One of our Lighthouse students has been researching different attitides to Christmas from a historical perspective, and contributed this fascinating blog post on the subject:
After finishing our sociology module we had time before Christmas and so decided to do a display in the centre around how Christmas traditions have changed over the years. We went all the way back to the Middle Ages and then looked at the Tudors, Victorians, during the war and modern day. We looked at how Christmas was celebrated as a society and how it has evolved.
Originally Christmas was very religious and a time for prayer and reflection whereas nowadays it is more secular and driven by capitalism. Some traditions have stayed throughout the years such as gift giving and having a feast and others have changed such as not fasting anymore and less people go to midnight mass.
We looked at Christmas through the different sociological perspectives and whether they view Christmas as a positive or negative event. Functionalists say Christmas is vital for society as people come together and create social harmony. Marxists have the view that Christmas supports a capitalist society and feminists argue that Christmas widens the gender inequality within the household.
Learning about the changing society throughout the years was really interesting and being able to link my pre-existing knowledge of sociology to this project further developed my understanding.
