Since humans evolved enough to have concern for the shortening of the days and the apparent loss of the sun this season must have been special. This year the Winter Solstice took on special meaning because of the Mayan calender thing. It was fun to play along and get some kind of fun rather than only being bombarded with the usual excesses that the season brings in this country. Has anyone ever wondered what would happen to the economy if we simple forgot to play along? So the capitalists in particular have reason to be happy don't they? The orgy goes back far beyond Christianity. In fact the celebration of Christ's birth was moved to coincide with the ongoing solstice celebrations around the fourth century. The overpowering physical presence during this season is darkness. In modern times the darkness has been turned back with the lights of so many kinds. I live in the country and we get darker but cities and towns all around light up the night sky. Let us think about the season from that perspective for it has much to give us to think about. Read on below and I'll explain.
Solstice Celebrations have an interesting history. How much does our modern orgy resemble the past?
If future archaeologists were to replay news audiotapes from the turn-of-the-21st century holidays, they would hear weekly updates on the success or failure of area merchants and editorials on how their sales figures reveal the true state of the economy. If they also had access to computer records, they might assume the legal definition of Christmas in the U.S. includes a fiscal obligation for each family to incur self-destructive debt.
Need I mention the special irony of this as our republican congress plays games with the idea that debt is a bad thing? So how is it that we can be so oblivious to what we do?
First of all the human mind is based in a brain that is in us. The illusion we often try to project that there is a set of ideals and abstractions apart from this. That does not prevent us from constructing a false reality that ignores that very basic bit of biology. Our mind is a very complex thing but certain things about it can not be denied. The most basic is that every piece of sensory input relies on the stuff we have already learned for its processing into our world model. This is not a digression. The presence or absence of light is a dominant sensory experience and therefore the season's profound influence on us is no surprise.
Is there a connection between dwindling light and conspicuous consumption? Between the end of the year and irresponsible behavior? Certainly there is a connection between the solstice and the presence of millions of twinkling little bulbs illuminating a sky that has been dark for too long. And there is a biological connection between cold and overindulgence in food, but even if less logical, the connection between festivities and year's end seems just as central to our behavior.
There are many winter celebrations that antedate our placement of Christmas on December 25, three of which are ...:
Saturnalia
Hanukkah
Mithras
Let us take a look at some of what we know from history:
In Ancient Rome, the mythical age of Saturn's kingship was a golden age of happiness for all men, without theft or servitude, and without private property. Saturn, dethroned by his son Jupiter, had joined Janus as ruler in Italy, but when his time as earthly king was up, he disappeared. “It is said that to this day He lies in a magic sleep on a secret island near Britain, and at some future time ... He will return to inaugurate another Golden Age.”
Janus instituted the Saturnalia as a yearly tribute to his friend, Saturn. For mortals, the festival provided a yearly symbolic return to the Golden Age. It was an offense during this period to punish a criminal or start a war. The meal normally prepared only for the masters was prepared and served first to the slaves, and in further reversal of the normal order, it was served to the slaves by the masters. All people were equal and, because Saturn ruled before the current cosmic order, Misrule, with its lord (Saturnalia Princeps), was the order of the day.
Children and adults exchanged gifts, but the adult exchange became so great a problem -- the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer -- that a law was enacted making it legal only for richer people to give them to poorer.
Oooops! Well somewhere along the way these particulars seem to have been lost, but you get the idea.
Let's look at another one:
Saturnalia may have been responsible for the pageantry of our midwinter festival, but it's Mithraism [www.uvm.edu/~classics/life/holiday.html] that seems to have inspired certain symbolic religious elements of Christmas. Mithraism arose in the Mediterranean world at the same time as Christianity, either imported from Iran, as Franz Cumont believed, or as a new religion which borrowed the name Mithras from the Persians, as the Congress of Mithraic Studies suggested in 1971.
Mithraism radiated from India where there is evidence of its practice from 1400 B.C. Mitra was part of the Hindu pantheon and Mithra was, perhaps, a minor Zoroastrian deity, the god of the airy light between heaven and earth. He was also said to have been a military general in Chinese mythology.
The soldiers' god, even in Rome (although the faith was embraced by male emperors, farmers, bureaucrats, merchants, and slaves, as well as soldiers), demanded a high standard of behavior, "temperance, self-control, and compassion -- even in victory". Such virtues were sought by Christian, too. Tertullian chides his fellow Christians for unbecoming behavior:
"Are you not ashamed, my fellow soldiers of Christ, that you will be condemned, not by Christ, but by some soldier of Mithras?"
The comparison of Mithraists and Christians is not coincidental. December 25 was Mithras' birthday (or festival [Survivals of Roman Religions p. 150]) before it was Jesus'. The Online Mithraic Faith Newsletter [no longer available] says:
"Since earliest history, the Sun has been celebrated with rituals by many cultures when it began it's journey into dominance after it's apparent weakness during winter. The origin of these rites, Mithrasists believe, is this proclamation at the dawn of human history by Mithras commanding His followers to observe such rites on that day to celebrate the birth of Mithras, the Invincible Sun."
But the actual choice of December 25 for Christmas was thought to have been made under the Emperor Aurelian because this was the date of the Winter Solstice and was the day devotees of Mithras celebrated the dies natalis solis invicti 'birthday of the invincible sun'.
So all this stuff is an ongoing human saga. The trappings, lights, holly, etc all predate Christmas.
This year in particular has brought us a lot to ponder at this time. Too many of those who carry the label "Christian" have shown that it is merely a label and that they practice something like a badly tainted form of witchcraft. I say that knowing that witchcraft itself is an honorable practice and am doing it injustice by this analogy but language fails me at this point. I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
Independent of the assaults on women and people who are LBTG we have had a tremendous attack on workers and our government has been taken over in one of the worst coups in history.
The climate has shown us that we have damaged our earth and that the consequences have begun to feed back on each other to accelerate the change beyond even the wildest predictions. Suddenly the sun has an threatening meaning as we celebrate its return.
So we have a lot to think about this year as the solstice comes and goes. Maybe the Mayans were not 100% correct but they may have simply not had the timing right. We may be on the way to something we wish would never happen. I hope we can renew the planet as easily as we get the sun to return. It is not probable. More like the Mayan prediction it seems far fetched.