Tis the season to be jolly!

All these Christmas decorations made me think this week. Everywhere are Christmas lights, Christmas trees, Santa’s, snowmen etc. etc. This made me think about WHY we do that? Why do we want our house to be so light we almost need sunglasses? This made me wonder whether people really know why we decorate our houses and light up a tree and put this in our home. For this matter I did some research, so here’s a little history lesson kids:

The pagan originality of the Christmas Tree

Many centuries ago trees were perceived as a symbol for fertility. The Romans but also the Germanic people thought trees were something divine. Elements like trees were important for making a connection to the godly world and ours. The Germans believed in the existence of tree spirits. They had special powers and they made sure people could live happily.  They discovered there was one tree which stayed green throughout the whole year, the pine tree. Other trees would lose their leaves. In order to keep the tree spirits satisfied and to make sure they would return the fertility to those trees which lost their leaves they began to decorate them to lure the spirits back. These decorations were things like apples, garlands made of gold and silver and later decorations  which looked like moons and stars. They also made offerings to the spirits. Nowadays, they compare these offerings to the giving of presents.

The Christian originality of the Christmas Tree

It’s no surprise that nowadays Christmas goes hand in hand with Christianity and the birth of Jesus Christ. But many centuries ago the Christmas Tree wasn’t perceived as a symbol of Christianity, in fact the tree was banned from churches. Later Christianity decided to accept the tree and started to give meaning to it in a Christian way. The tree was associated with the holy number three and was a symbol for knowledge, good and evil and for the tree from which Eve picked the poisoned apple. The image of the Christmas Tree we know now was actually known since World War II and since then every home had one around Christmas time.

As for the lights: the pagans believed the light was a symbol for the birth of the Sun, while the Christians believed it was a symbol for new life, the birth of Jesus Christ.

Enough for now I think. By researching this I actually think people don’t know why they are decorating their houses the way they do. Christmas nowadays is a symbol for family, being together and giving each other presents. Maybe that’s just the way we see it now and we don’t really need to remind this history, but in fact I do. It’s good to know where things originate from and why we do the things we do. But after all, let’s just enjoy this time of the year. It’s not without reason it’s called ‘the most wonderful time of the year!’

 

Merry Christmas! X

Source: http://kunst-en-cultuur.infonu.nl/feestdagen/46991-de-kerstboom-de-oorsprong-van-de-versiering.html

Dubsmash, the perfect meme?

For people who don’t know what I’m talking about: open your Facebook page and it’s very likely you will see at least one movie in which one of your friends shows off his or her playback and imitation skills via the new app Dubsmash. The idea is simple, you choose a soundclip of the library, click on it and record your movie.

Now where does this app come from? First I thought it was just fun, but now I know it’s actually very different. It’s about mimicking people, having fun but most of all self love. You are the subject instead of the one who is responsible for the audio. You are the one that shows off your playbacking ‘talent,’ you you you. The app is the perfect combination of the love of yourself (e.g. the selfie) and crazy (sound) clips from the internet.

Here I want to include some insights I got from this block’s lessons about identity. Nowadays identity isn’t that indisputable anymore. You can change who you want to be every minute if you want to. This becomes even easier online. You can create yourself in a whole new way on the internet. But in this  lies a paradox. The absence of the body seems less important these days, people know other people create fake profiles and act differently than in real life and seem okay with it. On the other hand, the perfect body never seems so important as nowadays. People mimic each other in order to belong to a group, but on the other hand they want to be unique. Now, everyone wants to make the most unique Dubsmash video, but meanwhile they don’t realize that they are not unique at all because the whole world has access to this app and is making movies in the same and ‘unique’ way as you do.

It’s not that I don’t love this app, in fact, I think I have discovered a whole new talent of mine! Of course this is completely useless, but at least I’m having fun doing it. And isn’t that also important? But if you think about it, nothing good ever came from bad playbacking, right Britney?