Friday, December 26, 2003
Christmas is history
For us, this has been a very strange Christmas season -- certainly memorable but also more than an a little melancholy. I suspect that from here on I will count my own Christmases in terms of before and after "Cancer Christmas." The Preece family is getting together out at Lake Marquette later today but I don't look for the mood to be especially festive with Lenore, her brother Bruce, and I in the midst of cancer treatment. Maybe more importantly, we are all really missing Lenore's dad who embodied the best of the spirit of Christmas everyday of the year. Although, he was gone already last Christmas, I think we were all still in a bit of a daze then and our fondly focused recollections of him made it feel as if he was still there with us. By now, reality has set in and it seems as though there is a release of postponed grief. It also seems very strange to not be spending time 'meditating' in the fishhouse this time of year...even yesterday's half-hearted attempt ice fishing proved futile when I couldn't find an open bait shop to buy minnows! I did win a drawing at a downtown jewelry store though...a lovely(?!?) Santa Claus cookie jar! Yaaaahoooo! All in all, I'm just glad to have this Christmas (almost) completely behind us.
Speaking of Christmas as history, late last night I got to wondering how it is that we came to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. (Some) people who are into this sort of thing place the date of Christ's birth on September 29, 5 BCE, noting that the Biblical references to the shepherds 'tending their flocks by night' rule out a December date since shepherd's in the region never keep flocks out overnight after October. In any case, what is more interesting to me is the fact that Christmas wasn't celebrated at all until late in the fourth century CE! Around 336, the Roman Church realized that it was making no inroads against the pagan festival of Saturnalia and so elected to co-opt it as the "Feast of the Nativity of the Sun of Righteousness." Eventually, Pope Julius set the official date as December 25th, corresponding to the detectable returning of the sun that marked pagan solstice festivals throughout the pre-Christian world. According to the International Dictionary of the Christian Church, the celebration was adopted in Antioch around 374, in Constantinople by 380, and in Alexandria by 430. Not surprisingly, the pagan origins of our mid-winter celebration have led some Christian fundamentalists to reject the celebration of Christmas altogether! Gotta go 'celebrate' something or other! /dps
Speaking of Christmas as history, late last night I got to wondering how it is that we came to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. (Some) people who are into this sort of thing place the date of Christ's birth on September 29, 5 BCE, noting that the Biblical references to the shepherds 'tending their flocks by night' rule out a December date since shepherd's in the region never keep flocks out overnight after October. In any case, what is more interesting to me is the fact that Christmas wasn't celebrated at all until late in the fourth century CE! Around 336, the Roman Church realized that it was making no inroads against the pagan festival of Saturnalia and so elected to co-opt it as the "Feast of the Nativity of the Sun of Righteousness." Eventually, Pope Julius set the official date as December 25th, corresponding to the detectable returning of the sun that marked pagan solstice festivals throughout the pre-Christian world. According to the International Dictionary of the Christian Church, the celebration was adopted in Antioch around 374, in Constantinople by 380, and in Alexandria by 430. Not surprisingly, the pagan origins of our mid-winter celebration have led some Christian fundamentalists to reject the celebration of Christmas altogether! Gotta go 'celebrate' something or other! /dps
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