Yuletide

As Good as Anything Else

Just finished the Christmas meal and am presently lying on the bed post-dinner. All the family was present; both children, partners and two granddaughters. 

Although I've lived in New Zealand for twenty-five years, I have never got used to Christmas in summer. Today, it is sunny and hot. Just never seems right.

Well, readers, I hope you have a great Yuletide, and don't forget the pagan origins of this Mid-Winter festival. Christianity usurped the festival for its own. The truth is, no one knows the date of Jesus' birth.  It was an act of expediency by the early Christian church. The pagans had an essential festival at that time, and the church fathers knew that it would be virtually impossible to stop those dumb but violent Germanic tribes from relinquishing this highly culturally ingrained festival. Their solution: They imposed a Christian event, 'The Birth of Jesus', on top of the Yuletide festival. As Jesus' birth date was not known, it proved an effective and easy solution. Regardless, the vestiges of the old festivity remain. The yule log, misletoe and other symbolic vestiges are there to see, to the restless mind. 

The same is so with Easter. The Easter celebration was originally pagan. It represented the time of renewal and fertility. The name itself has nothing to do with torturing a Jewish Rabbi and his subsequent crucifixion. The pagan fertility goddess Eostre lends her name to this fest. A goddess of renewal and spring rebirth. The banishment of winter and the celebration of the coming bounty. Again, the deceitful early Christians applied and tried to bury the pagan source of this crucial Germanic celebration of life. The antithesis of the symbolism of non-life as applauded by Jesus' death by Roman justice. As with 'Christmas', the fragments of the old buried remains poke out from the overlying Christian pageant. What do eggs and bunny rabbits have to do with the Christian parody of Easter?

Regardless of belief, custom, or banal celebration, enjoy the day as fits. Tis all subjective and of little consequence to the broader experience. I'm off to sacrifice a virgin (sex not specified) and bathe in the milk of an Ass, seasoned with a tincture of Raven's blood. Who are you to judge?