• Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    “Celtic” is an extremely sketchy grouping that encompassed many languages and cultures over a long period of time. It’s just a big basket for a linguistic group and spreads across an enormous area.

    Modern laypeople make a lot more of “Celtic” culture than they should. There’s no meaningful connection between modern “Celtic” nations and the “Celts” running around in 0ad, not least because the “Celts” were a number of different linguistic and cultural groups, not a single culture. There’s some linguistic connections in Irish, Welsh, and Scots, but that’s it. AFAIK there isn’t even a really good consensus on what “Celtic” should mean. Like we’re literally basing all this on trends in 2,000+ year old pottery.

    And the funny costumes are not “Celtic”, that’s ridiculous. It’s modern people dressing in funny costumes and ascribing meaning to them based on the mythology created for 19th century romantic nation-state building projects. What is this, a Krampus festival or something? Krampus is only attested from the 1400s.

    • Vncredleader@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      It goes right back to post-christianization cultural practices that have elements of folk Christianity and local flavor. Like the christmas tree, like any number of things. ReligionforBreakfast has some superb videos on this exact thing. He just did one on the christmas tree, and his one on Easter is fantastic at cutting through the BS.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW06pWHTeNk

      So many people want to put all their faith in Bede being honest and correct. It is absurd

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        So many things are like this. We have 1 source for this 500 sq km region in the entire period from 324ad-545ad, so that source is definitely a smart informed correct guy and not just some shitposter.