And A Merry Winter Solstice To All!

In our modern culture, the biggest and most elaborate celebration of the year is, without a doubt, this monstrous holiday that goes by the name of "Christmas."  And without fail, every year there will be fights and arguments and controversy over what this celebration is really about, with Christians on one side and secularists on the other.  Read here about a public school where singing "Silent Night" will get you in a heap of trouble.  And here, where nativity scenes on public property have been banned.  Even saying “Merry Christmas” has its controversy.  No religious edification is safe!

So 'tis the season for your favorite blogger to whip out his keyboard and add his two cents’ worth.

Let's start off with this:  Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th.  We don't know for sure what time of the year He was born, but Bible scholars agree that it was very unlikely to be "on a cold winter's ni-ight that wa-as so deep."  Shepherds do not (did not) watch their flocks by night in the dead of winter, among other morsels of evidence.

When the sun, on its annual journey, reaches its most southerly point, it's called the Winter Solstice north of the equator (or Summer Solstice south of the equator).  In 2022, it will occur at 3:47 pm CST on Wednesday, December 21.  At that point, winter has reached its apex, and the days will start getting longer again.  Spring is coming!  People in the northern hemisphere have been celebrating this joyous event for pretty much as long as humans have lived on this planet - which is at least a thousand years or so before Christ was born.

To this day, our Christmas traditions are full of "warm-fuzzies" about the season of winter.  This applies regardless of the actual weather conditions outside.  I live in south Texas, where it rarely snows, come Christmas or otherwise.  But we still put up all the decorations meant to mimic ice and snow, and sing "Jingle Bells", "Sleigh Ride", "Frosty the Snowman", "Let it Snow", "Winter Wonderland", and others about cold weather.  We sing them even though few of us, if any, have actually ridden in a one-horse open sleigh or built a snowman.  

So how and why did the "Mass for Christ" come to be celebrated in December?  The generally accepted answer is that church leaders wanted to "steal the thunder", so to speak, out of the Solstice celebrations.  It seems that in the days of the early Christian church, the Solstice parties had become a hideous pagan orgy of sex, drunkenness, and debauchery.  Turning it into a religious holy day might tone things down somewhat - in theory, at least. 

But notice that most of the pagan symbols and rituals never went away.  The lights, indoor trees, greenery, wreaths, yule log, and all the other glittery, sparkly things are still with us.  But make no mistake about it:  Christmas trees and lights have nothing to do with the birth of Christ.  Sorry, but  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did not have a Christmas tree in their living room.  It’s rather ironic that even Christian churches everywhere go hog-wild with all these seasonal decorations that are, in truth, 100% pagan.

Meanwhile, our end-of-year seasonal celebrations have inherited all sorts of other events, celebrations, and other cultural symbols which have all morphed and merged together into “Christmas."  There’s the Feast of Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, originally celebrated on December 8.  Today the plump, white-bearded, red-suited, cookie-eating man with the reindeer is nothing at all like his original personage.  But who can deny that he, above all others, is the ultimate Christmas icon?  Then we can also toss in New Years, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc., etc. (does the school district mentioned above allow Hanukkah carols?).

Shop till you drop.

And then there's the gift-giving orgy.  For most of us, the one aspect of Christmas that has the biggest impact on our lives is financial, all courtesy of the unbreakable tradition that we must buy everybody a present.  And too often, money is no object.  The average American spends about $650 on Christmas gifts and goodies.

Wise men from the East really don’t belong here.

The tradition supposedly started with the Bible story of the wise men from the East who presented the child Jesus with gifts.  Here again we have another goofy anachronism:  Jesus was, like, two years old when this event occurred. Never mind all those nativity scenes with the camels and the "three kings".  So today, we shop till we drop, or our credit cards melt, whichever comes first.  Jesus and company would all be horrified at what this noble tradition has morphed into.

It's no secret that for many retailers, Christmas is the biggest revenue-generator of the year, thanks to us consumers.  Normally, I would not object to businesses seeking a profit-making opportunity and working hard to take advantage of it - but retailers have crossed the line when they start putting up their holiday decorations in, like, October.  It's bad enough that Thanksgiving, a truly blessed holiday, has been swallowed by Christmas because there's just not enough retail money to be made on it; now even Halloween is in danger of being swallowed.  

It all starts on Thanksgiving.

Christmas overkill has also spilled over onto entertainment venues.  A favorite radio station of mine normally plays bunches of great classic, rarely-heard oldies.  Nowadays they start playing 24-7 Christmas music on Thanksgiving Day!!  That should be a felony (wow - can you believe a hard-core libertarian just said that?!?).

When I become Emperor Of The World, I will declare that the celebration of Jesus' birth be taken out of the month of December, and moved to August.  What else happens in August?  Nothing!!  This should end, once and for all, all this fighting and bickering over what the "real" meaning is behind the big holiday celebration in December. 

In the meantime, have a Merry Winter Solstice, one and all!