By Alex Miller-Mignone
It's almost that time again. Sleigh bells ring, are ya list'nin'? Here they come, thievin' Christians? A slight paraphrase.
One of the most difficult times of the year to be Pagan is December the twenty-fifth. And that's just not fair, because, like most Christian holidays, Christmas derives from decidedly pagan roots.
You name it, the Christians stole it. Oimelc? Try Candlemas. Summer Solstice? Ever hear of St. John's Day? Samhain? How about All Saints Day?
But the chief rip-off is December 25-the birth of Mithras, the Festival of the Sol Invictus, the peak of old Roman Saturnalia and Celtic Yule; in short, the Winter Solstice, Pagan New Year itself. It's hard to say whether the early Christians were simply poor astronomers, or if their choosing of Mithras' birthday for their own savior's nativity was an attempt to curry favor with the Roman Legions, who had a special friend in Mithras. At any rate, Christmas falls a few days after the actual Solstice, which is convenient for those of us with families of the Christian persuasion. Plenty of time to light the needfire and pass out the Solstice sacks before we troop home to trim the tree and stuff Christmas stockings.
It's not so much that I resent the Christian theft of one of the most sacred times of the pagan year; they have a right to celebrate what they want when they want, even if they choose nowadays to ignore their original intent to subvert pagan populations with their pseudo-syncretism. What still gets my knickers in a twist is that superior attitude, born doubtless out of 1500+ years of cultural dominance that says the whole thing is their idea.
Probably the worst aspect of the situation is the fact that, for most Christians, the deception is so removed from present circumstance and the cover-up so ingrained into modern society that their perpetuation of this holier-holiday-than-thine attitude is largely unconscious. Which of course means it's most impolite to respond with a kidney punch when you are wished a Merry Christmas. Yes, ultimately, I'd have to say it is my inability to deliver appropriate kidney punches which bothers me most.
The Christian secular sector is almost as annoying in its omnipresence as the sacred. My favorite reworking of the popular secular mythos is probably Pauline Campanelli's assertion (in The Wheel of the Year) that Santa's sleigh and eight reindeer is actually a representation of the Solar chariot and the eightfold solar year. Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah.
Of course, breaking out of the Christian holiday mold isn't all that easy. I spent a few years conforming outwardly. I looked for cards that said, with the Jewish populace in mind, Season's Greetings or Happy Holidays. It still seemed too much like a sellout, however, so we suspended holiday cards for a few seasons, and now do our own Solstice cards on the computer.
I gave up saying Merry Christmas right away, but if someone did the dirty to me salutation-wise I would respond with a cheerful Same to you! Which, I must admit, often came out sounding like I had said, up yours!
The Christmas tree was the next to go, regrettably. It's a lovely custom, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Non-Pagan relatives and business associates would come to the house for the needfire buffet (we called it a `bonfire' and neglected to mention that after they left we'd be burning them in effigy) and say how lovely our Christmas tree was, with its unusual ornaments of Suns, Moons and Stars, pine cones and fruit. After about three years of near lockjaw from gritting out, thank you, but it's a Solstice bush, actually, we gave up the evergreen, choosing instead to decorate a large potted hibiscus which we had brought in from the garden to winter, and which was less susceptible to misinterpretation. (This year the hibiscus has outgrown its pot and has had to be tubbed, which makes it too large to bring in, so I guess we'll have to get even more creative.)
Christmas stockings have become Solstice sacks. Same principle, but it allows us to maintain a fun custom while affirming our pagan roots. We choose items that look as little like actual stockings as possible. (This has become easier with the proliferation of dollar stores, each crowded with seasonal bibelots like felt or woven pouches adorned with images of poinsettias, holly, or pine branches.) This year my house mate has taken up crocheting, so we will have mini sacks-within-the-sack for holding special items like crystals or jewelry.
A lot of what actually happens at Solstice is reminiscent of Christmases in my youth. My family's ethnic background is Pennsylvania Dutch (a kind of Amish without the insularity), and my own Solstice buffet is set with traditional foods such as roast turkey with bread and potato filling, dried corn, Brussels sprouts with bacon, candied sweet potatoes and desserts such as kiffels and Moravian sugar cake. We still trot out a few classics for the VCR, like The Bishop's Wife and Christmas in Connecticut (Hollywood is Hollywood, after all). A lot of the ornaments that will find their way to whatever will be our Solstice bush this year are family heirlooms. There are still some connections to my family's Christian roots.
In my youth there went up the hue and cry among the Fundamentalist community: Don't leave the `Christ' out of `Christmas'! I want to make it perfectly clear here that my quarrel is not, and has never been, with Jesus of Nazareth, whom I revere as a great teacher far ahead of his time, whose message of love and human capacity to express the divine has been either misunderstood or deliberately perverted by those claiming to represent him. As I read the gospels, and especially the Gnostic versions, what Jesus said was not simply I am God, but I am God, and so are you.
And here's the funny part. When you really look at it, what have the Christians actually done in overlaying their mythos onto the pagan infrastructure? In identifying the birth of Jesus with the Winter Solstice, they have only reaffirmed their savior in the same mold as the Holly King, Attis and Adonis, all images of the masculine polarity of the dying and resurrected Power which informs all life. And if we look into the color symbology of Christmas, we see an even stranger fact:
Jesus was the Christed One, the supreme image of perfected man, which is man made whole by the integration of all opposites, most basic of which, in the human condition, is the male/female polarity. In choosing red and green to symbolize this season, the early Christian fathers must surely have understood what they were doing. Red is the color of Mars, ultimate indicator of masculine energy, and green is the color of Venus, ultimate indicator of feminine energy. Opposites on the color wheel, opposites in human experience; no two colors could better express the blending and union of these basic energies with which Pagans daily strive.
Origin: pagan-space.blogspot.com
