A Word About Christmas

Please don't make a fuss over the way the holiday season seems to be more about partying than Christian devotion.  Spare us all that.

Let's lay out the facts first...the original festival with the tree, the holly, the mistletoe, the wreath...that was part of the Old Religion in northern Europe.  It's called Yule, not Christmas. The Church did what they always do in these situations...they despaired of getting people to abandon their solstice festival in favor of churchgoing and giving money to the priests.  So they sanctioned the pagan festivities by saying they were all part of the holiday of Christmas.

Christmas itself had been moved to December 25 by the Roman emperor Constantine when he created modern Christianity by merging Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity into one religion...and then making it the official faith of the Empire.  If you've never heard of Mithraism...think of a holy Savior who is the son of a sky god, comes to earth to save humanity from its sins, has a last supper with 12 disciples, gets buried in a stone tomb, rises from the dead, and ascends to heaven on a cloud to be with his Father.

A copy of Christianity you say?...guess again.  Mithraism originated in the Fifth Century BCE.  They celebrated rituals called "masses" on Sunday, and were organized by diocese.  The supreme leaders were descendants of Mithras and were called by the name Peter, which means rock, since Mithras was born from a rock.  This birth took place on December 25th.

Mithraism was favored by the Romans as the religion of the military men.  It held women to be inferior and justified rape during war. Roman soldiers had little contact with family life as we know it, they were married to their jobs, so to speak.

Zoroastrianism introduced the concept of an eternal struggle between good and evil, another concept that fit well with the power of the "benevolent" rule of the emperor.  Zoroastrians escaped persecution in ancient Iran by hiding in catacombs where they shared their sacraments of bread and wine.

So please don't tell me that Christmas is being stolen by secular doings.  Even if it were, it would be a case of "what goes around comes around", since Christians stole Yule from pagans.  Personally, I'd like to have it back.

And while you're at it, give us back Samhain too.  It's not Halloween, that's a name the Church made up too.  Easter is pagan too, it's the spring festival where Scandinavians celebrate the fertility of the earth and the fecundity of animal life with bunnies and eggs. Oestre is the Norse Goddess of the Dawn....may she continue to bless us all each and every day.