The Green Knight And Pagan New Years

Note that the Green Knight visits Arthur's court on New Years, during a Christmas feast.

There are of course no references in the Bible to the date of Christ’s birth, but Romans already celebrated the winter solstice (shortest day of the year -- or death of the year) around December 25th. (Dec. 17th for the early Romans, then usually Dec. 21st; sometimes Dec. 25th).  According to the Roman Christian Tertullian (circa 160 - 230), during the Roman feast of Saturnalia (as in Saturn; aka the winter solstice) pagan Romans decorated their homes with evergreen boughs and hanged images of gods upon them.

Throughout the Middle East as well as Northern Europe and Celtic Britain, fir trees were common Pagan symbols of eternal life as they maintained their spring colors through the death of winter.

The Norse and Anglo Saxon pagans burned a yule log (still common in England and Canada) in mid-winter to burn off the old year, and decorated homes with holly ("Bot in his on hand he hade a holyn bobbe" l. 206) and mistletoe, which still maintains "fertility ritual" status in our country, but mainly note that both of these maintain their spring green through winter.

Like an evergreen tree, the Green Knight is cut down but will not die.

Ironically, the only mention of this "Christmas tree" custom in the Bible is as a prohibition against these pagan practices. From the Old Testament, Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (KJV)

The History Channel’s Christmas Unwrapped is an interesting look at the rocky history of this holiday. In the United States Christmas as a Christian holiday was not generally celebrated until around 185, and even as late as 100 years ago devout Christians considered “Christmas” a demonic pagan holiday to avoided or ignored.

For More On Blending Pagan and Christian Cultures Review: The Roman Crucible

The Celts and Human Sacrifice

The other cultural connection here ties the beheading of the Green Knight to Druidic human sacrifice as connected to Lindow man (wikipedia)and so called "bog bodies".  (Also see Danish Tollund Man).

Both the Roman historian Strabo and Julius Cesar himself note that the British practiced human sacrifice -- a practice that the Romans ended.

More Clues The Green Knight Is Pagan/Druidic
Well, I don't want to spoil the plot....