December 21, 2004

• It

  has been snowing here today, a heavy wet snowfall that sticks to the

  trees.  Branches are bending under the weight. 

  I’m not complaining about the snow.  The precip comes with a

  welcome warming trend.  Yesterday, the temperature decreased

  throughout the day, starting around fifteen degrees.

  Just to lighten my mood, make it seem

  warmer

  in here and give a little acknowledgement to the Solstice holiday, I

  turned on every light in the front part of the house. The temp was

  down

  to near zero Fahrenheit outside before I went

  to bed early this morning.  When I awoke later in the
  morning,

  it

  was up into the low twenties, a much more comfortable temperature, and

  one that makes it easier for our little woodstove to keep my

  houseplants alive.

  Recently, my body hasn’t been wanting to get to sleep early. 

  I’ve

  been tending to stay up later and later into the wee small hours, and

  then awaken when the sky grows light outside, between nine and ten AM

  this time

  of year.  I question what’s behind it, but I don’t fight

  it. 

  Making peace with my body and its rhythms is part of my healing

  process.

  Last night, I was sitting in bed reading a good book, in the climactic

  ending sequence of Uther

  by Jack Whyte.  Time flew, and when it became apparent that I

  would be awake for the Solstice Moment, about a quarter to four this

  morning, I got up and turned on the porchlight to illuminate the

  festive wreath hanging on the door of the little cabin beside our

  trailer.  It is our only outward display of holiday

  celebration.

  Then I lit some incense, a Celtic blend in harmony with my reading

  material, and some candles:  red, green and white. 
  I

  tuned

  in to the planetary consciousness and felt

  the turning of the season.  It felt good.  Back in

  bed, I

  finished one book and started the next in the series, read until I

  felt

  sleepy and then snuffed the candles and turned out all but the one

  light that is generally left on for minimal illumination when one of

  us

  is at the PS2.  Doug went on playing and tending the stove as

  I

  slept.

  [aside:  Freaky little thing -- an odd-looking, hanging,

  gooseneck-style lamp with a small cupped shade painted to look like

  the

  toon Tasmanian Devil, which hangs over the computer desk, hasn't

  worked

  for weeks.  I thought the bulb was burned out.  As I

  was

  typing the copy above, it came on, lit up.  At the same time,

  Koji, nearby, started to growl, with his hackles up... and

  there

  was light.]

  ---

  

  Merrie

  Yule, Y’All

  four

  more days
  

  until Xmas

  For the past week, I have been writing about what Christmas means to

  me, sharing some memories, and posting a few research pieces about the
  pagan roots of some

  common holiday traditions.  I was complimented by lionne

  on my research, and I must confess that I really enjoy doing

  it. 

  Whenever any person, event or random thought suggests a topic on which

  to dive into the vast library that is the internet, I do it with

  pleasure and get great kicks out of what I learn there.

  I guess there might be some of my readers who do not realize that the

  Mass of Christ or Christmas is not Baby Jesus’s birthday.  It
  just

  isn’t.  Historical documents from the time of the Roman
  Empire

  give evidence of that fact.  While I’ve no objection to
  people

  choosing any time of the year, or the whole year long, to celebrate the
  earthly incarnation of

  the Christos, my Virgoan skin crawls when they ignorantly and
  inaccurately call the

  Saturnalia holiday, “Baby Jesus’s Birthday.”  In last year’s

  Yule/Saturnalia
  blog, I wrote:

  Early

  Christians, the earliest followers of Joshua ben Joseph, apparently

  were not interested in his birthday.  By the time the
  celebration of

  Christ’s Mass began, nobody had the foggiest notion of his
  birthdate…

  either that or someone savvy about public relations decided it would
  be

  politic to ride the Saturnalian coattails.

  It is simple enough to tweak out of historical records the
  timing of

  that Roman census in Judea during which Mary had her inconveniently

  timed labor in the stable.  It was in the summer time, and a
  few years

  before that non-existent year zero from which Christians measure
  time. 

  The Urantia Book

  says He was born at the cusp, when the Sun was moving from
  Leo

  to

  Virgo.  As an astrologer, I find that quite
  fitting. 

  From the

  Heliocentric perspective, that was when the Earth was moving into

  Pisces, and it was also the time when the Celestial North Pole,

  through

  precession of the equinoxes, was tilting from Aries into

  Pisces.  That

  event neatly initiated the two-thousand-year Piscean Age,

  which is now

  yielding to the Age of Aquarius.

  Okay, so that gives us some clear clues to the seasonal timing of Baby

  Jesus’s birth, and I’ve mentioned one possible good reason for the

  early church leaders to choose to co-opt the already popular Winter

  Solstice/New Year’s Roman holiday for their Mass of Christ. 
  Now

  I’ll tell you more about Saturnalia.

  ---

  

   

     By

  the beginning of December, writes Columella,

  the farmer should have finished his autumn planting. Now, at the time

  of the winter solstice (December 25 in the Julian calendar), Saturnus,

  the god of seed and sowing, was honored with a festival. The

  Saturnalia

  officially was celebrated on December 17 and, in Cicero‘s time,

  lasted seven days, from December 17-23. Augustus

  attempted to limit the holiday to three days, so the civil courts

  would

  not have to be closed any longer than necessary, and Caligula extended

  it to five. Still, everyone seems to have continued to celebrate for a

  full week, extended, says Macrobius,

  by the exchange of

  sigillaria, small earthenware figurines that were sold then.

  

      Macrobius, in his Saturnalia, creates an

  imaginary

  symposium among pagan intellectuals that takes place then. There, he

  offers an explanation for the

  varying length of the holiday.

  Originally, it was celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before

  the Kalends of January (December 19). With the Julian reform of the

  calendar, however, two days were added to December, and the Saturnalia

  was celebrated sixteen days before the Kalends (December 17), “with

  the

  result that, since the exact day was not commonly known–some

  observing

  the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others

  following

  the old usage–the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more

  days than one” (I.10.2). The original day was given over

  to the Opalia,

  honoring Ops, who personified abundance and the fruits of the earth,

  and was the consort of Saturn. As the two deities represented the

  produce of the fields and orchards, so they also were thought to

  represent heaven and earth. It was for this reason, says Macrobius

  (I.10.20), that the festivals were celebrated at the same time, the

  worshippers of Ops always sitting in prayer so that they touched the

  earth, mother of all.

      In the Roman calendar, the Saturnalia

  was designated

  a holy day, or holiday, on which religious rites were performed.

  Saturn, himself, was identified with Kronos, and sacrificed to

  according to Greek ritual, with the head uncovered. The Temple of

  Saturn, the oldest temple recorded by the pontiffs, had been dedicated

  on the Saturnalia, and the woolen bonds which fettered the feet of the

  ivory cult statue within were loosened on that day to symbolize the

  liberation of the god.

  
   

     It also was a festival day. After

  sacrifice at the

  temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in

  217 BC (there also may have been a lectisternium, a banquet for the

  god

  in which its image is placed in attendance, as if a guest).

  Afterwards,

  according to Macrobius (I.10.18), the celebrants shouted “Io,

  Saturnalia!” at a riotous feast in the temple.

      The Saturnalia was the most popular

  holiday of the

  Roman year. Catullus describes it as “the best of days,” and Seneca

  complains that the “whole mob has let itself go in pleasures.” Pliny

  the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the

  household celebrated. Cicero fled to the countryside. It was an

  occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of

  gifts, particularly wax candles (cerei), perhaps to signify the

  returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria. Martial wrote

  Xenia

  and Apophoreta for the Saturnalia. Both were published in December and

  intended to accompany the “guest gifts” which were given at that time

  of year. Aulus Gellius relates in his Attic Nights (XVIII.2) that he

  and his Roman compatriots would gather at the baths in Athens, where

  they were studying, and pose difficult questions to one another on the

  ancient poets, a crown of laurel being dedicated to Saturn if no-one

  could answer them.

  

      During the holiday, restrictions were relaxed and

  the social order inverted. Gambling was allowed in public. Slaves were

  permitted to use dice and did not have to work. Instead of the toga,

  less formal dinner clothes (synthesis) were permitted, as was the

  pilleus, a felt cap normally worn by the manumitted slave that

  symbolized the freedom of the season. Within the family, a Lord of

  Misrule was chosen. Slaves were treated as equals, allowed to wear

  their masters’ clothing, and be waited on at meal time in remembrance

  of an earlier golden age thought to have been ushered in by the

  god.
  

    This equality was temporary, of course;

  and

  Petronius speaks of an impudent slave being asked at some other time

  of

  the year whether it was December yet. Dio writes of Aulus Plautius,

  who

  was to lead the conquest of Britain, cajoling his troops. But they

  hesitated, “indignant at the thought of carrying on a campaign outside

  the limits of the known world.” Only when they were entreated by a

  former slave dispatched by Claudius did they relent, shouting “Io,

  Saturnalia.” (If a time of merriment, the season also was an occasion

  for murder. Commodus was strangled in his bath on New Year’s eve, and

  Caracalla plotted to murder his brother during the

  Saturnalia.)
  

  
  

      At the end of the first century AD,

  Statius still

  could proclaim: “For how many years shall this festival abide! Never

  shall age destroy so holy a day! While the hills of Latium remain and

  father Tiber, while thy Rome stands and the Capitol thou hast restored

  to the world, it shall continue.” And the Saturnalia did continue to

  be

  celebrated as Brumalia (from bruma, winter solstice) down to the

  Christian era, when, by the middle of the fourth century AD, its

  rituals had become absorbed in the celebration of Christmas.

  University

  of California at San Francisco – Encyclopaedia

  Romana

  ---

  The rhetorician

  Libanius said:

  The festival of the Kalends is

  celebrated everywhere as far as the limits of the Roman Empire

  extend… The impulse to spend seizes everyone…. People are not only

  generous towards themselves, but also towards their fellow-men. A

  stream of presents pours itself out on all sides…. The Kalends

  festival banishes all that is connected with toil, and allows men to

  give themselves up to undisturbed enjoyment. From the minds of young

  people it removes two kinds of dread: the dread of the schoolmaster

  and

  the dread of the stern pedagogue…. Another great quality of the

  festival is that it teaches men not to hold too fast to their money,

  but to part with it and let it pass into other hands.

  Sound familiar?

      

  (According to

  wikipedia.org,

  Libanius (Greek: Libanios)

  (ca

  314 AD – ca 394)

  was a Greek-speaking teacher of

  rhetoric of the later Roman Empire, an educated pagan of the Sophist school in an

  Empire that was turning aggressively Christian and publicly burned its

  own heritage and closed the academies.)

  ---

  

  So, that covers Saturnalia and Kalends, Winter Solstice through New

  Years, which roughly corresponds to the West’s annual winter

  celebration that many of us call the “Christmas holidays.”

  Yule was a Northern European celebration, already in practice when the

  conquering Romans first encountered the Celts, Saxons and
  Germans.

   

  According to 13moons.com:

  “The Winter Solstice or Yule is
  one of the Lesser Wiccan Sabbats, and

  it is also the shortest day of the year, and hence – the longest
  night.

  This usually takes place on December 20th or 21st, although it does

  sometimes occur on the 22nd or 23rd (check your calendar as it changes

  from year to year). Other than the most common name of Yule, various

  other names for the Winter Solstice include Midwinter, Yuletide (the

  Teutonic version), Alban Arthan (Caledonii Tradition, or the Druids),

  Feill Fionnain (Pecti-Wita Tradition, which falls on December 22nd).

  Yuletide lasts from December 20th through December 31st. It begins on

  “Mother Night” and ends twelve days later, on “Yule Night”, hence the

  “Twelve Days of Christmas” tradition. Alban Arthan, unlike all the

  others, is not considered a fire festival.”

  Okay, so it’s a “lesser” sabbat.  I suppose that’s
  understandable

  for a bunch of people who tend to celebrate life and
  fertility. 

  Although I do endeavor to live in the Now, I still find myself looking

  forward in time.  At summer solstice, the thought that occurs
  to

  me is that days will be getting shorter and soon the midnight sun will

  be gone. 

  At this time of year, it is not the darkness on which I focus, but
  that

  embryonic new year gestating within the frozen Earth, and the coming
  of

  the Sun. 

  Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

  and I say it’s all right

  Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter

  Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here

  Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

  and I say it’s all right

  Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces

  Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here

  Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

  and I say it’s all right

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

  Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

  Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting

  Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear

  Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

  and I say it’s all right

  It’s all right

  George Harrison, 1969

  

  • 10:40 pm
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