The Origin of Christmas

Frantic people every where are trying to re frame the meaning of Christmas as the commercial mass hysteria of jingling tills and glee filled retailers converge for yet another silly season boarders on over kill and burn out

The origin of things is something most have little clue about. Unexamined lives continue to buy into unexamined beliefs until they become ingrained unconscious patterns that are considered to be - simply - the way life is and for the most part they go unchallenged.

However knowing the origin of things can expand our awareness of who we are as individuals and who we are as a collective. Thus as the capitalist world succumbs to the end of year consumer frenzy, and Christians mark the birth of their saviour and pagans the summer solstice, some of us head for the hills (or wish to) away from what many see as madness i.e. the silly season.

Yet this ‘silly’ season has its origins in a time long forgotten by us sophisticated moderns  - yet to discover the origins of our most auspicious festive season might just reveal some deeply unconscious associations that keep appearing at this time of year.

As far back as anyone can record the cause for celebration was originally Solstice. It is the oldest celebrated event in history – for the Northern hemisphere where the bulk of the population lived it was the winter solstice, for us here in New Zealand it is the Summer Solstice

• Around 2000 BC, the Ancient Mesopotamians marked the Winter Solstice with a festival celebrating their god Marduk’s victory over darkness. The Egyptians welcomed Ra’s triumph over death. With the Daygan festival, the Persian Zoroastrians dedicated the day after the Solstice to Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom.

• In the Ancient Greek Festival of Lenaea, wild women tore the harvest god Dionysus to pieces and ate him, then presided over his rebirth. On the Winter Solstice the Romans honored Saturn, the God of farming, with the Saturnalia. They also celebrated “Dies Natalis Invicti Solis”, the birthday of the invincible Sun, which came to Rome via Syria.

• The Ancient Celtic Druids celebrated Alban Arthuan, the “Light of Arthur”. They believed that during the 3 days before the Solstice, the Sun God journeys through Annwn, or the underworld, to learn the secrets of life and death.

•  Also in China and East Asia, the Winter Solstice is the occasion for one of the most important festivals, called Dong zhi, “the extreme of winter”. The Native Americans too had Winter Solstice rites, as is attested by the paintings of the Chumash people of California. So did the Incas: their festival called Inti Raymi honors Wiracocha, the Sun god.

• In Africa it was called the festival of the Unconquered Sun, more than 1,700 years ago denoting the return of the sun

Christians took this tradition and translated it for them selves to mean the birth of their divine Sun/son Thus the organic and natural cycle of nature which had underscored humanity for millennia began to be lost and eventually seriously eroded by the jingling of cash register tills and a hyped up media campaign of spend spend spend

It may surprise some to know that the celebration of the Christian Christmas is a relatively ‘new’ event beginning sometime after the 2nd century AD, The new testament for instance gives no date for the birth of the Christian savior and it doesn’t appear as if it ever mattered

scholars still debate the date to this day – Some believe, based on the De Pascha Computus, an anonymous document written in North Africa around 243 CE placed the birth on March 28. Clemet – bishop of Alexandria 215 CE thought Jesus was born on November 19th and based on historical records Joseph A. Fitzmyer – Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America, member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and former president of the Catholic Biblical Association guess’s that Jesus birth occurred on September 11th 3 BCE

Today Christians the world over have aligned themselves with the arbitrary date of 25th December inserting the birth of their savior as the cause of the festive season – this religious dogma has become the status quo belief for most western nations – yet it is being forced to change as more and more refuges from western imperialism seek refuge, bringing with them their own cultural beliefs – some of which clash with the status quo religious story – however all expand our knowledge of ourselves as a humanity and help shift the dogmatic beliefs that have kept the status quo in place

What follows is a time line of events that reveals a story not often told

How Did Christmas Come to Be Celebrated on December 25?

• Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.” Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this innocent man or woman.

•  The ancient Greek writer poet and historian Lucian (in his dialogue entitled Saturnalia) describes the festival’s observance in his time. In addition to human sacrifice, he mentions these customs: widespread intoxication; going from house to house while singing naked; rape and other sexual license; and consuming human-shaped biscuits (still produced in some English and most German bakeries during the Christmas season).

• In the 4th century CE, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it. Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.  The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

• Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia. As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.” The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling), etc.

•  The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston observed in 1687 that “the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.”   Because of its known pagan origin, Christmas was banned by the Puritans and its observance was illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.  However, Christmas was and still is celebrated by most Christians.

  The Origins of Christmas Customs

Christmas Trees

• Just as early Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, so too worshippers of the Asheira cult and its offshoots were recruited by the Church sanctioning “Christmas Trees”.   Pagans had long worshipped trees in the forest, or brought them into their homes and decorated them, and this observance was adopted and painted with a Christian veneer by the Church.

 Mistletoe

• Norse mythology recounts how the god Balder was killed using a mistletoe arrow by his rival god Hoder while fighting for the female Nanna. Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim.   The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

Christmas presents

• In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January). Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace. The Catholic Church gave this custom a Christian flavor by re-rooting it in the supposed gift-giving of Saint Nicholas (see below).

Santa Claus

• Nicholas was born in Parara, Turkey in 270 CE and later became Bishop of Myra. He died in 345 CE on December 6th. He was only named a saint in the 19th century.

• Nicholas was among the most senior bishops who convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE and created the New Testament. The text they produced portrayed Jews as “the children of the devil”[11] who sentenced Jesus to death.

• In 1087, a group of sailors who idolized Nicholas moved his bones from Turkey to a sanctuary in Bari, Italy. There Nicholas supplanted a female boon-giving deity called The Grandmother, or Pasqua Epiphania, who used to fill the children's stockings with her gifts. The Grandmother was ousted from her shrine at Bari, which became the center of the Nicholas cult. Members of this group gave each other gifts during a pageant they conducted annually on the anniversary of Nicholas’ death, December 6.

• The Nicholas cult spread north until it was adopted by German and Celtic pagans. These groups worshipped a pantheon led by Woden –their chief god and the father of Thor, Balder, and Tiw. Woden had a long, white beard and rode a horse through the heavens one evening each Autumn. When Nicholas merged with Woden, he shed his Mediterranean appearance, grew a beard, mounted a flying horse, rescheduled his flight for December, and donned heavy winter clothing.

• In a bid for pagan adherents in Northern Europe, the Catholic Church adopted the Nicholas cult and taught that he did (and they should) distribute gifts on December 25th instead of December 6th.

• In 1809, the novelist Washington Irving (most famous his The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle) wrote a satire of Dutch culture entitled Knickerbocker History. The satire refers several times to the white bearded, flying-horse riding Saint Nicholas using his Dutch name, Santa Claus.

• Dr. Clement Moore, a professor at Union Seminary, read Knickerbocker History, and in 1822 he published a poem based on the character Santa Claus: “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there…” Moore innovated by portraying a Santa with eight reindeer who descended through chimneys.

• The Bavarian illustrator Thomas Nast almost completed the modern picture of Santa Claus. From 1862 through 1886, based on Moore’s poem, Nast drew more than 2,200 cartoon images of Santa for Harper’s Weekly. Before Nast, Saint Nicholas had been pictured as everything from a stern looking bishop to a gnome-like figure in a frock. Nast also gave Santa a home at the North Pole, his workshop filled with elves, and his list of the good and bad children of the world. All Santa was missing was his red outfit.

• In 1931, the Coca Cola Corporation contracted the Swedish commercial artist Haddon Sundblom to create a coke-drinking Santa. Sundblom modeled his Santa on his friend Lou Prentice, chosen for his cheerful, chubby face. The corporation insisted that Santa’s fur-trimmed suit be bright, Coca Cola red. And Santa was born – a blend of Christian crusader, pagan god, and commercial idol.

And that dear friends is why today's christmas is the way it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGAzwStfAlw&feature=related