Now that the Christmas season is over, I would like to answer all of the arguments I hear every year about why it is good and why it is bad and the origins of it and yadda yadda yadda. Some say we should stop commercializing the holiday and put Christ back into Christmas, and that is the crux of the problem, I think. Of that problem, and many others, and I wish to set the record straight once and for all in a roundabout way.
Following the example of Saint Columba, Maryknolls converting primitive people to their religion would integrate any of the indigenous practices they had to in order to make it stick. If the natives insisted on saying Rashumba dudda rosha while clutching people's heads and rolling their eyes up, well, they'd let them. But they'd give them a different reason to do it. Say, oh you're right to be doing what you're doing, but you are doing it for the wrong reason. THIS is what Rashumba-doodle-doo really means. Now, aren't you glad we came into your godforsaken land to tell you that? Good. Amen-amen, salvation all around. And now you can tell all these other servants of the Lord we brought with us where the gold and ivory is.
They started with folk heroes. Everybody remembers Saint George as being the one who slew a dragon, but most of us will agree that dragons didn't exist. In the Middle Ages, however, pagans did. And they believed in heroes who had slain them and deserved to be worshipped for it, after a fashion. Beowulf in Denmark and Siegfried in Germany are two notable examples. In order to incorporate those beliefs into Christianity, the worship of folk heroes and gods and goddesses became admissible by disguising them as saints. Saint George is a patron saint of Germany and England, but there wasn't squat mentioned in his canonization about dragons until that myth was needed to convert pagans. Same with St. Patrick driving snakes out of Ireland.
The Holy Trinity, for example, is not anywhere in the Bible. No implications, even. The idea of a Triune God didn't find its way into the Church formally until the fourth century, under Constantine in Rome, and it was adopted into Christianity because of politics. Mesopotamians had Anu, Ea, and Enlil. Egypt had Horus, Isis, and Osiris. Babylon had Ishtar, Sin, and Shamash. India had Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu. So, we had to have them, too, if we wanted a hold over those people. That's why we changed the Sabbath to Sunday. The day of the SUN god. We took sun disks from Egypt and turned them into haloes. We took the Goddess and called her the Virgin Mary. Where do you think the miter, the altar, doxology, and Communion came from? Pagans! You know, in India, when Krishna was born? Their book is a lot older than ours, and they say Krishna was visited by three kings who brought him gold, frankincense, and myrrh! Constantine brought all this under his roof because thats the quickest way to get people's loyaltythrough their gods.
Think about this: people often wonder why the Bible doesn't mention anything about Jesus between the ages of twelve and thirty. Know why? Because he wasn't around. The Hindus in their book talk about a mysterious young holy man who came out of the west to perform miracles and teach, and be taught, and he went away having learned a lot from them that he wanted to spread to his own people. Matthew even hints of it. Makes you wonder.
And now, to the point. Christmas.
People talking about how we should put the Christ back in Christmas, how it's become too commercialized, will be a tad disappointed to learn that Christ wasn't really ever there! Many people agree that Christ was really born in the Spring, because why would Mary and Joseph be traveling to participate in a census while she was pregnant if, one, no censuses were taken in the Winter, and two, the weather and roads in that area were treacherous that time of year? We had to celebrate his birth in the Winter to integrate the German's celebration of Yuletide.
The Germanic pagans would decorate trees in sacred groves that time of year, hoping to attract the spirits of their ancestors, whom they called alfs. Sounds suspiciously like elfs, doesn't it? The reason was that maybe, in the cold months when food was scarce, maybe the alfs would bring gifts. The Church outlawed the practice at first, being pagan, and so the Germans would cut down those trees and bring them inside, keeping the tradition alive by hiding it. Now, it is out in the open again.
However, celebrating Christ's birth in the Spring would have conflicted with the celebration of his death and resurrection, which we had to have in the Spring in order to assimilate the following two pagan rituals. First off, what do we know about Spring Break? What an interesting phenomenon, all these college kids going to Florida and Ibiza to get drunk and have wanton sex with strangers once a year, to just go wild. Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously like the same fertility festival that every pagan culture had every Spring since forever.
Now, the other one. Easter. Persecution of the Jews started up because of revolts against the Romans, 64 to 70 and 132 to 135 AD. Up until 70 AD the Christians were considered just another branch of Jews, so they got suppressed along with the rest of them, so what they did was start celebrating Easter instead of Passover, to distance themselves. They made up this Easter thing, assimilating pagan festivals that just happened to be around that time anyway. Tammuz and Ishtar. Attis and Cybele. Adonis and Aphrodite. Death and resurrection celebrated by fasting and then feasting. Here's a perfect example of how obvious it is: dead on Friday, risen on Sunday? Hello! How did three days and three nights turn into one and a half days and two nights? Any kind of rationalizing for Sunday undermines Jesus' prediction. He said three days. Period.
And now back to Christmas. Do you know when it became this way? Commercially, I mean? Merchants started promoting it in the 1870s. And now what was really Yuletide pumps $37 billion into US economy, every year. Heck, FDR even moved Thanksgivingthe authentic American holiday!back a whole week so there could be more time for Christmas shopping. And, as is often the way, much of the rest of the world followed suit. Yeah, it's tragic, some may say, but no, it isn't.
Commercialized Christmas, with a Coca-Cola red Santa Claus and jingle bells and all that mistletoe is great, because people are happier and actually care about each other for a whole month instead of grousing and complaining about how much life sucks all year round. You know, any merry-making at Christmas time was banned in America for a long time because Cotton Mather called it an affront unto the grace of God.' Actually BANNED. But we knew Cotton Mather was a schmuck, so to hell with him. Decent people HAD to bring back Christmas cheer with all this commercialism because Wintertime without it, this affront to God, well, sucks.
So, what I advise is this. Instead of arguing over why we do something and debating the validity of something that makes us happy, let us instead be thankful that it exists and DOES make us happy. Well, most of us. And while we're at it, instead of arguing that you are responsible for the horrific torture and death of a man who lived eons ago (at whatever time of year), a man you could never have known anything about had you not been told, and whose death compensated for an earlier crime with no victim, the only consequence of which being self-awareness and mortality, and that if you, who are free to choose, decline the vicarious redemption being offered through this terrible thing while completely ignoring the needs of those you actually HAVE sinned against, you will suffer a far more terrible fate for all eternityjust do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. That was the message of this man whose birth we may or may not be celebrating. All that other noise, that's just stories to ease the passage of that message into the consciousness of sheep-like people. That's all it is.
And now, don't even get me started on the subject of the New Year beginning in the middle of Winter instead of the first day of Spring.