That's right folks! The stores, diaries here, the radio, probably TV (I don't watch it)... everywhere, we are being besieged with the stuff. I have my own take on this season. It goes with the way religion must have come upon us way, way back in the earleist days of human evolution. I wrote about it a but last year, but this year is special. We are in a very special time. Therefore it is very important that we use the weeks ahead wisely. We need to be prepared. We need to be proactive, not reactive. Therefore come look beneath the break and join me in preparing ourselves for this season of importance.
First a story. It happened something like this:
The new human species had begun to multiply and had learned to communicate. It was fall, winter was coming. The days got shorter, or more specifically, the sun stayed with us for less time each time it appeared. This was hard to deal with. If it continued, the sun might just go away. Then what? Darkness all the time? Already it felt better to light the fires and many of them to produce light to replace the depressing darkness. By now superstition had begun to enter the primitive culture. It was a practice to make sacrifices to ward off disaster and to encourage good hunting, fertility, etc. So they made sacrifices to the sun. Soon the days began to be longer again! The sun was coming back! The rituals and the lights and the piles of boughs and everything they were doing had succeeded in keeping the sun from going away! What power! What magic!
The next year it happened again. And the next, and so on........
So there you have it! We are about to do it one more time. All of mankind will in some way be celebrating one event, the Winter Solstice. Yes, they all have their own ways of doing it. That, in a way is sad, because we are once more engaged in killing those who do it differently than we do. But at the core it is all one human species that celebrates the return of the sun each year.
So as I ride about the countryside I see the electric fires producing light to dispell the dark gloom. I see the boughs and logs and hear singing which has replaced the ancient chants. Probably well over 99.999% of those who so enthusiastically celebrate the season have no clue that their act mimics acts begun tens of thousands of years ago. They have become comfortable with their own cultural myths and will remain so even if exposed to the history we know to be true. Yes, even if it means having regular wars because those "other people" do it differently.
Oh, oh, I seem some of you snickering and others shaking their heads. I did not just make this all up you know. Let's use Wikipedia to give a taste of what is out there: Cultural aspects:
Many cultures celebrate various combinations of the winter and summer solstices, the equinoxes, and the midpoints between them, leading to various holidays arising around these events. For the December solstice, Christmas is the most popular holiday to have arisen. In addition, Yalda, Saturnalia, Karachun, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Yule (see winter solstice for more) are also celebrated around this time. For the June solstice, Catholic and Nordic Protestant cultures celebrate the feast of St. John from June 23 to June 24 (see St. John's Eve, Ivan Kupala Day, Midsummer), while Neopagans observe Midsummer. For the vernal (spring) equinox, several spring-time festivals are celebrated, such as the observance in Judaism of Passover. The autumnal equinox has also given rise to various holidays, such as the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. At the midpoints between these four solar events, cross-quarter days are celebrated.
In many cultures the solstices and equinoxes traditionally determine the midpoint of the seasons, which can be seen in the celebrations called midsummer and midwinter. Along this vein, the Japanese celebrate the start of each season with an occurrence known as Setsubun. The cumulative cooling and warming that result from the tilt of the planet become most pronounced after the solstices.
In the Hindu calendar, two sidereal solstices are named Uttarayana and Dakshinayana. The former occurs around January 14 each year, while the latter occurs around July 14 each year. These mark the movement of the Sun along a sidereally fixed zodiac (precession is ignored) into Mesha, a zodiacal sign which corresponded with Aries about 285, and into Tula, the opposite zodiacal sign which corresponded with Libra about 285.
Please forgive me but I have to plug last years diary on this because it has lots of information to back this all up: Io Saturnalia! And you can Google "Winter Solstice" and amuse yourself for hours. There is no need to fret the overpowering monoply some greedy sects have gained over the season in this country and other parts of the world. Focus on the unity and sameness of all the celebrations by all the world's people over all those tens of thousands of years. There is something that will move you if you do that reverently and seriously. It gives our new president's concept of our all being in this together some more meaning.