O'Reilly and a host of other latter-day Pharisees think they own this late-December holiday lock, stock and barrel. They don't. They never have and they never will, for Christmas is not for Christians only. It never has been and it never will be.
And for a very good reason. O'Reilly and company are in stubborn, bullheaded denial of a fact of history that won't go away: The holiday the world celebrates on the 25th of December is thousands of years older than Christianity itself.
The Historical Truth About Christmas
The historical truth is that Christmas is the Christian adaptation of the many ancient Pagan celebrations of the winter solstice. With the notable exception of the Nativity Creche, nearly all of the symbols and decorations that we associate today with Christmas -- the tree, the wreath, the holly and the ivy, the lights, the mistletoe, the eggnog, the yule log, the caroling and even Santa Claus -- are of Pagan origin.
Many Americans, in fact, often refer to Christmas as "the Yuletide." And no wonder: Yule is the winter solstice. Most modern Pagans still celebrate Yule. Even most Christians use "Christmas" and "Yule" interchangeably to describe the season without even thinking about its Pagan origins.
Yule celebrates the beginning of the sun's light and warmth returning to the northern hemisphere after reaching its southernmost point on the Earth at the Tropic of Capricorn on the winter solstice.
[In the interest of full disclosure, this blogger is obliged to state for the record that I, a former Roman Catholic, am a Pagan; more specifically, a Wiccan. Yule -- which this year came and went this past Saturday -- is also the anniversary of my conversion in 1984 to Wicca, the largest and best-known "denomination" of modern Paganism.]
The Origin of the Christmas Tree
If you really want to be historically accurate, then the Christmas tree should rightly be called the Yule tree, for it dates back nearly 5,000 years to the Celtic Druids. They revered evergreens as manifestations of deity because they did not "die" from year to year, but stayed green and alive when other plants appeared dead and bare. The trees represented everlasting life and hope for the return of spring.
Best known today for their celebrations of the summer solstice in June at Stonehenge, the Druids decorated their trees for the winter solstice in December with symbols of prosperity: a fruitful harvest, coins for wealth and various charms such as those for love or fertility. Scandinavian Pagans became the first to bring their decorated trees indoors, as this provided a warm and welcoming environment for the native fairy folk to join in the festivities.
The Saxons, a Pagan tribe from what is now Germany, were the first to place lights on the their trees in the form of candles (an extremely dangerous fire hazard by today's standards, I know). For centuries, the ancient Romans decorated their homes with evergreens at the winter solstice festival of Saturnalia -- which also marked the Roman New Year -- and exchanged evergreen branches with friends as a sign of good luck.
Christians' use of the tree symbol for the December holidays did not begin until the 16th century, when devout Catholics in present-day Italy brought decorated trees into their homes. The German-born Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, is credited with starting the tradition in England in 1841 when he brought the first Christmas tree into Windsor Castle.
The Eight Pagan Holidays
Nature's cycles of winter, spring, summer and fall (and everything else in between) are so much a part of human life and society on Earth that to acknowledge, celebrate and even sanctify those cycles is a primal need we simply cannot ignore. Just ask any ski-resort operator in winter or swimming-pool operator in summer -- or any farmer, for that matter.
Yet those who follow the world's three great monotheistic religions -- Christianity, Judaism and Islam -- have long been reluctant to do so and instead instituted their own rituals, holy days and festivals. The fact that many of the major Christian, Jewish and Muslim holidays -- and even some civic and national holidays -- often occur in tandem with the eight major Pagan holidays during the course of the year is no accident.
In addition to the winter solstice celebration of Yule on December 20-22 (depending on the actual date of the solstice itself from one year to the next), the other seven Pagan holidays are:
I'm a native of New York City who's called the Green Mountain state of Vermont home since the summer of 1994. A former freelance journalist, I'm a fiercely independent freethinker who's highly skeptical of authority figures -- especially when they're on the wrong side of the issues I care about. But I'm not afraid to also call into question those with whom I would usually be "on the same page" if and when they, too, are on the wrong side of the issues I care about.
I look forward to Christmas more and more each year. Why ? Because of Yule (or Jul Tid whereas the word "Tid" is still part of the northern dialect in what is now known as Germany...meaning "time") and the end of long dark days, with each day being brighter and brighter. If you watch for the difference, day by day, year after year, you'll soon notice the gradual changes. Unless you live in an area largely uneffected by this. I'm happy to have stumbled across this article and I hope more people come to rediscover the older traditions which have been bulldozed over and cleverly meshed with Christianity.
by
Tony Forest (7 articles, 18 quicklinks, 166 diaries, 1429 comments)
on Monday, December 31, 2007 at 7:57:08 AM
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