In many respects, it's appropriate for me to be writing about the holiday season. Trying to figure out what to do about "Christmas" was one of the major things that led me to Paganism in the first place. I wrote about that in my Introduction, so I won't duplicate all of that here. (You can thank me later...)
I thought it would be appropriate, however, to spend a little time talking about the winter holiday season from the pagan perspective.
The recent hullabaloo in the press regarding "the taking of Christ out of Christmas" and all of that foolish noise is just that: foolish noise. My local newspaper recently ran a question asking how people should acknowledge the holiday season; for you see, the biggest part of that foolish noise was about the evangelical Right's screaming that replacing "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays" was somehow taking away from that "most Christian of celebrations", Christmas. I would like to share my response with you.
The Christian cycle of holidays - including Christmas - has its roots in the Pagan cycle of seasonal celebrations that have been observed by most cultures as far back as anyone can trace. Christmas is Winter Solstice, Easter is Spring Equinox, and the list goes on. These Christian interpretations were the early church's way of co-opting a culture's existing celebrations as a part of the conversion process.
Change their god, but don't take away their parties...
It may come as a shock to most fundamentalist Christians, but Christ wasn't born in December (the last scholarly research I saw indicates February or August), and probably wasn't cruicified, buried, and resurrected in the Spring.
The symbolism works, of course. Winter Soltice is the traditional Pagan time to celebrate new beginnings (the rebirth of the Sun), and Spring Equinox is the time to celebrate the renewal of life. But the fact of the matter is that Christmas isn't Christian - it's Pagan. At the Winter Solstice, we celebrate the shortest day of the year by celebrating the impending return of longer days and the promise of Spring and renewal.
Some pagan groups see it as the rebirth of the God in his endless cycle of birth, youth, manhood, potency, and death. For many pagans, only the Goddess is eternal. The God comes and goes with the passing seasons. He begins as Her newborn son, grows to be a youth, becomes Her consort with the fullness of time, and dies in the Fall, to be reborn again. When you hear this story, it's a short step indeed to think of the Christ as the god in this context - playing out the story of the sacrificed god that is common to many religions. Thinking Christians remember this, and also remember that Christmas celebrates the figurative birth of Christ, not the actual birthdate itself. And thinking Christians recognize that they are a late-comer to this party and understand that they have to share.
We Pagans certainly don't mind sharing. It makes perfect sense to celebrate the turnings of the seasons in some way. The annual cycle of seed, growth, harvest, and fallow are one thing that all human beings have in common. At least, all human beings who eat.
So I am perfectly willing to have someone wish me a Merry Christmas. I will wish them a Joyous Yule and we are all saying the same thing: Peace on Earth to men of goodwill, and
Blessed Be
