The Origins of Christmas

It's that time of year when it is my sad duty to remind of readers, especially those in the US of A, of the the pagan origins of Christmas.

Let us start with presents.

Presents

Well that's obviously the wise men right?

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.” (The Bible Matthew 2:1-2)

Now notice:

• They didn't follow the star, that would be just silly.  Stars don't move to act like some celestial sat nav.
• There is no evidence for a star.  The best Christians can come up with is a conjunction of planets. Not a star right?
• They were Magi not Kings.  Magi are astrologers - hence looking for his star.  So astrology is alright by the Bible.

The story continues:

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped Him. Then they opened their treasures and presented Him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route. (The Bible Matthew 2:9-12)

Notice:

• I was wrong earlier the star did move.  This is a silly story.
• The text does not say three wise men, but this is a reasonable assumption. Wouldn't each Magi want to give a gift?  Would any Magi go all that way and not give a gift?  But giving two gifts would be not showing sufficient humility.

Now here is a thing:

"Osiris's coming was announced by Three Wise Men: the three stars Mintaka, Anilam, and Alnitak in the belt of Orion, which point directly to Osiris's star in the east, Sirius (Sothis), significator of his birth." Barbara Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.

So the three wise men are a rip off of the Osiris myth. Ahhh, I hear you say, (or not), its in the Bible in must be true.  Well the earliest texts of the gospel of Matthew don't have the birth of Jesus story (http://www.biblequery.org/mtmss.htm).  The earliest manuscript containing the birth story is P45, dated about 250 - that's a quarter of a millennium after the event.

All this schlorship about presents is too much!

But there is more.  The whole present giving thing may be Pagan anyway.  In pre-Christian Rome, the emperors compelled their most despised citizens to bring offerings and gifts during the Saturnalia (in December) and Kalends (in January).  Later, this ritual expanded to include gift-giving among the general populace.

Angels

Now angels figure large in the Christmas story:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,  to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ...... And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 

Now I always like to think the angel was actually a female Gabrielle not Gabriel.  Poor old Mary could do with some female support after being knocked up by the "Holy" Spirit.

But where do angels come from?

Angel on the Heavenly Reception Desk?

Yes, I know they come from heaven, but sociologically where did the idea of an angel come from?

One possibility is Ancient Egypt.  The Egyptian Book of the Dead lists 500 gods and goddesses, and it is possible to identify at least 1200 more deities in later ancient Egyptian writings. Some of these deities were undoubtedly closer to our concept of an angel rather than a god, however: for instance there was at one time a cult dedicated to invoking the help of the Hunmanit, who were a group of entities connected with the sun, portrayed as rays of the sun, rather like the Christian representation of the angel choir of the seraphim.

And of course angels are very close to demons.  The demons of Zoroastrianism, that are referred to as daevas, exist in opposition to ’angelic’ forces that are referred to as ahuras. In the ancient Hinduism of the Vedas, however, we find demons referred to as asuras, existing in opposition to ’divine’ forces known as devas.

Devils or angels?

Santa
I have already dealt with Santa in a previous post.  But notice that "Santa" easily becomes "Satan", by moving one "n"

A Satan, I mean Santa to tempt the guys

Lots of Santas?  How else do they deliver the presents? Did you think it was magik?

And while we are on the subject of Satan (Santa) that takes us nicely onto ....

Stockings
According to legend Saint Nicholas once helped an old widower provide dowries for his three daughters by anonymously tossing three bags of coins into some stockings.  So this tradition is probably of Christian origin, although clearly based on a legend.

I think it the modern age, Christmas stockings should be replaced by Christmas tights to get twice as much.

Helping with her dress, or trying to get to her tights to fill them with presents?

Will these girls be getting their tights off for Satan, I mean Santa?  One will be disappointed.

You won't get many nice presents in socks, but in tights.....

The Date of Christmas

So why is it we get to spend December the 25th rather than March 1st or September 28th with those we loath?

Well the Bible does not give a date of Jesus birth.  Of course Jesus probably never existed.  (There is no contemporary historical record of any kind of Jesus! No written Roman, Greek or Jewish sources from this time (apart from the gospels) know of any historical Jesus or Christ. The name "Christ" is mentioned in some later texts (Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny) but then merely as the name of the idol of the Christians' worship.)  So we cannot meaningfully talk about his date of birth.

Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25.  During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration.  The festival began when Roman authorities chose “an enemy of the Roman people” to represent the “Lord of Misrule.”  Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week.  At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering this man or woman.

Wonder why they are trying to feed you up?

And letting you enjoy drink and other pleasures?

Perhaps because they want to bind you up to sacrifice you later!

 In the 4th century AD, Christianity imported the Saturnalia festival hoping to take the pagan masses in with it.  Christian leaders succeeded in converting to Christianity large numbers of pagans by promising them that they could continue to celebrate the Saturnalia as Christians.  The problem was that there was nothing intrinsically Christian about Saturnalia. To remedy this, these Christian leaders named Saturnalia’s concluding day, December 25th, to be Jesus’ birthday.

True Christian service using Saturnalia (aka Christmas).  But why is true Christian service left to us women?

Christians had little success, however, refining the practices of Saturnalia.  As Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst, writes, “In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been.”  The earliest Christmas holidays were celebrated by drinking, sexual indulgence, singing naked in the streets (a precursor of modern caroling).  AND A GOOD THING TOO!

Drinking

A bit of indulgence about to get under way? 

On the way to getting naked - or better than naked

Mistletoe
Druid rituals use mistletoe to poison their human sacrificial victim. The Christian custom of “kissing under the mistletoe” is perhaps a later synthesis of the sexual license of Saturnalia with the Druidic sacrificial cult.

Waiting for someone to come along with mistletoe to sacrifice (I mean kiss) her

Looks like they ran out of mistletoe - so had to resort to pre-sacrificial binding