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Disamring the War on Christmas: Why it's appropriate to wish your friends and family Happy Holidays
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Disamring the War on Christmas: Why it's appropriate to wish your friends and family Happy Holidays We live in a society where facts are increasingly and astonishingly being questioned. There is an old saying that we are all entitled to our own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts. We would all do well to understand that rather basic point. It is a fact that 2+2=4, and it can be demonstrated with numerous simple experiments and observations. You may claim that 2+2=5. but at that point, the burden of proof is upon you to demonstrate the claim. A universally negative hypothesis is impossible to prove. It is a basic point of science that a universally negative hypothesis is impossible to prove. Returning to our example above, I can offer the hypothesis that 2+2=4 and demonstrate the reality of the hypothesis by numerous demonstrations. I can never prove that there is no instance where 2+2=5. If anyone wishes to make that claim, they will have to demonstrate that instance. The initial claim that 2+2=4 is therefore falsifiable. The claim that 2+2=5 is also falsifiable in that I can demonstrate a number of instances where it doesn’t. However, I can never demonstrate that there are no cases where it doesn’t. Now, what does all of this have to do with our society’s most fervent holiday celebrated almost universally near the end of the year? Ostensibly, it is a holiday celebrating the birth of the Christian savior, Jesus Christ. As such, some radical Christians are claiming that there is an effort underway to destroy the holiday. This is, of course, nonsense. Even most non-Christians in our society celebrate Christmas. The reason is rather simple, whether most people really understand it or not. Christmas is not, and never has been, a Christian holiday. People have been celebrating a similar holiday for millennia. Our present traditions tied to the “Christian” holiday of Christmas almost all predate the birth of Jesus by centuries. It is important to note that everything we know about the life of Jesus is contained in the 4 “gospels” of the New Testament. There is no compelling evidence outside of the Bible that Jesus even existed. It seems a bit astonishing that an individual that was as temporally important as Jesus is credited with being in the Bible is not mentioned in any surviving historical record outside the Bible. But it is even more interesting that as important as Jesus is in the Bible, the four gospels don’t tell us all that much about him, and a lot of what modern Christians believe about Jesus are either not part of the gospels at all, or were not mentioned in all of them. None of the 4 credited authors of the gospels were eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. The first was probably Mark, which is generally believed to have been written around 70 AD, nearly 4o years after Jesus was crucified. Matthew was written around 80 AD, Luke around 90 and finally John in 95 AD. Interestingly, neither of the earlier 2 gospels, Mark and Matthew, make any mention of the virgin birth. There are numerous contradictions and errors in the 4 gospels, and those contradictions alone could be subject of a very lengthy article. But that is not my purpose here. More to the point of this article, it is astonishing that the Bible tells us next to nothing about when Jesus was actually born, in any of the 4 gospels. In Matthew, it is stated that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod, and Luke elaborates a little further by telling us that Jesus was born during the census of Quirinius. All of this makes sense, but it is damaging to the notion that Jesus was born on December 25 of 1 AD. First of all, we know with high confidence that Herod died in 4 B.C., so if Matthew is accurate, Jesus couldn’t have been born later than that. Further, the census of Quirinius occurred in 6 B.C., which is consistent with the statement in Matthew. So it is evident that Jesus was probably born in 6 B.C., although some theologians place his year of birth as early as 33 B.C. The Bible only offers us one other clue. Luke 2:8 tells us that the shepherds were tending their flocks through the night on the night Jesus was born. By the traditions in that part of the world at that time, livestock was quartered indoors during the winter months, and the only time shepherds would have been tending their flocks through the night was during the spring lambing season. That pretty much rules out the December 25 date. So the only thing we can surmise with any certainty about the birth date of Jesus was that it was NOT in the early morning hours, or any other time of day, on December 25, and it was not in 1 AD. So why does Christianity celebrate a clearly errant date as the birthday of the central figure in their religion? The answer, again, is because we human folk have been celebrating a significant holiday around that time for thousands of years. Since the earliest humans appeared on Earth, we have understood the importance of the sun in our lives. Not only does the east to west movement of the sun across the sky define day and night, but the north to south and south to north movement was critical to our long term survival. In our early hunter-gatherer days, the north-south movement of the sun was tied to animal migrations and the availability of various fruits and edible plants. Once we invented agriculture, the northward movement of the sun and its crossing of the celestial equator at the time of the vernal equinox signaled the time when it would be prudent to plant crops. The southward movement and the crossing of the celestial equator at the autumnal equinox signaled the approaching time of ripening and harvest of crops. When the southward movement stopped at the time of the winter solstice, the promise of the rebirth of the Earth was celebrated. Clearly, if some year that southward movement didn’t stop, the unfortunate inhabitants of Earth would have been doomed to freeze in the dark. So it was understandable that the winter solstice took on special significance on an annual basis. In the early days of humanity, the axial tilt of Earth and its orbit around the sun were not understood. But it didn’t really matter to most of the population why the Earth had seasons. All they cared about or really understood was that the seasons did come and go, that each had special significance in our human lives, and it was all somehow tied to the sun. So long before the birth of Jesus and the establishment of Christianity, the year’s most significant holiday was the winter solstice. The holiday was given many names by many civilizations over the march of human history, but one of the most elaborate and recent, prior to the appropriation of the holiday by the Christian faith, was the Roman Festival of Saturn; The Saturnalia. It was a celebration that typically began on December 17 and ended on December 23. In other words, it began a few days before and ended a couple of days after the solstice. The particulars of the holiday will sound pretty familiar. The Saturnalia was a time of peace. No wars could be started during the observation. People exchanged written notes with friendly sentiments. Bushes and trees were adorned with candles and baked goods. Gifts were exchanged. During the period, slaves were temporarily given reign over their masters. There was also a great deal of alcohol consumption, partying and in typical Roman sensibility, numerous orgies. When the new Christian faith gained and consolidated its power in the Roman Empire, the Saturnalia became an obvious target for expulsion from the public psyche. But extinguishing the beloved holiday proved more difficult than the new pious power elite in Rome were prepared to handle. Perhaps for the first time in history, the new Christian leadership of Rome exercised what is now considered to be a common bit of folk wisdom: When in Rome, do as the Romans. The leaders couldn’t do away with the Saturnalia, so they attempted a new strategy: They modified the holiday and wrapped it in more suitably Christian sensibilities. Many of our modern traditions associated with Christmas can be traced directly to the Saturnalia; Christmas cards, baked goods, gift exchanges, decorating trees and homes with lights, songs and parties and more. Gone, sadly, are the traditions of wild alcohol and accompanying orgies. But we haven’t entirely given up on those either. We just postponed those for a week and tied them to the tradition of the new year. I explain that bizarre observation of the beginning of the new year in another essay here, but its traditions are also deeply rooted in the Saturnalia. So, is anyone REALLY attempting to destroy Christmas, as the strange claims now suggest? Put simply, No. Perhaps it would have been just as easy to note that at the outset, but I rather enjoy writing and explaining. Christmas is really nothing more or less than the celebration of the winter solstice, even if we attempt to provide it with some more sublime wrapping. If Christianity, and all other religious observation were to disappear from the planet tomorrow, I am pretty confident that Christmas would survive its passing. Incidentally, if you refuse to pull the stick out of your ass and want to get offended when someone wishes you “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” this time of year, try to chill out a little. By my count, there are some 47 holidays, religious, secular and historical that are celebrated during the month of December alone around the planet, and that doesn’t include the ones like “Festivus” that were created in fiction or media. If you consider the start of the holiday season to begin at Halloween, toss in about a dozen more. So the “Happy Holidays” greeting is far friendlier, inclusive and appropriate, in my view. |
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