Wishing you all a Merry Christmas  and a Fantastic 2009

 
A brief history of Christmas  [Excerpt of an article by John Steele Gordon, published Monday 24th of December 2007 in the WALL STREET JOURNAL] Christmas famously ‘comes but once a year’. In fact, however, it comes twice. The Christmas of the Nativity, the manger and Christ child …. and the Christmas of parties, Santa Claus, evergreens, presents …. But because both celebrations fall on December 25, the two are constantly confused. A little history can clear things up. The Christmas of parties and presents is far older than the Nativity. Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice [since approximately 3000 years B.C!], when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins to climb once more in the sky. In ancient Rome , this festival was called the Saturnalia and run from December 17 to December 24. During that week, no work was done, and the time was spent in parties, games, gift giving and decorating the houses with evergreens (sound familiar?)…. In its earliest days, Christianity did not celebrate the Nativity at all. Instead, the church calendar was centred on Easter, still by far the most important day in the Christian year…which falls on the day of the full moon in the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar. The Council of Nicea decided the Easter should fall on the Sunday… By the time of the Council of Nicea, the Christian church was making converts by the thousands and, in hopes of still more converts, in 354 Pope Liberius decided to add the Nativity to the church calendar. He also decided to celebrate it on the December 25. It was, frankly, a marketing ploy with a little political savvy thrown in. History does not tell us exactly when in the year Christ was born, but according to the gospel of St Luke, ‘shepherds were abiding in the field and keeping watch over their flocks by night’[Luke 2,8]. This would imply a date in the spring or summer when the flocks were up in the hills and needed to be watched. In winter they were kept safely in corrals. So December 25 must have been chosen for other reasons. It’s hard to escape the idea that by making Christmas fall immediately after the Saturnalia, the Pope invited converts to still enjoy the fun and games of the ancient holiday and just call it Christmas. Also, December 25 was the day of the sun god, Sol Invictus, associated with the emperor. By using that date, the church tied itself to the imperial system…. By early Middle Ages, Christmas was a rowdy, bawdy time, often inside the church as well as outside it .…With the Reformation, Protestants try to rid the church of practices unknown in its earliest days….priest celibacy, the cult of the Virgin Mary, relics, confession and … Christmas. …. Christmas was abolished in Scotland in 1563 …. in England in the 1640s …. There was still no Christmas in Puritan New England, where December 25th was just another working day… …. In the 1860s, the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast set the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. (The colour red became standard only in the 20th century, thanks to Coca-Cola ads showing Santa Claus that way). Merchants began to emphasize Christmas …. pushing the idea of Christmas presents for reasons having nothing whatever to do with religion … By the middle of the 19th century, most Protestant churches were, once again, celebrating Christmas …. they were afraid of losing congregants to other Christmas celebrating denominations…. …. there’s a very easy way to distinguish between the two Christmases. If it isn’t mentioned in the gospels of Luke and Mark, then it is not part of the Christian holyday. Or we could just change the name of the secular holiday back to what it was 2000 years ago.  Merry Saturnalia, everyone!



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From: Thierry Dubout
Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:09:41 -0600
To: Thierry Dubout
Subject: Fwd: Meditating Prairie Dog...

 
"I watched prairie dogs every day, rise before the sun, stand with their paws pressed together facing the rising sun in total stillness for up to 30 minutes," says Williams. "And then I watched them at the end of the day take that same gesture 30 minutes before the sun goes down they would press their palms together in perfect stillness. I don't mean to anthropomorphize, but when you look at a creature that has survived over the millennium begin and end each day in that kind of stance, it causes one to think about one's own life and speed and rapidity in which we live."