of marches to the beat of its own drum. I've lived in 6 states (West and Midwest) and "Happy Holidays" is common everywhere as is "Merry Christmas," as far as I know, but Christmas is by far the biggest of all holidays in those areas. But Christmas decoration, etc is sometimes frowned on before Thanksgiving has finished. I wonder if the prominence of Thanksgiving over Christmas is a NYC or maybe a Northeast thing. That's interesting.
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos But it's quite local. only in the state of Kerala ( India) maybe Karnataka too. But I guess it's become an identity thing now. There's a story about it too. This king is so virtuous that the Gods feared he'd threatened their position after death tgat they begged Vishnu by to do something about this guy. So Vishnu manifest as a bramin and asks for three feat of land. King laughs and says he'll see to it and asks him to measure his plot of land where ever it is. And if I remember correct the story goes that the bramin begins to grow. With this first foot he's covered the whole of heaven, with this second foot the whole of earth. Seeing that there's no more land left i think the King allows him to step on his head fir the final step and he does thus he's pushed down to the be neither world. He's given a chance to visit every year to see how his folks are doing. There's probably more to this.. m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/east+coast+daily+eng-epaper-eeastco/onam+festival+story+of+king+mahabali+onam-newsid-72022938?listname=topicsList&index=0&topicIndex=0&mode=pwa
In Sweden, Västerbotten in the beginning of the 1900 they did julafton (christmas-evening) with the Jul-goat. Some neighbour dressed up as a the jul-goat, took some wodden logs and smashed them at the door, and then threw in the presents in the house in a frightening way for the kids and then run away. There was no s:t Claus, but there was Vättar and some kind of tomtar that was supposed to get as an offering a plate with riceporridge outside the door, the night before Christmas, so that the would not bring in misfortune to the house.
Thanks Aki for mentioning my book. I really enjoyed the talk. Good yule!
:)
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos Great to see you here Tom, love your work!
Noah, did you mean to @SurviveTheJive? Yes, lots of fascinating videos on that channel.
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos Yes, Survive the Jive makes some of the very best content!
I’m really enjoying this discussion. It’s wonderful. Where I live Christmas is a bigger deal than Thanksgiving. We, too, had ham and also turkey for our Christmas meal.
This interview is incredible, I've listened to it twice now and still gotten new things from it. Aki really has a handle on the importance of ancestral Traditions and is such a wealth of knowledge. More of this please!
Agreed. Aki is very thought-provoking. (I especially appreciate that he is not down on other traditions.)
I really like Aki Cederberg, read and thoroughly enjoyed his book "Journeys in the Kali Yuga", this will be an interesting listen. This year I still celebrate Christmas, but next year might try Yule!
I think it's a really great interview -- entirely because Aki is so interesting. In regard to celebrating Christmas versus Yule, I believe Aki is okay with you doing either, just depending on what your tradition is.
You mentioned Christmas meals in different countries. In America, actually Christmas is the most important holiday of the year and the most common tradition is to eat a big leg of ham (Thanksgiving is major, but it's probably like the second or third most important). The Christmas ham is in line with much of northern Europe. IIRC, turkeys only came to Britain after their colonization of the US, and before that, ham was the Christmas meal of the wealthy in England too. This of course, has its roots in the ancient Yule ham in homage to Ingui-Frea/Yngvi-Freyr and his boar Gullinbursti.
Thanks. I've been in the U.S for twenty years, but I live in NYC, which is probably very different to other, more traditional and more family-oriented parts of America (and to the U.S. of a few decades ago). But, in my experience, here Christmas is not as much of a big deal as Thanksgiving, partly because people normally get two days off for Thanksgiving while it's not unusual to only get one day off for Christmas. Also, hardly anyone says "Christmas" here; it's "happy holidays," which is meant to include other religious holy days.
Good to know about the tradition of eating ham in the U.S.
Thanks again.
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos Oh, that's quite interesting. The cool thing about NYC is it's much more culturally and religiously mixed than most of the country, and it kind of marches to the beat of its own drum. I've lived in 6 states (West and Midwest) and "Happy Holidays" is common everywhere as is "Merry Christmas," as far as I know, but Christmas is by far the biggest of all holidays in those areas. But Christmas decoration, etc is sometimes frowned on before Thanksgiving has finished. I wonder if the prominence of Thanksgiving over Christmas is a NYC or maybe a Northeast thing. That's interesting.
It might be a thing of the northeast, but it could be more of an NY thing.because all of the people from other countries and cultures.
There's a festival called Onam about a kind King. It's a secular kinda tradition around august. Btw..
Merry Christmas ( or yule) and Happy New Year
Thanks, jack. I hadn't heard of that.
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos But it's quite local. only in the state of Kerala ( India) maybe Karnataka too. But I guess it's become an identity thing now. There's a story about it too. This king is so virtuous that the Gods feared he'd threatened their position after death tgat they begged Vishnu by to do something about this guy. So Vishnu manifest as a bramin and asks for three feat of land. King laughs and says he'll see to it and asks him to measure his plot of land where ever it is. And if I remember correct the story goes that the bramin begins to grow. With this first foot he's covered the whole of heaven, with this second foot the whole of earth. Seeing that there's no more land left i think the King allows him to step on his head fir the final step and he does thus he's pushed down to the be neither world. He's given a chance to visit every year to see how his folks are doing. There's probably more to this..
m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/east+coast+daily+eng-epaper-eeastco/onam+festival+story+of+king+mahabali+onam-newsid-72022938?listname=topicsList&index=0&topicIndex=0&mode=pwa
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos m.dailyhunt.in/news/india/english/east+coast+daily+eng-epaper-eeastco/onam+festival+story+of+king+mahabali+onam-newsid-72022938?listname=topicsList&index=0&topicIndex=0&mode=pwa
In Sweden, Västerbotten in the beginning of the 1900 they did julafton (christmas-evening) with the Jul-goat. Some neighbour dressed up as a the jul-goat, took some wodden logs and smashed them at the door, and then threw in the presents in the house in a frightening way for the kids and then run away. There was no s:t Claus, but there was Vättar and some kind of tomtar that was supposed to get as an offering a plate with riceporridge outside the door, the night before Christmas, so that the would not bring in misfortune to the house.
Sounds like a very intriguing custom. :)
@@AngelMillar-TransformingChaos Yes, my grandmother told me that it was i bit frightening.