I personally love Christmas. Not because of it’s quasi religious connotations but because of it’s true meaning.
Christmas as we call it is actually a pagan ceremony. Yes it is. Where in the bible did Christ celebrate with Yule logs, Christmas trees, holly and ivy, mistletoe and all the other modern paraphenalia. These traditions are far older and probably druidic in tradition.
The true Christmas celebrates light from darkness and was set for the shortest day of the year (21 December) it has nothing to do with any virgin birth in the middle east. Basically the church hijacked the ceremony when it realized that it could not persuade the people to stop their true worship. I suppose they summed it up as ‘If you can’t beat them , join them’ and make it ours. As I have explained before religion is the original shyster politics, whether so called christian or islamic.(Lack of capitals intended)
But the true Christmas, or Midwinter festival as it should be called has far more sublimity attached to it than fake christian belief.
Even historians now believe that ancient sites such as Stonehenge did not celebrate midsummer but were astronomical alarm clocks for telling when it was the shortest day, not the longest and celebrating it.
The true Midwinter festival celebrated the changing of the year. From nights getting darker, to days getting longer. A time of spiritual or rather human re-birth. A time to celebrate the start of the run up to spring. Times were hard and they feasted on their stored food as the time to plant new crops arrived and decorated their homes with green things, such as holly and ivy and mistletoe, even fir trees. Probably some of the few green things in the Northern hemisphere in late December. Animals were killed to feast on not merely for ritualistic reason but because the previous years feed stuff would be low or almost out. So the sensible thing would be to kill and eat surplus livestock, keeping any remaining supplies for breeding stock for this new year.
And that is why I celebrate Midwinter festival. Rebirth of humankind. Rebirth of spirit and hope and the happiness of life starting over. Not for some pathetic excuse to force a false middle eastern religion on us all.
This is awesome!!! It’s a lot like my xmas post that I wrote on Friday. I had no idea you celebrated midwinter, too.
I personally don’t mind that the christians hijacked the solstice, to me it is potential for bringing religious belief together, since I don’t see a point in organized religion anyway. Check out the song “The Christians and the Pagans” by Dar Williams – it brings a tear to the eye, cute little folk song.
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Just watched it Kath….and I love it. Think I will post it on here.
xxx Stan.
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