Happy Holiday Season Seekers!
A lovely time of year when many holidays across cultures and religion seemingly line up.
We get together with family and friends, buy gifts, stress out, eat and drink, and hopefully be merry.
No matter what you believe in, here are some interesting ideas to mull over on the traditions of Christmas and its roots. Before Christianity, many cultures created celebrations around our solar system, and often the return of the Sun (or Son).
Christians celebrate Christmas as the birth of their lord and savior Jesus Christ. Live Science website (https://www.livescience.com/42976-when-was-jesus-born.html), suggests the real birth date is unknown, and rather the Roman Catholic Church adopted December 25th for several reasons:
1. It lands around the Winter Solstice (21st), Saturnalia (after the Sun returned, i.e. after Winter Solstice), and Yule (also after the the darkest night of the year, Winter Solstice)
2. The politics of the Catholic Church saw it as an opportunity to over haul many of these older pagan tradition and replace them with more wholsome/Christian meaning
3. Putting a Christian holiday around the same time as these traditional pagan holidays would cause less strife among the converting peoples.
WINTER SOLSTICE
This is the shortest day of the year, or when there is the least amount of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere. It usually happens around the 21st/22nd of December, after which the Sun starts making its way back into the Northern Hemisphere, therefore making each day have incrementally more daylight. Winter Solstice is when the Sun shines directly over the Topic of Capricorn, and moves into this constellation
in the sky, hence people born on December 22nd have their Sun Sign in Capricorn.
As mentioned before, many earlier cultures looked to the sky for answers, and therefore worship. Having knowledge of the sky and its processions, Scandanavians, Romans, and Greeks are some of the few who took this time to celebrate Midwinter of hardship and cold, and the beginning of new life moving into spring and warmer weather.
YULE
This pagan holiday on Winter Solstice has given us many of our Christmas traditions (such as a Yule Log, tree decorating, singing carols, gift giving, and feasting) and was celebrated in many ways through many many cultures such as Jul in Scandinavian countries, as well as the Celtic and early British cultures.
Yule is a celebration of the return of the sun, therefore candles and lighting of fires are also important to this holiday, which we can see in our culture today. Livestock were also
sacrificed during this time, so they would not have to be fed in the hard winters, allowing great time of feasting within communities
SATURNALIA
The God Saturn was honored for a week, or up to a month, around the time of Winter Solstice by the Romans. Saturn is their god of agriculture and time, so many sacrifices were made to honor Saturn in time of sowing. Gifts were also passed between people to manifest the coming of a bounty in the Spring. During this drawn out celebration, all social structures were suspended; no court, no school. Debauchery often ensued, even salves were granted participation in the biggest Roman holiday and did not have to work.
So how ever you celebrate this Season, enjoy the merriment and blessings!
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