Every year I take some time around the holidays that apply to my faith tradition to learn something about their origin and the symbolism of their observance, to reflect on how the lessons thus taught should change who I am, and to teach my family about what I have learned. My thoughts do not amount to scholarship, but rather a yearly dabbling to help keep my heart anchored to my roots. The present short essay relates specifically to the tradition of celebrating Christmas at the time of the winter solstice.
The season of Christmas and the celebration of New Year is a
wonderful and special time of year. This
year, my look at the roots of this holiday season focuses on why we celebrate it
when we do, and the symbolism of its timing.
To my knowledge, we have no authoritative contemporary
record about the season of Christ’s birth.
Rather, Christmas is essentially a celebration tied to the winter
solstice. It marks (roughly) the moment
when the sun reaches the southern extreme of its course for the year, resulting
in the longest night (and the shortest day) of the year. It comes relatively early in winter, so that
it precedes the coldest portion of the year.
It is perhaps difficult for most of us, living in climate-controlled
homes, basking in electric light, and selecting our preferred foods from the
seemingly inexhaustible bounty of the grocery store shelves, to grasp what
winter meant to man even just a century ago.
Without electric light, the cold, dark nights, much longer than the
days, severely limited the scope and degree of human activity. Food was generally limited to storage from
the winter harvest or animals that could be caught; in the latter case, the
principle of scarcity inevitably pitted man against dangerous predators in
direct competition for fresh food. Fermented
beverages, high in calories, were used to supplement food stores, which had to
be carefully rationed. A long winter
might spell death by starvation.
Solstice, then, served as a milestone for judging how much
longer winter might last; and, symbolically, it became the first harbinger of
spring, a promise that the cold, dark season would end, even though the deepest
of winter has yet to come.
It is unsurprising, given its role in making predictions
necessary for survival, that the winter solstice has been celebrated throughout
the world as an event of deep importance.
What is more profound is the symbolic meaning that many cultures through
the ages have given to it. Some
animistic cultures held an annual ritual of ceremonially ‘binding the sun’ on
that day in order to prevent the sun from escaping. Our current traditions, however, find their
roots elsewhere, for in many cultures, the solstice came to be symbolically
associated with one or both of two concepts that still echo in our daily
experience with the spirit of the season: the victory of light over darkness,
and death and rebirth or resurrection.
These traditions descend to us from the celebrations of
Rome. For many years in ancient Rome,
the solstice season was noteworthy mainly because it fell outside of the year
prescribed by the Roman calendar, composed of 12 30-day months. The remaining five or six days of the solar
year were regarded as being ‘off the books,’ and therefore celebrated with a generally
licentious ‘what happens in Vegas’ attitude.
The elements of the spirit of the holiday that we currently associate
with Christmas and New Year seem to have been first introduced with the rise in
popularity of a Mediterranean variation of the worship of the Persian deity
Mithra,[1]
known in various regions as the god of covenants, an omniscient protector of
truth, a helper of mankind, or as one of the judges men and women must pass at
the bridge to the afterlife. Followers
of Mithra observed solstice as the date of the deity’s yearly death and
rebirth. The strong parallels between
this observance and Christian message—that through the birth, death, and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, the greatest gift of God to man is the provision
of a path for man to repent, clear the slate of past mistakes, and overcome
human weaknesses, personal shortcomings, and, ultimately, death itself, to be
reconciled with the divine—made the transition of the solstice holiday to
Christmas a natural one as Christianity rose to its status as the empire’s state
religion.[2]
Observing the parallels in the meaning that Jesus Christ and
his predecessor in the solstice holiday held for their adherents, one scholar
opined that they are, to some extent, “both manifestations of a single deep
longing in the human spirit” (Ulansey, 2008).[3] Certainly this is perennially true of the
symbolism of the solstice season, as well. How many of us would, if we could, go back
and do something differently and better than we did do it, recall some hurtful
word spoken, or erase past mistakes? Who
of us would not like to rub out some dark spots in our character? Finally, how many of us would like to be able
to face the dawn of a new future without feeling encumbered by the shadow of
our past?
For me, the symbolism of solstice as ensconced in the
Christmas spirit and the birth of a new year resonates with the lessons learned
by Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge. It bespeaks
reformation, redemption, and resolutions to do better; second chances;
forgiveness of self and of others for past grievances; and compassion,
goodwill, and service to our fellow man. In the winters of our life, it promises that things will eventually get better.[4] And, if we truly come to grasp and
internalize the symbolism of solstice and the spirit of Christmas, we will
resolve, with Scrooge, to “honour [it in our] heart, and try to keep it all the
year.”[5]
I hope you all have had a merry Christmas, and wish you the
greatest happiness and success in the new year!
Sincerely,
David Blen Nance
[1]
Apparently beginning in the first century BCE.
[2]
This transition, unfortunately, often did not reflect the ‘peace on earth and
good will toward men’ advocated by Christian doctrine.
[3] Ulansey,
D. "The Cosmic
Mysteries of Mithras." http://www.mysterium.com/mithras.html. Accessed
1/1/13.
[4]
These same lessons are evidenced in many other Christmas stories, although A
Christmas Carol is easily the most famous. Another favorite is Henry van Dyke’s The Mansion.
[5]
From the Fourth Stave of A Christmas Carol.
