The Winter Solstice

I love Christmas. Holidays in general, but there is something very special about Christmas. The sights, the smells, the food, the family. And of course the gifts. I love Christmas. My best memories of childhood come from Christmas time.

Have you ever thought about where these holidays come from? Is there a holiday factory somewhere churning them out? There are literally thousands of holidays around the world. There should be something going on every day, but there isn't. Why not? They all seem to be clumped around certain times of the year. These are the kinds of thoughts and questions I have constantly, with everything.

The holiday we celebrate as Christmas is a very old holiday. It far predates Christianity, having morphed over the years into many forms and traditions. Basically it's the celebration of the Winter Solstice, that time of year where we get the shortest day. The longest day of the year is on the Summer Solstice in late June. The two times of the year where the length of the day and night are equal are called the Vernal (Spring) and Autumnal (Fall) Equinoxes.

Most major holidays fall on or near the Solstices and Equinoxes, a tradition that goes way back into history, to the ancient druids and possibly further back still. Planting of crops is typically done around the Vernal Equinox, and harvesting is at the Autumnal Equinox. When you depend on the Earth and its crops and migrations for your very life, it's important to know when the changing of the seasons will happen. And if you're there and all dressed up, why not celebrate a little?

Christmas retains many ancient pagan traditions, so rooted they were in culture that they were impossible to remove. Many of the things we associate with Christmas came from the tree-worshipping druids. Yule logs, gift giving, caroling (called mumming by the ancients) even the tree itself, which was decorated in ages past with apples, red and green. The druids did love apples. In fact it is very likely that Christianity's shunning of the apple (read: Adam & Eve) came from this conflict as the early church was consolidating its power. The bible doesn't mention the apple as the forbidden fruit, but it was mighty convenient to assume the apple was implicated as a strike against the druids who loved and maybe even worshipped them. Red and green apples are still on our trees, of course, but they have morphed into ornaments and we've even kept the color scheme.

Christmas is believed to have also taken over the holidays of Saturnalia and Mithras. The latter is especially interesting because Mithras was an ancient (~1500 BC) Zoroastrian god who was born of a virgin birth on December 25th. The reason we celebrate Christmas on that day is a direct result of Roman interaction with the Zoroastrianists. This appropriation of Mithras' birth date pretty much wiped out that religion, and may have also given us another heirloom: the word "Myth". Ouch. Epic Fail on the part of the Zoroastrianists...marketing really does matter! They should have sprung for the Superbowl ad.

I find all of this fascinating. There are so many interactions and borrowings, transferences and acquisitions amongst the holidays. It's all good. Just the way things go in this crazy world of bumps and clashes. When a new power takes over, it is useful to keep the old holidays in a modified form, because it gives the people some kind of continuity. I guess that makes sense, it would be really hard to just stand up and proclaim that you are going to create a new holiday on the spot and have it stick. Look at how much money the greeting card industry has spent on marketing Sweetest Day and I still have no idea when this holiday is. This way you get built-in history. It's a messy process, but interesting nonetheless.

In that light it's not really difficult to go back and see the beginnings of Easter in the ancient Anglo-Saxon holiday of the Spring Equinox, a time of new life on the Earth, when the return of spring was attributed to the goddess of the dawn, Ēostre (Ostara, also Eos in ancient Greek. BTW, it is Eos that Canon chose to name their current DSLR product line after. Interesting, that).

Here is a partial list of Winter Solstice holidays around the world and through the ages:

The Saturnalia (Ancient Greek - Drinking, gift giving, role reversals for masters and slaves. Must have been quite a party)
Hanukkah (Jewish - The Festival of Lights. Special foods and gift giving)
Mithras (Iranian - Celebrates the birthday of Mithras. Called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti by the Romans)
Brumalia (Ancient Greek - associated with Dionysus and the drinking of wine. As you may guess, I would dig this one)
Christmas (Christian - The birth of Christ is celebrated with gift-giving and festivity)
Sankranti (Hindu - This holiday is so old that it originated on the Winter Solstice but due to inaccuracies in the calendar has now shifted over the centuries to January 14th. People who die on this day end the reincarnation cycle)
Boar's Head Carol (Norse - The presentation of the Boar's Head to Freyr on the Winter Solstice)
Kwanzaa (Primarily African American - First celebrated in 1966. Drinking, gift giving, feasting)

Whichever version of the Winter Solstice you celebrate, and I know there are at least three of them represented amongst my tiny sphere of peeps, I hope you have a great one! Looks like they mostly involve partying and drinking, which explains their longstanding popularity :)