Contributions of the Barbarians to 
Modern Culture and Civilization

• Our Holiday Traditions.

  Ever wonder where the hanging of mistletoe arose as a Christmas tradition?  How about Santa Claus?  Why do we celebrate New Year's at the end of December instead of in April as we once did?  Why are Holly and Ivy so important to the season?  Why do we put up a Christmas Tree in our house? Why are gifts exchanged at Christmas?  Why is ham traditionally eaten during the Christmas feast?  Guess what -- all of these traditions stem from the barbarian festival of Jul (Yule); the festival of the Winter Solstice.  This festival lasted for 12 nights, beginning on the night of December 20 (Solstice Eve), and culminating on the Night of December 31 (New Year's Eve, which is why Pope Gregory chose this as the beginning of the New Year.)  When Christianity sought to incorporate the barbarian festival of the return of the Light with the festival of the birth of their Savior, they chose December 24 as the Solstice Eve because by that time, the Julian Calendar was 4 days off from the actual Solstice.  (By the time Pope Gregory corrected it in the 16th century, it was over 11 days off from the actual Solstice.)  The putting up of a Christmas Tree was to appease the landwights, or nature spirits, of the area, to guarantee a bountiful harvest for the coming year.  Mistletoe was the plant that had slain Balder, the god of Love, and it was believed that through its power he would be restored (the rebirth of the God.)  Santa Claus is the modern derivative of the Norse God Odhinn; the "Wild Hunt" took place during the winter months and was at its peak during the festival of Jul.  During this time, Odhinn and his retinue would ride through the sky, carried by his eight-legged steed, Sleipnir.  It was the custom of barbarian children to place straw and sugar in their shoes for Sleipnir for his journey.  In return, the Allfather would give them gifts (or so they were told by their parents!) Nicholas, a Christian Saint, also embodied this tradition in giving to the poor, especially the children, at Christmas time, which is why Santa Claus is also known as "St. Nick."  Holly and Ivy were considered to be representative of the masculine and feminine force by the ancient Celts, and these had to be in right balance with each other at the time of Yule for fortune to enter within the house.  Finally, the sacred animal that both German and Celtic barbarians associated with the holiday was the Boar, both the symbol of Lugh and of Fro Ingwe (Freyr).  The tradition of bringing the Boar's Head in was in tribute to this God of Fertility and Love.  It was traditional that the hero that had performed the greatest deed in the past year would be given the "Hero's Cut," the finest cut of the ham.  To this day, ham is still associated with the festival of Yule. 
  
  Mention, too, must be made of the Barbarian holiday of Ostara, occurring at the Vernal Equinox (around March 20-21).  The Old English word for the holiday, Eostre, developed into the word for the Christian holiday of Easter.  Ostara, or Eostre, was the Goddess of Spring and beauty. During the Christianization of Europe, the Christian monks made all the elder gods into demonic forms to turn the people away from their worship.  They were unable to do this with the blissful Eostre, however, as she espoused the virtues of purity, innocence, and youth.  Instead, her holiday was adopted into the holiday of the death and rebirth of the Christian god,  Jesus. 

  Many of our Easter customs derive from the heathen practices during Ostara.  The coloring of eggs was a powerful ritual of fertility; many games involving eggs such as "first crack" and "lobbing" were actually methods of divination for determining whether the new year and the harvest would be prosperous.  The rabbit was venerated by the Germans and Celts as a symbol of fertility, obviously because of its reproductive fecundity. 
   

• Mathematics. 

  Both the Celtic and Teutonic barbarians also had an extensive mathematical system, based upon base-12 rather than base-10 such as the Arabics have.  This influence can still be seen in our (U.S.) mathematics today. We have a 24-hour day (twice 12), there are 60 minutes in an hour (5 times 12), 12 months in a year; we buy things by the dozen (12) or gross (12 squared = 144).  There are special words for 11 and 12 (eleven and twelve) rather than saying (oneteen or twoteen), while 13 (thirteen) reverts back to a base-10 standpoint.  The circle is divided into 360 degrees (30x12), a foot is 12 inches, and so on.  Even their alphabet, the Elder Futhark, has 24 characters in it, now known as the "runes."  From this system, there is evidence to indicate that these "barbarous" people were able to perform complex calculations such as predicting eclipses and other astronomical phenomenon. (Owen, "The Germanic People", 1960.)
  
  It is amazing to me how controversial this subject is.  Time and again, I get e-mails from people (sometimes irate!) about how the Babylonians used a base-12 mathematical system long before the German barbarians.  The hilarious point of it is, both the Babylonians and the Germans hailed from the SAME ROOT RACE: the Indo-European "Aryan" race. Migrating from the southern region of the Himalayan mountains some 11,000 years ago, these people spread to Mesopotamia, the Caucasus Mountains, across the Black Sea, and finally into Northern Europe, settling all along the way.  Clearly, the base-12 mathematical system was in use long before either the Germans or the Babylonians had settled in their respective locations. 

  My point was that the NAMES of the numbers "eleven" and "twelve", the use of the 360-degree circle, the 12-month year (rather than the 13-month Judaic and Celtic year), the 24-hour day, etc., that the English system uses was derived from the Germanic base-12 system rather than the Arabic base-10, even though our calculations use base-10 mathematics.  Anyone who has to convert from degrees-minutes-seconds (base-12) to decimal degrees (base-10) knows the difficulty involved with this procedure, even when using a calculator.  We had very little concrete knowledge of the Babylonian civilization outside of books until the Mesopotamian excavations during the 19th and early 20th century, but the Germanic civilization is from where we descended and what has been the greater influencer of our thought processes.  (The relatively modern base-10 Metric system that the rest of the world uses STILL has not yet been adopted by the English-based countries, including the U.S.)  

• Literature. 
  
  I have already mentioned much of the barbarian peoples' contributions to classic literature.  Epics such as Beowulf and the Mabinogion, the tales of King Arthur, the Kalevala (the Ugric-Finnish saga), the Volsung Saga (the Ring of the Nibelungen), the sayings of the Havamal, and the Prose and Poetic Eddas are just a few of the tales that have survived from barbarian times.  Many of the European fairy tales, such as those of the Brothers Grimm, are recountings of the ancient legends and wisdom teachings of the barbarians.