Solstice Greetings
As 2023 comes to an end we can look forward to 2024.
The Mid-Winter celebrations in the Northern Hemisphere centre on the festivals of The Solstice, Yule, and Christmas.
It’s no surprise that our collective narratives of the stories that are part and parcel of this time of year have merged, become confused, and their origins lost.
The Solstice (21st/22nd) December marks the longest night of the year and heralds the promise of lighter nights to come, The wheel of the year, the balance between light and dark, turns around the two solstices of Summer and Winter.
In terms of the Winter Solstice…
Since ancient times, people all over the world have recognized this important astronomical occurrence and celebrated the subsequent “return” of the Sun in a variety of different ways. Old solstice traditions have influenced the holidays we celebrate now, such as Christmas and Hanukkah.
Soyal is the winter solstice celebration of the Hopi Indians of northern Arizona. Ceremonies and rituals include purification, dancing, and sometimes gift-giving. At the time of the solstice, Hopi welcome the kachinas, protective spirits from the mountains. Prayer sticks are crafted and used for various blessings and other rituals.
The Persian festival Yalda, or Shab-e Yalda is a celebration of the winter solstice in Iran that started in ancient times. It marks the last day of the Persian month of Azar. Yalda is viewed traditionally as the victory of light over dark, and the birthday of the sun god Mithra. Families celebrate together with special foods like nuts and pomegranates and some stay awake all night long to welcome the morning sun.
Inti Raymi is a solstice celebration that comes in June rather than December. But for Peru, it is a winter solstice, and this Incan celebration is in honor of the Sun god. Originally celebrated by the Inca before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, the festivities included feasts and sacrifices, of animals or possibly even children. The Spaniards banned the holiday, but it was revived (with mock sacrifices instead of real ones) in the 20th century and is still celebrated today.
The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia is perhaps the most closely linked with the modern celebration of Christmas. This festival happened around the time of the winter solstice and celebrated the end of the planting season. There were games and feasts and gift-giving for several days, and social order was inverted—slaves did not work and were briefly treated as equals.
St. Lucia’s Day is a festival of lights celebrated in Scandinavia around the time of the winter solstice. Although it is now meant to honor St. Lucia, a Christian martyr, it has been incorporated with earlier Norse solstice traditions, such as lighting fires to ward off spirits during the longest night. Girls dress up in white gowns with red sashes and wear wreaths of candles on their heads in honor of St. Lucia.
Dong Zhi, the “arrival of winter,” is an important festival in China. It is a time for families to get together and celebrate the year they have had. Based on the traditional Chinese celestial calendar, the holiday generally falls between the 21st and 23rd of December. It is thought to have started as an end-of-harvest festival, with workers returning from the fields and enjoying the fruits of their labors with family. Special foods, such as tang yuan (glutinous rice balls), are enjoyed.
Yule is one of the oldest winter solstice festivals, with origins among the ancient Norse thousands of years ago. Its roots are complicated to trace, although there are several theories about how and why the festival was celebrated. It is generally agreed that Yule celebrations began as a Norse festival called jol, although assessments of the purpose and traditions vary.
Like most winter solstice festivals, themes of light, fire, and feasting are common threads.
Some historians think that sacrifices were an important part of the observance, either to the gods and other supernatural beings (such as elves) to the dead, or both. In the harsh climate of northern Europe, most cattle were slaughtered because they could not be fed during the winter. Meat, therefore, was plentiful for a midwinter feast or to leave out as an offering.
Some contend that the original festival was a sort of Norse Day of the Dead, with the god Odin as a major player; among Odin’s many names was Jolnir, and among his many duties was acting as a god of the dead. However, this has been disputed in recent years, with at least one historian positing that jol was a New Year festival intended to set the tone for the months ahead.
One of the earliest known references to Yule is from English monk and historian Bede, who wrote in the early 8th century about “giuli,” a period in the old pagan calendar used by Germanic groups such as the Norse and the Anglo-Saxons.
Giuli was a two-month span that marked the time when sunlight began to increase again at the winter solstice. It was not a festival per se but a marking of the passage of time.
“Yule” became a name for Christmas about the 9th century, and in many languages, Yule which is still used to describe that holiday
Christmas
The first time the birth of Jesus Christ was attributed to the date December 25 was in the 4th century, according to early Roman history.
Early celebrations of Christmas are thought to have derived from Roman and other European festivals that marked the end of the harvest, and the winter solstice.
Some customs from those celebrations that have endured include decorating homes with greenery, giving gifts, singing songs, and eating special foods.
The holiday developed further with the legend of St. Nicholas. Although much of his history is unconfirmed, the man who became St. Nicholas lived in the 4th century.
The Nativity
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John may be the authors on whose writings much of our knowledge of Jesus’s life and teaching are based, but for historians investigating the nativity story, they throw up two major problems. The first is that two of the books – Mark and John – fail to mention Jesus’s birth at all; the second is that the two that do – Matthew and Luke – disagree on many of the details.
Matthew and Luke both tell us that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and that his mother, Mary, was a virgin when she gave birth. But that’s where the agreements end.
We’ve got Matthew to thank for the appearance of an angel to Joseph in a dream, the three wise men following the star from the east, and Herod the Great’s infamous massacre of the innocents.
Luke mentions none of these.
Instead, it’s from Luke that we learn that “an angel of the Lord” appeared before some shepherds “keeping watch over their flock by night”, that Mary and Joseph were forced to travel to Bethlehem to be counted in a Roman census, and that Jesus was laid in a manger.
Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels around 70 years after Jesus's birth. Given that eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus's life were, by then, rapidly dying out – and that many early Christian communities were isolated from one another, scattered by political upheaval – you could argue that it would be quite an achievement if Matthew and Luke's accounts did agree.
There are problems with the accounts of The Nativity if we are looking for any historical evidence for the story we have been told. Interestingly some of the imagery is associated with the “traditional” image of the birth of Jesus.
I, like you, will remember the stories of the stable, the manger, the donkey, and the cattle looking on. The bright star which led three Kings from the Orient to the place where the birth took place. Herod being alerted to the birth of a “New King” and ordering the killing of all newly born.
Well, it’s not easy to substantiate these “facts” and are almost certainly glossed over and romanticized by later writers.
We are told that “there was no room at the inn” and so Joseph and Mary stayed in a stable - which would explain the donkey and other “beasts”.
Well…
IF Joseph was returning to Bethelem as part of a census then he would have been returning to a family home. There is a suggestion that a mistranslation in the texts turned “guest room” into “stable” - a much more humble setting for the birth of a future king.
The census Joseph and Mary were traveling to undertake is another problem.
The Roman census – requiring all Jews to return to their ancestral home to be counted – is one of the most famous incidents in Luke’s version of the nativity story.
Some historians have cast doubt on the tale, suggesting that it simply wasn’t Roman practice to uproot families in such a way.
However, we know from other historical sources that the Roman governor of Syria, Quirinius, called a census of Judea – and that he did so in AD 6.
Could, then, Jesus have been born in this very year?
The Three Kings of the Orient, or Three Wise Men were described as Magi. This means they were Astrologers and Mystics (Occultists)
The Magic were a group of men who certainly existed in Jesus’ time.
They belonged to a priestly sect from Persia (now Iran), described by the Greek historian Herodotus nearly 500 years earlier. The magi had knowledge of astronomy and the interpretation of prophecy, which is supposedly how they knew it was ‘time’ for Jesus’s birth.
They have gone by several names: in one account from Persia they are identified as Hormizdah, Yazdegerd and Perozdh, with the Western church settling on Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar or Gaspar.
As for The Star…
For centuries, academics have attempted to peg this star to an astronomical event, one that can in turn be linked to a precise date.
Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, suggested that the magi may have been intrigued by a series of three conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, which occurred in 7 BC.
Others have suggested that the star may have been a comet or nova, like one reported by Chinese and Korean stargazers in about 5 BC.
The reality is, of course, we’ll never know for sure – especially if the star was, in fact, some kind of local phenomenon as opposed to a significant celestial event
What about the evil-King Herod?
In Matthew’s version of the nativity: the massacre of the innocents. This sees Herod the Great (the Roman-appointed King of Judea), perturbed by the news that the “King of the Jews” had just been born in Bethlehem, ordering that all males in that town below the age of two be put to death.
But if Herod had indeed ordered the killings, the first-century historian Josephus – a vehement critic of the Judean king – would have been quick to condemn him.
He did not.
Herod was, in his later years, fearful of his position and reportedly killed some of his own children so it could be possible that he would order the murder of new-born male children. As one historian has noted in Bethlehem the population at the time was fewer than 1,000 so the innocents may have numbered fewer than ten. This means this horrific act would be considered as a local event and not reported widely. ????
Minor detail or not, the slaughter of the innocents can’t have happened in AD 6 – the year of Quirinius’s census – for the simple reason that Herod the Great died in 4 BC.
As for the date?
Well the story we all know tells of “shepherds watching their flocks”…
It seems to be widely accepted that shepherds would not be out in the fields in the winter. They would have brought their animals closer to, or even into, their homes.
So how did 25 December come to be universally accepted as the official date of the Christmas festival?
The answer appears to be that this was already a time of year when people across Europe were used to letting their hair down.
By the fourth century AD, midwinter festivals – marking the moment when the Sun started coming back and the days got longer – were a well-established fixture in the pagan calendar.
Perhaps this is the reason modern Christmas is littered with pagan symbolism.
Evergreens, Holly and Ivy; Tree Decoration: Feasting; Celebrating the Sun (SON); treating servants as equals; Lords of Misrule; ….
Perhaps if we started looking at this season as a multicultural hybrid of winter traditions we would reduce some of the intolerance between so-called peoples of faith.
Have a Great Seasonal Time and I’ll see you in 2024.
Alan /|\
NOTE: Next MOOT : Friday 12th January 7.30
Invitations and links will be sent out after Christmas
Hope to see you then.
YOU MAY NOT have seen this version of the GREATEST Christmas Song ever…
AND THIS, another GREAT CHRISTMAS SONG
And to conclude my top 3 Christmas raves, this prequel to the song above…
Alan /|\
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