Jesus Is Not the Reason for the Season
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Jesus is not the reason for the season. The 23-degree tilt of the Earth’s axis is the reason and the midwinter solstice resulting from that has been celebrated since the beginning of agriculture and perhaps much earlier. Jesus as a Solstice birthday boy is a late addition, but don’t tell it to America.
“Merry Christmas” as the new war cry of Christianism has nothing to do with being Merry and everything to do with furthering the Christian State and the New Jerusalem.
It’s our way of saying FU, atheists and Jews, secular humanists, Hindus, Buddhists and especially Muslims. FU! and it’s our country and ours alone.
No matter the reason for the season, it’s always been about gods and the fear that the days would continue to get shorter if they’re not propitiated: Thor, Horus, Osiris, and Attis and all the gods of agriculture. Before 200 B.C.E. we have Mithra, Heracles, Dionysus, Tammuz, Adonis; and Sol Invictus, formerly of Syria, was added to the birthday party around 274 CE.
Constantine, of course, was Pontifex Maximus of that cult all his life, he added Jesus when he bought the franchise and wrote the new screenplay – as Christian wise men stood aside in wonder.
Many of those have been uncomfortable with the obvious merger of Jesus with his predecessors and rivals. Christians attempting to return to the religion’s original beliefs have banned Christmas and punished the celebration thereof many times in history.
Our own Puritans, like their English counterparts, criminalized it. Strange, isn’t it, that we try to portray them as our founding fathers and ignore their disgust with Christmas.
All the ancient gods of the Northern hemisphere have been celebrated in their time and place and indeed we still heavily lean towards them in our current celebrations.
The newest Pontifex in our American pantheon seems to be Donald Trump with his amazing ability to create a sticky, fictional reality to which small, angry, frightened minds adhere much like obnoxious insects to fly paper. He’s done much to promote the myth of Obama the enemy of Christmas and the idea that there are hordes of devils planning to take their gods and guns away.
The Washington Post today interviews small-town Americans and we hear from one woman, whose views I hear in my own small town every day:
“It offends me,” she continued, “to see at the stores, where they just do ‘Happy Holidays’ or ‘Seasons Greetings.’ It should be ‘Merry Christmas.’ Put Christ back into Christmas. That’s what it’s supposed to be. . . . I just wish we would all get on the same page.”
Whatever page that might be, it’s not in the New Testament. The phrase “Season’s Greetings” in store windows and on cards is over a hundred years old but only since the mid 20th Century and the Idiot’s Crusade has America been told that the word “Holiday” is offensive.
Merry Christmas is the chip on our national shoulder – our way of saying “I dare you not to be overtly Christian” It’s also the albatross around our necks, a sign of our original and recurring and chronic sin against the philosophy that spawned our secular Republic.
It’s proof of our dishonesty, our ignorance and our willingness to promote and preserve militant tribalism – and if it’s not our undoing, it’s certainly a symptom of the advancing sickness we cling to while the world passes us by.
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Bad comment is bad. The first mention of December 25 as the date of Jesus’ birth is found in an early Roman calendar from A.D. 336, the year before Constantine died. Your observations are irrelevant. Arguing for something of course being somewhat different than making it into Roman law. It’s standare worldwide practice when changing a country’s religion to meld the local customs and practices and those of the new religion. Look at how Catholicism and African paganism were laminated together in Haiti. I’d say Christianity is a lot like voodoo in that respect – or Santeria.
Just as an aside, “Christ” is not a name, it’s a title; a gross Greek interpretation of “annointed” or Meschiach (מְשִׁיח) and as such it requires an article which would be Ha Meschiach or “the anointed” Bad grammar – bad.
And it’s a word that has no connection to the Christian silliness about saving immortal souls from eternal punishment and I’m sure Jesus would have agreed. That’s an idea that probably came from Zoroastrianism or the Zurvanist version thereof.
As I’m sure you know “sir” there have been many recongnized Messiahs from David to Cyrus the Great of Persia and people still gather around the grave of Menachim Schneerson waiting for his resurrection. I assume you’re still waiting for Jesus to descend from the clouds but the chances are vastly greater that some bird will crap on you first.
Bad article is bad. Constantine certainly wasn’t the person who put Christ in Christmas. Hippolytus of Rome argued for the Dec 25th date of Jesus 100 years earlier, and the winter Feast of the Nativity which later became Christmas didn’t become widely celebrated until later in the 4th century, after Constantine’s death.
Good article, and perfect for Jesus Day, which really isn’t. Tilting axis and all. Just asked my son if he knew what that was, and he had no clue, and had never heard of such a thing. Christmas is about Jesus being born after all. Sigh. That’s all I can do, just sigh. He’s 16 and in high school and has never studied anything worthwhile.
Merry Merry Ho Ho Ho to all here. I’d like to just take a sec and say, the year I had this year, some of you here have been my literal lifeline to keep my sanity and my many ugly girl crying tears from flowing. Whether it is by email or allowing me to argue my points in comments back and forth with you, I am most appreciative of that gift from all of you, so thank you all and go now and sin no more. On the other hand, if you are going to sin, please for the love of all things make it count 😉
Jess I’ve been an admirer of your colorful comments for a number of years, over five as I recollect. On this day, I thank you for making me smile, and for your permission to go and sin as long as it counts. Peace to you and yours.
Guess that is the nice way of putting it, colorful comments 🙂 I used to comment when Mike wasn’t mad, at his other blog and a few others he and I went to at the same time. It has been a long time for some of us commenting back and forth and I will never meet any of you probably but you all have a space in the tiny space where my heart should be.
The sin is in, I started in already with the weed before I go see my best friend, who has been calling me since 4 this morning to make sure either a, I am asleep or b, I am still alive. Told him he wouldn’t be alive if he called me one more time, after the third time he called at 5. I could even hear hie new boyfriend in the background telling him, you are going to really piss her off if you keep calling her. Best friend said, it keeps her grounded. I can’t kill him because I will go to prison for it, but there are times when I think I could suffer the electric chair for him.
The creeping Christianity that is America today is a reason to pay attention. A friend of mine doesn’t believe we could tilt much farther to the right when it comes to Jesus. I disagree with him.