In the valleys of the Danube, Dnieper, Don, Volga, this holiday has certainly existed since the time of Attila. In Western Europe, it began to be celebrated in this form only in the XIX century. It should be remembered that the Slavs and Romans considered oak a sacred tree, the Finns birch, the Greeks olive, and the southern Germans spruce. The first mention of a Christmas tree is found in the Alsatian chronicles of 1500. The decoration of Christmas trees for the New Year in Russia was banned during World War I by the tsarist government, as it was supposedly a German custom, in fact it dates back to the ancient times of the veneration of evergreens and trees.
In the Avestan (Zoroastrian) teaching about the end of the world Frashkard, very reminiscent of the Apocalypse, sheep (rams) are mentioned: «Who was righteous and who was sinful everyone will rise in the place where he met his death. The sun will shine with renewed vigor, half of its radiance will go to Gaia Martan, and half to the rest of humanity. The bodies and souls of the resurrected recognize each other. The husband recognizes the wife, the children of the parents, and the relatives of each other. And those who were lonely in a previous life will now find their family.» So, everyone both the righteous and sinners will rise again and rejoice, having regained their lost loved ones. And then a Sadvastaran meeting will take place, and their good and evil thoughts, speeches and deeds will be demonstrated to everyone. And sinners will look there like a white sheep among the blacks» (speaking in Russian, like a white crow). And Jesus Christ is the lamb of God, and the lamb is a lamb (baby sheep), the firstborn in the flock, which was used as a sacrificial animal.
Arias, hence the name «Iran» from «Arians», aries from Latin a ram, aries, a totemic animal of the ancient Indo-Europeans. Arkaim is represented by a giant wheel with a diameter of 180 meters with two circles of powerful walls: external and internal.
Especially impressive is the five-meter-thick outer wall, built of soil and having an internal gallery. On the outside, a deep ditch was dug around the wall. The inner moat is covered with a log flooring, possibly representing a storm sewer. Dwellings were located from the walls towards the central square. These houses were quite large: up to 20 meters long and more than 6 meters wide, where, according to experts, up to 50 people could be accommodated. In each house there were hearths, wells, pits for storing food, rooms for individual families. The floor was covered with a solid layer of lime mortar. In total, the settlement could accommodate up to two and a half thousand people. The inhabitants had a lot of cattle, especially horses slender, thin-legged, fast, harnessed to war chariots, these ancient «tanks» of the Eurasian steppes. The production of bronze products has reached a high degree of perfection. It is believed that they diverged from here to very remote places. Most scientists believe that these are ancient Aryans, Indo-Aryans, that is, the peoples of the Iranian group of languages.
Magi or magicians were called Persian (Zoroastrian) priests. «When Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of King Herod, the magi came to Jerusalem from the east,» says the Gospel of Matthew. From the east from Parthia (Iran), where the main religion at that time was Zoroastrianism. They carried out a sacred mission, seeking to expand the influence of their religion among the Jews to fight against Rome.
It is believed that by offering gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn Jesus, the magi honored him as a king, high priest and sacrifice. But the same gifts symbolize the three dominant castes of Zoroastrian society and three types of varna (in Sanskrit, «Varna» letters «quality», «color», the four main classes in Ancient India, the dominant position in society was occupied by Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas, the Sudras were a caste of inferior, dependent people). Similarly, in Zoroastrianism, the hvarna of the priest, the hvarna of the ruler and the hvarna of the warrior stood out. The symbol of royal charisma is gold, priestly frankincense, military myrrh, because warriors sacrifice themselves in the name of peace.
At that time, various dualistic religious teachings were spread in Parthia (Iran), considering the world as a struggle between the good principle led by the god Ormazd and his spirits and the evil principle led by the god Ahriman and his demons (devas). These teachings associated with the name of Zarathustra have not yet received final formalization. Later they received a dogmatic form in the Avesta books recognized as sacred and in this form became known as Zoroastrianism. The religion of Mithraism (the god Mithra) is also connected with Iran, which in the first centuries of the existence of Christianity was a serious competitor to it. Myths, the appearance of Mithras himself, the cult of Mithraism largely coincides with mythology, the cult of Christianity. Suffice it to say that the birth of the god Mithras was widely celebrated in the Roman Empire on December 25.
Initially, Christmas was celebrated on January 6, along with epiphany and epiphany, only in the IV century, when Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome, it was postponed to December 25 to displace the cult of Mithras. Syncretism was characteristic of the top of Parthian society, expressed in the fusion of local and Hellenic gods. In general, the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia (247 BC 224 AD) was distinguished by broad religious tolerance, unlike the later Sassanid dynasty, who were zealous advocates of pure Zoroastrianism. In the I century A.D. Zoroastrianism is being reformed in Parthia, ancient texts are being collected, and one of the oldest editions of the Avesta is being created. During its greatest heyday, the Parthian Kingdom stretched from Babylonia through Iran to the Indus Valley. The Parthian kingdom ceased to exist around 224, when the Sassanid state emerged.
So sheep, rams are our closest animals, helping people at all times.
2. 1945 chronicle
January 1945
On January 6, the Supreme Commander of the USSR, Stalin, receives a letter from British Prime Minister Churchill with a request to accelerate the start of the Soviet offensive, since the allies (Anglo-American troops faced the threat of a second Dunkirk, that is, encirclement, as in 1940) were in a difficult situation in the Ardennes. Therefore, despite the bad weather, on January 12, instead of the planned January 20, a major winter offensive of Soviet troops begins in East Prussia, Western Poland and Silesia, called the Vistula-Oder offensive operation of the Red Army. Already on January 17, as a result of the Warsaw-Poznan operation, the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front, together with the 1st Army of the Polish Army, liberated Warsaw, and on January 18, Soviet troops entered Silesia on the territory of Germany. On January 19, the troops of the 2nd Belorussian Front entered the territory of East Prussia, and the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front liberated the city of Lodz in Poland.
On January 20, an armistice agreement was signed in Moscow between the USSR, the United States and Great Britain on the one hand and German ally Hungary on the other. Hungary capitulated.
January 23 forced retreat of German troops. Elimination of the Ardennes «salient» on the western front.
On January 26, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on awarding Leningrad with the Order of Lenin was published.