Showing posts with label Saturnalia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saturnalia. Show all posts

December 25 - Christmas Day

  Posted on December 25, 2021


This is an update of my post published on December 25, 2010:




This is my favorite holiday! I love arranging our collections of nutcrackers and Santas and snowmen, I love the beauty of twinkling lights on a great-smelling and highly decorated tree, and of course I especially love getting together with family for food and gifts and fun.



Part of the fun is getting ready—finding special treats that my grandkids will love, baking our family's favorite cookies, counting down the days on an advent calendar. 

Even though I love Christmas, I understand why some people bemoan the commercialism of the holiday, and why some people who are not Christians or who (for whatever reason) do not celebrate Christmas feel left out or even irritated by the pervasiveness of Christmas in the U.S.


I like to buy the occasional Christmas decoration, but I often
make my own, as well. I love having an eclectic - one might
say mixed-up-looking collection of decorations!


Christmas hasn't always been around!

At the beginning of the religion of Christianity, there was no such holiday as Christmas. There is no good reason to think that Jesus of Nazareth was born on December 25; as a matter of fact, there is no indication in the Bible of what day, month, or even season Jesus was born. When 4th-Century Christians (in other words, people who lived hundreds of years after the writing of the Gospels and other parts of the New Testament) decided that it would be nice to celebrate Jesus's birth as well as his death (and re-birth, according to believers), any date seemed equally likely or unlikely. So Pope Julius I chose a time of year that was already a time of fun and celebration, at the end of the Roman festival of Saturnalia, near the Winter Solstice.

Some Christians do not celebrate the holiday because of the shaky historical origins of the chosen date (or for other reasons). Puritans who first settled the New England area were opposed to the holiday, and celebrating Christmas in Boston was actually against the law from 1659 to 1681.

After the American Revolution, many English customs—including the Christmas holiday—became less popular, and the first U.S. Congress after the ratification of the Constitution, December 25, 1789, Congress was in session.

Christmas was not declared a federal holiday in the U.S. until 1870.



For more on Christmas, check out other December entries and entries from other years (in the "Also on this date" section below).



Also...

In the Republic of Congo, it's Children's Day, and in both Angola and Mozambique, it's Family Day.

What these three African nations have in common is a relatively recent time of Marxist government. During the Marxist regimes, Christmas Day was changed to Children's or Family Day celebrations.



I have a feeling that people in these African countries do pretty much the same thing every year, whether it's called Christmas or Family Day or whatever. They probably gather together with loved ones, eat together, perhaps exchange gifts, play games, dance or sing.





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December 21 - Anniversary of a Solstice Eclipse

 Posted on December 21, 2021


This is an update of my post published on December 21, 2010:




A fairly rare event—the total eclipse of the moon—and a once-a-year event—winter solstice—happened on the same day on this date in 2010.

On that day, I wrote: "Here in Southern California, we seem to be living at the bottom of a very big shower stall right now, because it's been raining HARD for days. (I know many people have to deal with this much rain on a regular basis, but we're used to drought and earthquakes, not flooding and inundation!) ...The point is, we couldn't see the eclipse because of the total cloud cover."

A total lunar eclipse is when the Earth gets between the Moon and the Sun, and the Moon falls totally within Earth's shadow. The Moon, which is full or nearly full, usually shines (reflecting the Sun's light) a bright white color, but during an eclipse, the moon seems to become gray, then orange, then deep red.



Here are some photos of a more recent lunar eclipse,
all put together into one photo so we can see the
changing color of the Moon.


The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year—and, of course, the longest night. Most cultures nowadays count the winter solstice as the day that winter begins.


NOTE: Most of the world's population lives in the northern hemisphere. However, millions of people live in the southern hemisphere, and today is their SUMMER solstice—the shortest night and the longest day of the year!


How do (and have) people celebrate(d) the winter solstice?

Germanic countries (including the Scandinavian countries), long before Christianity in Europe, held a winter festival called Yule or Yule-tide during the solstice. Customs such as burning a Yule log, decorating the house with evergreen branches and wreaths, lighting candles, eating a Yule feast, and Yule-tide singing (or Wassailing)—all of these solstice customs are now commonly associated with Christmas. Characters that haven't made it into widespread use in Christmas traditions include the Yule goat, pictured here:

 
Yule Lads, from Iceland's Yule celebrations, haven't caught on in the U.S. - except maybe they have, in the form of elves and gnomes?




A Druidic tradition (think of the people who built England's Stonehenge) calls the winter solstice “Alban Arthuan,” which means Light of Arthur, or “Alban Arthan,” which means Light of Winter. A poetic interpretation of the Light of Arthur is that the legendary figure of King Arthur (of “Knights of the Round Table” fame) still sleeps in a mountain, ready to return to his people if he is needed. The Druidic holiday colors are red, green, and white—again, colors that today are often associated with Christmas.



Ancient Rome celebrated Saturnalia for a week around the solstice. There were some nice aspects of the holiday—wars were interrupted by temporary truces, for example, and slaves were served by their masters—and there were some familiar customs such as exchanging gifts and lighting candles. However, apparently the holiday eventually started to become less fun, with too much wild behavior and even crime.


Other places in the world celebrate the solstice with bonfires, ritual baths and purification rites, feasting, and even special dances.

Special places for celebrating the solstice...

  • Newgrange is a beautiful megalithic site in Ireland, with a huge circular stone structure estimated to be around 5,000 years old (older, even, than the Egyptian pyramids at Giza!). It was built so that a shaft of sunlight would illuminate a particular special spot on the dawn of winter solstice.



(By the way, a megalith is a huge stone used to build a structure or monument.)

  • The Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, was built about a thousand years ago. A modern-day artist noticed that, during the summer solstice, a slender beam of sunlight passing between two rock monoliths exactly bisected a spiral-shaped symbol. She came back to the spot on the winter solstice and, sure enough, a ray of sunlight bisected another, smaller spiral. Unfortunately, so many people have gone to see the sight of these daggers of sunlight, the trail eroded, the monoliths shifted, and the Sun Daggers no longer bisect the spirals!




  • The Great Zimbabwe in sub-Saharan Africa may have helped medieval astronomers track celestial bodies; modern-day scholars note that the brightest stars in Orion line up with several monoliths during the winter solstice.






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