The Evolved Podcast

Holiday Amnesia: Celebrating Our Traditions Consciously Not Robotically

• Manhattan Prophet • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Ever wonder why we decorate trees in December or hunt for eggs in spring? Beneath the surface of our most cherished celebrations lie forgotten origins and manipulated histories that would shock most holiday revelers.

In this eye-opening exploration of holiday consciousness, we peel back the layers of tradition to reveal how our most sacred and secular celebrations have been co-opted, stripped of their spiritual significance, and repackaged to serve various agendas. From Christmas's pagan roots to Thanksgiving's sanitized history, these revelations challenge everything we thought we knew about the days we mark on our calendars.

Aaron Scott guides us through how holidays function as both personal anchors and national myth-making tools. These ritualized pauses don't just give us days off—they shape our identities from childhood, create emotional architecture that lasts a lifetime, and reinforce cultural narratives that often suppress uncomfortable truths.

The journey takes us through the manipulation of our calendar system (did you know September through December are named for the numbers 7-10 despite being our 9-12th months?), the Roman Catholic Church's strategic placement of holy days, and how April Fool's Day emerged from calendar reform resistance. We examine how religious celebrations across traditions share surprising similarities, revealing a common human experience beneath seemingly different beliefs.

Most powerfully, this episode challenges us to question what happens when we celebrate without understanding. Are we practicing faith or participating in a ritual of ignorance? When we decorate, gather, feast, and repeat without questioning, do we become unwitting participants in our own programming?

This isn't about abandoning cherished traditions but awakening to their true significance—moving from autopilot celebration to conscious observance. By remembering where our traditions truly come from, we reclaim our power to decide what they mean and transform them from mechanisms of control into authentic expressions of our humanity.

Follow The Evolved Podcast to continue unveiling the true nature of the world hiding in plain sight, with new episodes weekly. Support this evolution of consciousness by sharing with loved ones and leaving a review.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everyone and welcome to the twelfth episode of the Manhattan Prophet Podcast. I am the Manhattan Prophet as a reminder, so that nothing is lost in translation. I'm here to ensure that all knowledge I give finds meaning in a practical place in your everyday lives. It's only through properly digesting knowledge, in this case of ourselves and the world around us, that we see things clearly enough to break old patterns of behavior and to get a new path forward to a heightened state of consciousness. Today we're diving into something that touches every one of us, yet most of us never stop to question our holidays. You see, most people celebrate holidays without ever really knowing what they're celebrating. We decorate, we gather, we feast, we repeat. But ask someone the true origin of the holiday they're celebrating? We decorate, we gather, we feast, we repeat. But ask someone the true origin of the holiday they're observing and chances are the answer is vague, commercialized or flat out wrong. In this episode, we're exploring the hidden histories and deeper meaning behind the holidays we've grown up with. How many were co-opted, stripped of their spiritual or cultural significance and repackaged to serve agendas far removed from their roots? We'll talk about how misunderstood holidays shape our identity, regulate our emotions and even act as mechanisms of control. But, most importantly, we'll ask why knowing the truth matters, because when we remember where something comes from, we reclaim our power to decide what it means. So whether it's Christmas, independence Day, thanksgiving or Easter, this episode is about waking up from the autopilot of tradition and stepping into conscious celebration.

Speaker 1:

Let's get into it. Holidays are not merely breaks from work or school. They are ritualized pauses in time, cultural mirrors through which we remember who we are, who we've been and who we aspire to be. At both the personal and national level, holidays function as anchoring mechanisms for identity. They shape memory, belief, belonging, even behavior, and often they do so quietly, invisibly and powerfully. Let's unpack why holidays are not just seasonal celebrations but psychological scaffolding and national myth-making tools.

Speaker 1:

On the personal level, holidays are woven into our earliest emotional and sensory experiences. For many, holidays are the first rituals we participate in Lighting candles, singing songs, setting tables, decorating homes. These rituals build memory through repetition, and memory builds identity. Ritual in its simplest form can be understood as repetition with meaning. These repeated actions create a sense of stability and continuity in a chaotic world. They tell us you are part of something ancient, something bigger. Don't be so disconnected that you are not able to see the potency of emotional memory. A child might forget a school lesson, but they remember the warmth of a certain dish, the scent of incense, the sound of laughter in the background. These become touchstones of the self emotional architecture that you, as an adult, often seek to return to.

Speaker 1:

At the macro level, holidays are tools of nation-building. They are the mythological glue used by governments and cultures to instill a shared story. The most successful holidays are those that merge national myth with emotional resonance, creating a collective sense of meaning and belonging. The Fourth of July, for instance, doesn't just celebrate independence from Britain. It reinforces a narrative of liberty, rebellion and exceptionalism. Fireworks and patriotic songs aren't neutral. They're performative affirmations of a shared mythos. Bastille Day, australia Day, juneteenth, victory Day in Russia each of these is more than historical remembrance. They are selective memory. They reflect what the nation chooses to elevate, forget or reframe. This myth-making can be dangerous when it suppresses truth. For example, columbus City in the United States once celebrated discovery while erasing Indigenous genocide. The shift towards Indigenous Peoples Day represents an evolving national identity, a collective confrontation with a buried past. Holidays, in this sense, are not just reflections of culture. They are battlegrounds for cultural definition.

Speaker 1:

Let's examine Thanksgiving, which may be the most acute example of blind celebration. The real Thanksgiving celebration was when, in 1637, massachusetts declared an official holiday after colonists massacred over 700 Pequot men, women and children during the Pequot War. The Thanksgiving holiday we know and celebrate today was, in truth, repurposed to shape nationalism. In 1863, president Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday during the Civil War, hoping to promote unity and heal the wounds of the nation. During the Civil War, hoping to promote unity and heal the wounds of the nation, he was heavily influenced by Sarah Josepha Hale, a magazine editor, who spent 17 years lobbying for a Thanksgiving holiday. This to promote morality, domestic values and a sense of American identity. So what we now think of as the first Thanksgiving was retroactively romanticized to give America a clean, harmonious origin story, one that erases colonization, genocide and indigenous resistance. Since 1970, many Native Americans have recognized Thanksgiving as a national day of mourning. On Thanksgiving Day, indigenous peoples and allies gather in Plymouth, massachusetts, to mourn the genocide of Native people, the theft of indigenous land and the distortion of history. It's a day to remember ancestors, educate the people and resist ongoing colonialism.

Speaker 1:

Over time, these holidays condition us to associate certain emotions with certain systems. Joy becomes tied to buying. Pride becomes tied to militarism, gratitude becomes tied to whitewashed history. Without awareness, holidays can become tools of subtle indoctrination. Because holidays are public and repeated, they are excellent barometers of social change. When values shift, holidays shift or become points of tension. The recognition of Juneteenth as a federal holiday reflects the US grappling with its racial legacy and expanding its national narrative to include Black freedom and resilience. This shows us that holidays are not static. They evolve, expand, clash and sometimes fracture, depending on what the society is willing or unwilling to acknowledge about itself. Ultimately, holidays operate in two directions they reflect back to the self and out towards the society. They tell the individual this is what your people value. They tell the nation this is what we want our citizens to feel, become simple tools for self-awareness. But when we go through the motions without reflection, they become mechanisms of programming.

Speaker 1:

Religious holidays were never meant to be days off work filled with generic rituals or commercial fanfare. At their core, they are spiritual markers guiding us through cycles of life death, rebirth, forgiveness, harvest, even light. When we understand the original intent behind these observances, we're invited back into alignment with something far deeper than tradition. We're invited into transformation. One of the most healing realizations we can have is that many of our religions are telling the same story in different languages shaped by geography and culture. The flood narrative spans Mesopotamia, Jewish, hindu and indigenous stories.

Speaker 1:

The winter solstice was a sacred turning point for ancient people around the globe, long before it was absorbed into Christian traditions like Christmas. This doesn't diminish anyone's faith. It illuminates their common essence. By learning the history behind holidays, we realize that we are not strangers divided by doctrine, but siblings, interpreting the divine through different windows. Embracing this consciousness dissolves the illusion of supremacy, replacing it with a newfound understanding of diversity. When we don't question or understand the roots of our beliefs, we risk surrendering our agency. Many have practiced faith not out of love or understanding, but out of fear, tradition or coercion. History matters because it reminds us that religions have always been intertwined with power, used both to liberate and to control.

Speaker 1:

Modern consciousness is obsessed with facts, data and logic. While useful, this linear lens has choked out our ability to see through symbols, metaphors and myth. But religious holidays are steeped in symbolic power. They reflect not only cultural memory, but cosmic patterns, solstices, equinoxes, agricultural cycles and planetary movements. When we rediscover what these symbols meant, like the candlelight of Diwali representing inner illumination amidst darkness, or Yom Kippur as a day of deep soul reckoning, we begin to live mythically once again. We shift from surface existence into a life that is layered with meaning, purpose and and poetic resonance.

Speaker 1:

Religion, when misused or misrepresented, has left behind deep scars forced conversions, inquisitions, genocides, cultural erasure. To heal we must first see clearly. Historical knowledge brings visibility to what was hidden or distorted. This kind of informed consciousness refuses to repeat past harm. It replaces shame or denial with accountability and reverence. In today's spiritual marketplace it's easy to romanticize cherry-pick or appropriate traditions without context. But when we know the history, we don't just mimic rituals, we honor them. If we're going to burn sage fast for clarity or celebrate solstices, let it be from a place of understanding and respect, not novelty or ego. Knowledge brings humility. In a world addicted to speed and forgetting remembering is an act of revolution. Knowing the true history of our religions and holidays reclaims what is sacred. It expands our consciousness beyond cultural conditioning. It reminds us that spirituality at its highest is about awakening, not controlling. In remembering where we came from, we find clearer direction and where we're going.

Speaker 1:

Our present-day calendar, known as the Gregorian calendar, has its roots in ancient Rome and is the product of both political and religious influence. Though initially adopted by Catholic countries, it wasn't universally embraced right away. Protestant and Orthodox nations held out for decades or even centuries. Today, the Gregorian calendar is the standard governing everything from business contracts to school years to religious holidays, many of which were strategically placed or preserved to support religious and empirical agendas. In order to illustrate just how disconnected we truly are from our own realities, the simple monthly structure of the modern day calendar is vastly unknown to most people.

Speaker 1:

Our current calendar is, in truth, a heavily revised version of older timekeeping systems that have been altered for political, religious and practical reasons over thousands of years. One of the clearest signs of this shift is hidden in plain sight. The names of the months themselves take September, october, november and December. Their names are derived from the Latin words for 7, septem, 8, octo, 9, novem and 10, decem, even though they are now the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th months of the year. This mismatch traces back to the early Roman calendar, which began in March, making those names numerically accurate at the time. Later reforms, including the addition of January and February to the beginning of the calendar, shifted everything forward. Over time, emperors even inserted their own names into the calendar, such as July for Julius Caesar and August for Augustus, further distorting the original structure.

Speaker 1:

What most people don't realize is that April 1st was once celebrated as New Year's Day across most of the world. Julius Caesar, advised by the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, restructured the Roman calendar to align with the solar year. He set January 1st as the start of the new year, made the year 365 days long, with a leap year every four years, and gave us the modern month lengths we mostly use today. So why January 1st for the first day of our new year? January was named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and doorways. He literally looks both forward and backward. The Roman consuls, or chief magistrates, took office on January 1st, so it became a practical administrative date to mark a new year.

Speaker 1:

During the Middle Ages, january 1st as New Year's faded into popularity due to Christian influences, many parts of Europe began the year at the end of March or beginning of April. Catholic countries adopted it quickly. Protestant and Orthodox countries took longer. England, in fact, waited until 1752. Greece until 1923. Not sure if you know this one, but when the calendar was reformed by Pope Gregory XIII, not everyone got the memo or accepted the change right away. Those who continued to celebrate the new year on April 1st were mocked by those who had adopted the new calendar, often being sent on fool's errands or tricked into elaborate pranks. Over time, these playful jabs evolved into what we now know as April Fool's Day, a quirky cultural remnant of a forgotten calendar revolution, reminding us just how little we know about the origins of the holidays we take for granted.

Speaker 1:

Many of the holy days celebrated in the Abrahamic religions Christianity, judaism and Islam have deeper roots in pre-Abrahamic pagan traditions that were absorbed, rebranded or reinterpreted over time as empires expanded and religions sought to unify diverse populations. Ancient seasonal festivals, solstice rites and fertility celebrations were often strategically repurposed to align with newer theological narratives. What we find is that modern-day monotheistic religions and their respective holidays are not in fact an evolved way of understanding our actual connection to universal consciousness, to understanding our connection to the divine. Let's look into the facts here. Christmas, for example, widely believed to mark the birth of Jesus, is in fact a celebration of the ancient winter solstice festivals like Saturnalia and Yule. These celebrated the return of light during the darkest days of the year. And Yule these celebrated the return of light during the darkest days of the year. Easter, too, is named after the pagan goddess Yistra, and coincides with spring fertility festivals celebrating rebirth and renewal.

Speaker 1:

This blending of old and new was not accidental. It was a deliberate method of corralling and indoctrinating people into new belief systems, making them more accessible and culturally familiar. Yet most people practicing these religions today are unaware that many of their most sacred observances are built upon older nature-centered traditions that long predated the texts and doctrines that they now uphold. We have Valentine's Day, which we have been taught to believe is simply a celebration of love or, if we looked a bit deeper, is the honoring of a 3rd century martyr, st Valentine, hence the name. But the origin is actually a celebration of the pagan festival Lupercalia, which was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus and Romulus and Remus, and involved love rituals, purification and matchmaking.

Speaker 1:

This manipulation didn't take place just with the commercial holidays. It did with those we assigned spirituality or divinity as well. Take Easter, for example, which in truth is a celebration of the spring equinox fertility rites, or pagan goddess Isra. You have been taught that it represents the day Jesus resurrected from the dead. This is but another fun fairy tale legislated by the Roman Catholic Church. Then we have Christmas, which is actually the pagan festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, christmas, which is actually the pagan festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, celebrating the sun god during the winter solstice. You have been taught that this is the birth of Jesus. Interestingly enough, when you investigate the origin story of Jesus, you find that the Roman Catholic version of his existence is nothing more than a plagiarized carbon copy of the solar messiah story, which is used throughout history to establish the importance of the sun. Pope Julius I in the 4th century set December 25th as Jesus' birthday to spiritually absorb and redirect the masses. The actual celebration is for the pagan sun god, yet the masses still to this day are blind to their own celebrations.

Speaker 1:

The Roman Catholic Church has in so many ways sculpted our common consciousness. They did so intentionally in order to shape, unify and manipulate society across centuries, and the Church determined what days were sacred and effectively structured people's time. The calendar, generally speaking, determines when you worked, rested, fasted, feasted. There were over 100 feast days per year in medieval Europe, which meant your entire sense of time and meaning was church-directed. Whoever controls time controls the pace and pattern of society.

Speaker 1:

This wasn't just spiritual. It had political and economic implications too. There were to be no marriages or legal proceedings during Lent, no farming on certain feast days, or else risk of excommunication or sin. Market days were often aligned with holy days to blend commerce and religion. Fasting seasons like Lent regulated food consumption and physical discipline. Feast days created communal highs, emotional and economic. These were tied to the church's calendar. This constant cycle of sacrifice and reward, controlled by religious authority, shaped behavior, expectation and even emotional life. This wasn't just religious, it was a consolidation of power. Days like All Souls Day, where last judgment-themed sermons instilled cosmic fear. You didn't just miss a holiday, you risked eternal consequences. People were, and still are to this day, kept morally dependent on the church for salvation. These holidays made spiritual obedience and participation non-optional, unless you wanted to risk your soul.

Speaker 1:

Of course, this is about more than just religious history. It's about identity, truth and how a society shapes its own soul. This tradition of half-truths and fables as the soul of our holidays has been seamlessly adopted by modern-day nations, even in this country. When a country sanitizes or mythologizes its history, especially its origin stories, it creates a collective consciousness that's unmoored from truth. In the US, that means genocide is rebranded as gratitude. Slavery becomes a footnote instead of the backbone of the economy. Colonialism is heroic, not predatory.

Speaker 1:

When people are disconnected from the painful parts of their collective heritage, several traits emerge in the dominant culture Compassion is extended selectively, often aligned with national or racial identity. Global suffering becomes easier to ignore, especially if victims are not quote-unquote us. Any challenge to national myths feels like a personal attack. Western citizens often feel unrooted, anxious and disconnected. That's the cost of living in a society that doesn't know or denies its truth story. There's no ancestral grounding, no collective ritual of reckoning, no shared meaning-making that honors both beauty and pain. If the collective story is dishonest or incomplete, people will retreat into self-branding hustle culture, escapism or consumerism to fill the void. The I-am-what-I-buy-do-or or achieve mentality becomes the default identity framework.

Speaker 1:

When we deny the trauma of genocide, the theft of land and labor, the legacies of perpetual warfare and Western hegemony, that denial does not disappear. It seeps into delusional nationalism, cultural amnesia, even anxiety disorders. These aren't just personal issues. They are symptoms of a culture avoiding its own shadow, not willingly, but rather from a collective subconscious anchored in complacent ignorance. The path forward is not through guilt, but through evolution of consciousness. When people start learning the truth of their country, its pain, its resilience, its stolen lives, something incredible can happen. Empathy deepens, identity, becomes more resilient, not less. People begin to see themselves as part of a larger human story, not just patriotic consumers. They are more likely to vote with intention, protest with compassion, create with justice in mind. A collective that tells the truth about its past becomes capable of healing its future On an even deeper level.

Speaker 1:

When we pray, celebrate or simply identify with held beliefs, we align ourselves with a force greater than ourselves. It's an act of intimate psychological and spiritual tuning. But when the object of our devotion is not rooted in truth, when it's a projection, a distortion or a construct meant to control rather than liberate, then what we are doing is not celebrating. It's psychological self-fracturing. We're feeding our consciousness to an illusion.

Speaker 1:

Religious holidays today are not celebrations of truth, but stories we were told to keep us in line with the societal power structure. If we don't know the history or the astrotheological truths behind the myths, we're not engaging in spirituality. We're participating in psychological programming, celebrating a collective bliss of ignorance on annual repeat like a broken record. For example, worshipping the event of a resurrection without understanding the inner alchemy of rebirth leads to an externalization of divinity. We look outside of ourselves for salvation while ignoring the God force or Krishna or Buddha within. But don't worry. In today's society, all of these religious holidays and their fairy tale gods take a backseat to the ever-changing line of popular false gods that seem to rejuvenate every season. We have consumerism disguised as abundance, nationalism disguised as divine destiny, institutional religion disguised as spiritual truth. Don't forget celebrities disguised as divine destiny, institutional religion disguised as spiritual truth. Don't forget celebrities disguised as saviors or the fan favorite, your own ego disguised as empowerment.

Speaker 1:

When we anchor our spiritual energy to false gods, our inner compass gets corrupted. We are not able to experience a genuine spiritual connection to our higher selves, to the source we are all collectively in tune with. False gods require followers, they need worshipers, because they are empty constructs that feed off belief. The true divine, the original source, needs nothing from us but invites everything from us. It invites wholeness, remembrance and sovereignty.

Speaker 1:

Yet when we spent our lives invested in a false image, the truth feels threatening. It shatters comforting illusions. But to stay aligned with a false god out of convenience is to continue praying to our own chains. To stop praying to false gods means more than rejecting institutions. It means going inward. It means asking is what I believe bringing me closer to truth or just keeping me acceptable to the social status quo? Am I shorting a system or am I in a relationship with something eternal? Do I feel more sovereign and loving, or more fearful and dependent?

Speaker 1:

The reclaiming of our consciousness begins when we stop outsourcing our spiritual power and start embodying it. The true quote, unquote holy day is when your inner being is aligned with the truth of who and what you really are. When people are asleep in their own existence, they become easily manipulated, disconnected from meaning, numb to wonder and, most tragically, estranged from their own soul. Think about it In a society of overworked, oversimulated and undernourished souls, holidays become the state-sanctioned dopamine drip. You're given permission to rest, love or reflect. This illusion of freedom masks the deeper reality. The emotional life of the population becomes compartmentalized, controlled, somewhat argue, weaponized. Myths matter, and holidays are how these myths are reinforced. By rewriting the origins and meanings of holidays, the system replaces spiritual truth with nationalistic fiction. Religious holidays are secularized, stripped of mystical meaning and used for economic simulation. Check out Christmas, for example. National holidays promote hero myths, world-warification or origin stories that erase inconvenient truths, ie Thanksgiving. The people aren't celebrating reality, they're celebrating the approved version of reality.

Speaker 1:

Rituals are powerful tools of consciousness. When engaged intentionally, they awaken. But in other frameworks rituals can hypnotize. When people repeat holiday behaviors year after year decorating, pledging, shopping, singing without knowing the symbolic or historical meaning, they become unconscious participants in their own programming. The repetition builds neural pathways of compliance, emotional associations with false narratives, social pressure to conform, shaming those who refuse to participate. In this way, the system doesn't need to force anything. The ritual enforces itself. Control, conformity, complacency all thrive in forgetfulness. Holidays end up helping people forget what matters and remember what the holiday narrative has become. The original purpose of many holidays was rebirth, awakening or sacred alignment. Now they serve to maintain social sedation. The soul is put to sleep under the comfort of nostalgia.

Speaker 1:

Perhaps the most insidious use of holidays, as shown by Judaism, islam and the Church, is the way they divert true spiritual connection. You are taught to externalize divinity. Islam and the Church is the way they divert true spiritual connection. You are taught to externalize divinity, to look to a nation, a messiah, a flag, a product, a saint, instead of the divine within. You are given rituals but stripped of their true meaning. You are offered reverence but directed towards false gods. Gods of war, consumption and obedience. Gods of war, consumption and obedience. True spirituality liberates it, questions it, awakens inner sovereignty. That's dangerous to any controlling system. So instead, holidays offer a state-approved spirituality, one that directs your awe and reverence away from truth and towards the system.

Speaker 1:

Holidays create mass rituals of perceived togetherness parades, fireworks, televised speeches that produce a false sense of communal harmony. You're not actually united, you're synchronized. The result is a population that feels emotionally tethered to a nation or system, even if that system is exploiting them. The illusion of connection becomes more important than the actual reality when we celebrate religious holidays without knowing their origin stories or, worse, without understanding what we're actually celebrating. We're not practicing faith, we're participating in a ritual of ignorance. In doing so, we willingly accept yet again someone else's narrative, someone else's consolidation of energy broadcast across the entire population. It reveals just how controlled we truly are. Not only are our working hours owned, but even our holy days, our time of rest, reflection and supposed spiritual alignment, they're hijacked. These days were meant to be sacred moments to disconnect from the machine and reconnect with whatever belief system, spiritual path or divine presence speaks to us.

Speaker 1:

But if you choose to ignore this truth and write off this message as irrelevant, ask yourself this what are you left with? That's truly holy. What are you left with? That actually reflects truth? What do you really know about the beliefs you claim to hold? Tolerating lies from the outside is one thing, but internalizing them, making them part of your identity, repeating them without question, that's not devotion, that's delusion.

Speaker 1:

As you continue listening to the Manhattan Prophet podcast, I'm going to unveil the true nature of the world that exists right under your nose. I'm going to analyze with you, out in the open, the systems at play here and the ways we can grow together and evolve. I'm going to provide you with real-world ways to touch higher levels of consciousness and understanding through truth and knowledge. I want to make this clear I do not own these truths. I do not own this knowledge. I'm simply extracting it and distilling it for you in an accessible form. I ask not that you follow me blindly, rather that you follow me with your open mind and heart. Episodes are updated weekly. If you believe and want to change your world for the better and support this evolution of consciousness, please show me by following and sharing this channel with those you love and leaving a review. If you enjoyed our time today, please donate on BuyMeACoffee, linked in the show notes below Until next week. Let's level up and master your universe.