What is the true meaning of this time of year? Not what you think…

 

Anyone who insists on everyone calling this season “Christmas” because of their own beliefs is sadly mistaken. It is not really about Christ, in fact; it has been adapted over the years. So when someone confronts you because you said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” they need to do a bit of research. Most of the celebrations and symbols are direct adaptations of past traditions, and the Midwinter celebration of fire, light and long life is much older than the pastiche of Midwinter revelry it became later on.

It’s the season known by some as Christmas, a time when people often think back to the late Bronze Age science fiction sagas of Mary, Joseph, a donkey, and an impending humble birth. But of course, Christmas was not the original name for the almost two-week period starting on the night of 24 December. It took a great deal of time, planning and slow conversion of symbolism, but many very ancient traditions remain. It wasn’t always about that humble birth, but that particular symbolism served a very useful purpose. 

The early Church had a problem on its hands: there were so many huge festivals around the winter solstice that got in the way of its rising influence and threatened its authority. By using the symbolism of the season, it managed to legitimise the hijacking of the Midwinter festivities for itself and turn people away from their original purposes. It seems, though, that we are slowly coming full-circle and that we are abandoning the religious accessories. How many similarities are there between the traditions of today's Midwinter and those before the Christian interval, and what type of festivals were there?

Saturnalia:

There was the week-long Saturnalia that covered the solstice period, where gifts were exchanged, slaves were served by their masters, people swapped their clothes, and lots and lots of drinking and eating took place. Because of its midwinter setting, candles were given to symbolise light and warmth, and there were even post-Saturnalia sales where younger family members were given some money to go out and spend there. This particular festival was a prevalent feature throughout most of the Roman period, and was such an important event that only a handful of Roman emperors dared bring any changes. Some of the madder ones tried to reduce it to five days, or even to just one evening, but most people carried on regardless for the entire week, or even longer.

Brumalia:

This was also a Roman festival that carried on in one form or another until at least the 10^th century in some parts of the empire, mainly in the east, but had all-but died out by the end of the time of Justinian in 565 CE. It celebrated the Earth and all things to do with hunting and farming, such as sacrifices of pigs and goats, as well as the downing of wine.

These revels took place because it was the saddest, darkest time of the year and it was important to remember that the light was about to return. The celebrations meant people could say goodbye to the increasingly darker days and welcome in the longer evening light. Different parts of Europe had variations of these events, but they all pointed to the main tenets of the darkness leaving and the light returning, the finishing off of the autumn fruits that had by now turned into strong alcohol, and being with close friends and family.

Yule/Jul:

Further north, the winter festivities were not that different. The god Odin had various other titles, including Jölnir, from whom the name of the festival comes. Various toasts were made, such as for the success of the coming year's harvest, the rulers, the gods and the ancestors. The culmination of that festival in Anglo-Saxon England was known as Modraniht, or Mothers' Night, and was a night of fire and sacrifice. What they all had in common was that folk brought along the food they had left and shared it all out. The food, especially the meat, was blessed by the most senior chieftain and they all participated in the debauchery until nothing was left.

Adapting the old for the new:

And it was these types of festivals that got in the way of any form of coherent building of Christian societies.

What to do?

This was an easy question to answer, and one that Rome had a great track record of: adapt these pagan festivals through their symbolism, and absorb them into Christianity without too many drastic changes. The people had to be coerced into this acceptance rather than have their already centuries-old celebrations banned to introduce this novel idea.

So although many early Christian thinkers were rather critical of all the winter excesses, they set out to make the period both holy and at the same time jolly. And so the great Midwinter festivals carried on but over time they carried more of an air of religiousness and formality. 

(By the way, the word jolly was at one time thought to have come from Jul, but it is most probably from the Old French, meaning pretty or nice.)

The symbolism and the adaptation of traditional behaviour had to be perfect to convert the midwinter festivals into somehow representing Christian beliefs, and it was telling the story of the birth of Jesus and overlaying the imagery of his appearance that made it the most appropriate way of coaxing people away from their original beliefs.

Symbolism

1. Decorating houses and halls with winter foliage was a way of demonstrating that there was still life around, despite the regression of nature. Mistletoe, holly and ivy had different connotations: mistletoe was the symbol of peace and love, hence the kissing; the Green King’s crown and garments were made of holly, and ivy was the representation of death, the death of the past year. Being an evergreen, winter-hardy plant, holly was also the symbol of fertility and long life, but it came to represent Jesus’s crown of thorns and the red berries of his blood, and inevitably eternal life promised in his story. In order to substantiate people’s roles in the world, the holly was a male symbol of fertility, and ivy the melancholy female representative of death. These days, of course, that would be understandably unacceptable, but the two were and are synonymous with the season.

2. Wreaths, always round, symbolised the circle of life: winter-to-spring-to-summer-to-autumn and back to winter, as well as the life cycle of people and families. These wreaths had nothing to do with anything concerning God or infinity, and the candles in an advent wreath (or crown) were added to provide a visual countdown to Christmas. Midwinter was seen as the birth of the sun deities, such as Mithras and Sol, so it was just a matter of converting this into the coming of Jesus.

 

3. Midwinter singing and drinking took place to drive away the evil spirits. As Christmas was supposed to be a celebration, it was easy to incorporate this, although it was toned down a lot from the originally-intended decadent blowout that the Romans put on. The Anglo-Saxon Modraniht mentioned earlier was easy to incorporate, as it meant Mother's Night, and Mary was always going to be given the role of the venerated and highly-favoured lady.

4. Even the candles are pre-Christian in origin, symbolising the rise of the sun. Many traditions around the world have candle festivals to bring human light to the darkest time of the year, but the idea of Christ’s light (the people sitting in darkness seeing the light, as Matthew and Luke wrote) was too convenient a symbol to drop.

 

5. Gifts were given at Saturnalia at an event called Sigillaria. They were generally small wax or earthenware figurines of particular deities that would represent different things to different people. Again, the gifts the Three Wise Men brought to the manger would serve perfectly to subsume this tradition into this new hybrid festival.

 

6. Dressing up and theatrical performances were the norm at Saturnalia. Traditional roles, like masters and slaves, were reversed; men and women swapped stereotypical clothing; later on in the Middle Ages, mummers, or guisers, groups of actors, musicians and singers, would pass round houses and perform folk plays. And things like carols and wassailing also took place at other times of the year, and were greetings of the season. It was also easy to Christianise these traditions, like creating plays that told the story of Jesus’s birth, and carols that moved away from evoking paganistic aspects like holly, ivy, midwinter and snow, and instead talked of angels, virgin births, stars and a plethora of miracles.

7. Fasting was not the monopoly of Christians: the period before the great feast was given over to fasting so that it would be a much more rewarding celebration. This of course sat very well in the new Christian narrative to get people in the mood and looking forward to the coming festivities, even if they were now about something totally different.

One of the reasons there are a lot of fruity, unctuous dishes, often a prized part of an animal to eat, and a log to burn, were all to do with the season – something to look forward to in the middle of the darkness.

Continuity of pre-Christian traditions

Many of these traditions carry on today in some form or another: 

1. Pigs are big: In the UK and Ireland, North America and parts of northern Europe, it is common to eat a Christmas Ham. This came directly from the ancient sacrifice of the Yule Boar. Even in Sweden there are cakes shaped like pigs, all evidence of how far we have come since those days, but still a continuous line from two or three millennia ago.

2. Happy music: Carol singing and wassailing were for the entertainment of the guests, and this tradition of seasonal merriment in music is not exclusive to the English-speaking world in the form of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer and The Twelve Days of Christmas. Other traditions have the same idea, such as the Czech/Moravian Bodejž se zbrunčila bába and Petit Papa Noël in France. There are plenty of non-Christian carols that have transcended the unsubtle Christian overtones and are staples of the period of the year.

3. Dressing up: Also in parts of Europe it is still common to cross-dress and enact stories to audiences, such as in the UK with pantomimes, where the main character is a girl dressed as a boy and his/her opposite number is often a mature man dressed up as a lady.

4. Cosy by the fire: The Yule Log was actually a whole tree that was cut up to provide warmth during the Midwinter festivities so that people didn’t get cold and could enjoy themselves in warmth. The fermented fruit would have helped...

5. Puddings and cakes: A lot of that fermented fruit was also mixed with the leftover ingredients, nuts, and any spices to disguise any dodgy flavours. It slowly transformed itself into something more “gentrified”, such as Plum Pudding in the UK, Julekake in Norway, Stollen in Germany, and Panettone/Pandoro in Italy. Some have alcohol or nuts in them, some not, but what they all have in common is the dried fruit and of course being served as dessert.

 

In the end, the meaning of this season is by far more complicated than I have laid out here, but one thing we can all say is however you reach this time of year, we should all try not to force our ideas of the festival on others, no matter which beliefs you have: relax, celebrate, enjoy the company of your friends and family, sing, eat, get drunk, and dress up how you want – so greet people in your own way and live and let live!

The Christmas message is maybe no longer lost

Along with many people, I have been gripped by the BBC's freshly-made telling of the Nativity story, quite originally titled Nativity, on at 19.00 GMT for four days this week. It was actually quite refreshing to see the whole story through Joseph's eyes, and walk a mile in his shoes. Well, 85 miles in fact, from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

I thought Andrew Buchan, who plays the upstanding William Garrow in Garrow's Law was an outstanding piece of casting. His mild-mannered attitude and gentle demeanour made him the perfect Joseph. Tatiana Maslany, one of the most innocently beautiful women ever to grace the screen made it all the more worthwhile. They together were two inspirational main subjects who brought the whole story to its sweetest conclusion and quite frankly I would have liked it to go on and on and on in that manner, telling the whole story. I might be a Pagan, but I too find the Christmas story humbling, yet empowering. An odd juxtaposition of emotions which culminate in just a day from now.

The reason it was so gripping was because there was no exaggeration, no Ben Hur-style über-glory, no fanfare, no great announcement by archangels, just the bare bones of the story, the poorest of poor shepherds, the Magi following the astronomical signals and two caring parents worried about their daughter and future son-in-law. The other interesting aspect of this particular version was the inclusion of planetary movement, making this astronomical event seem much more relevant, as it should do.

As a Pagan, we respect and tolerate all reasonable religions, and find comfort in and gain knowledge from many of their teachings. I would never shy away from hiding the story of the Nativity from any child of mine, as it is a story of hope, as well as a lesson in the equality of all people at birth. If Jesus could be born in a stall, and become the great man he was, and for many still is, so the dustman's son could one day grow up to be a footballer, the daughter of a party pack salesman could grow up to marry the heir to the throne of the UK, but at the same time, Nicholas II, the Tsar of Russia could be pulled from his haughty position to be executed, and the greatest leader of all time, Winston Churchill, could lose a general election and be a mere commoner the day after.

The Nativity story also tells us that life is a gift. The planet we live on is a beautiful spheroid perfectly climatised to allow us to evolve and gain intelligence to improve our existences. The story also teaches us that death is but a condition for our existence and comes to us all in the end, like a final bill at the end of a prodigious meal. Some of us will be lucky and drop dead without any symptoms. The most shocking for those left behind, but the way most of us would like to depart. Many of us will die of illnesses which we hope we will never get. The long, protracted suffering of my mother is one of the things which made me understand the tenuousness of our lives. Some of us, a very tiny minority in fact, will be killed by another person. This is the greatest crime in any society, and in all right-minded religions. The more brutal the death, the more horrified we are. But there is also war. That is for another day.

The benefits we receive from the Nativity story far outweigh the man-made rules and regulations taken down by human hand afterwards. Christianity today is a shadow of itself - it is losing the battle of hearts and minds, suffering from neglect, threatened with becoming irrelevant, even obsolete. This tragedy is due to the one and only fact: human desire for power. How can those in the Vatican claim to be Jesus's and St Peter's successors when it takes residence in great halls, monasteries, castles and cathedrals worldwide? How can a commercial enterprise fill the space where charity and compassion should be? And how can self-appointed representatives of such a humble man claim to be owners of countless masterpieces of a priceless nature whilst at the same time sanctioning the donation of money at church level to pay for their upkeep?

The fact that the BBC invests money, time and effort into telling the story properly and putting it on TV during prime time tells us a lot about the world we now live in. We are finally going back to basics. The simple things in life are coming back to us. The hubris years of credit cards, big spending and partying may finally be over. This is no time for decadence and carefree living. For the greatest thing taught to us by the Nativity is, we only have the one life. Why have so many people been raised to want more? Why are so many children in the North and West not happy with their situations? If they do not have any brand labels in their pile under the tree, if they do not have the latest downloads for their iPods, if they do not have junk food awaiting them instead of proper meat and vegetables for Christmas dinner, then that is another soul lost to the great demon of consumerism, the religion of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Then there are those that would destroy everything around them for their own beliefs: the fundamentalists, the crackpot element of this world. Why would anyone sane even think that the God of Abraham would consider a hero a person who believes his miserable existence should be ended by exploding himself in a busy street, killing tens or hundreds of innocent members of the public? And why would any sane individual even consider building a nuclear bomb, let alone using it? The story of the Nativity teaches us that very point: life is worth more than any ideological hangup, and certainly more than not having the latest toy/gadget/song to hand.

So maybe, if trends continue this way, the ungratefulness shown by spoiled kids may soon be a thing of the past, and we can get back to reality once again. When you wake up on Christmas morning to open your presents, remember two things: first, the fact that countless numbers of children worldwide will have been sleeping without a roof over their heads and will have no presents this day, and secondly that you are very, very lucky to even be here on this Earth in the first place. Bombs, wars, ideology and established religion are all just rabble-rousing hype. A life lived to the full and enjoyed as often as possible is worth so much more. So make the most of it!

Should Rome have a monopoly on beatification?

Yesterday Princess Diana would have become 46 years of age but for the tragic events of 31st August 1997, which brought speechlessness to usually stoic BBC newsreaders, a lump to the throat of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, a silent response from the Royal Family and a mass outpouring of grief from the general public. Ordinary people flew around the world to be at her funeral, world leaders sat among charity workers and hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets in an unprecedented (and unrepeatable) act of togetherness which made London the temporary epicentre of the world.

I was there too. All night. How could I miss such an event if I was only half an hour away by train?

I remember it well, and I don't regret one sleepless second of it. I met two friends of mine, Marketa from the Czech Republic and Anne from France and together we had a hot drink at one of the plethora of cafés which stayed open to feed the world the night before. It was one of the only times in history where London was crimeless, apart from the odd pickpocket and shameless flower peddlar. By midnight the streets looked like Disney had recreated a life-size sellout car-free London themepark - in London itself. We walked around bewondering the immensity of it all, the sheer numbers camping out along the streets, in the parks, in doorways of offices.

A little after, we found ourselves outside the HQ itself: Buckingham Palace. It was here that we chose to spend the remainder of the night. When we arrived there were relatively few people, and we chose to sit beside a musician strumming ballads on his guitar. Let us not forget, that week had been a week where most people in the city had not really gone to work. They mostly couldn't face it. But there were more people in the capital that night than at any time of the working week. But here we were quite alone at the Victoria Memorial. As the playing went on, more and more people came to join, sing along, sway, hold hands or simply listen. By about 2, we must have numbered sixty or more. The pagans celebrate the circle as a symbol of protection, a forcefield against the outside evil forces. And there we were on the greatest circle of them all, emotionally vulnerable but as a group indestructable. We all shared our food and drink together like some new form of communion. I brought a bottle of Becherovka to keep the chill away, Marketa had some sandwiches with her and Anne had a neat little picnic. I had some tortilla española, Polish vodka, North African unleavened bread and Hungarian salami from the assorted members of the human race who, just for that night, were together as they would never be again.

We sang "Candle In The Wind" and other soulful songs when the music stopped for a second. Someone (it might even have been me) recommended singing the National Anthem. If I remember rightly, there was no hesitation. Someone started us off and then the lot of us rose to our feet and belted it out twice. I was impressed how many foreigners knew the words. As we were nearing the end of the Anthem, a light came on in the Palace. I will never forget that moment. It felt as if Her Majesty the Queen herself were saying, "Don't worry, I'm here." Of course, it might have just been a security guard checking the rooms or the Queen Mother getting up to adjust her colostomy bag, or the Duke of Edinburgh looking for his shotgun, but at the time it felt like She was giving us her blessing.

The time passed quickly and the sun soon started to make its arrival imminent. It was going to be a glorious high summer morning. The puddles from recent rain had vanished and the constant sound of all of London's humanity murmuring had reduced to a dawn lull. It was then that we headed off to Hyde Park, where we wanted to watch the funeral on the large screens the BBC had, in her time-honoured fashion, selflessly placed in various open spaces around the city. I have so much to thank the BBC for over the years, but that is for a future article. The three of us, who had been unusually quiet overnight, headed off hurriedly to acquire a good position somewhere near the biggest screen in London.

I thought we would be too late, but we alloted ourselves a prime place a hundred metres back from the screen, and BBC News had already started broadcasting there to keep us occupied while we awaited what I would quite rationally and realistically call the world's greatest funeral since Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi. And maybe including his too. People from the sixties talk about the Kennedy Moment (that everyone knows what they were doing when they heard JFK was assassinated), well I'm sure the Diana Moment surpassed even that. This was a woman who was even known by some remote tribes of the rain forests, who even got airtime on North Korean television (North Korean TV is well known for providing news rather belatedly, and showed a thirty-minute highlights programme of the Football World Cup in 1998 two months after the event - if the BBC did that there would be a lot of letters!).

We sat there around the other people sharing more food out watching coverage of the early morning events, pundits and correspondents telling us what others were doing around the world, famous people reminiscing about their moments with Diana, or charity workers talking about her visits, presenters informing us of the schedule. We watched as the gentry filed into Westminster Abbey and the world's leaders arrived with their escorts and bodyguards. At exactly the right time, the soldiers opened the gates and out came the gun carriage, normally associated with great war leaders, like Churchill, Nelson or Wellington, this time paradoxically for a princess of peace.

Behind her came the royal accompaniment. Brave boys William and Harry looking like men far before their time, bemused, bewildered, betrayed; her brother Earl Spencer hardly able to walk, dignified with his head held high; Prince Charles looking like a startled fish out of water; the Duke of Edinburgh completing the lineup. It was like an identification parade at a police station. Which one of these three men was the perpetrator? Apparently Prince Charles had spent the week roaming around the hills of Scotland feeling full of guilt and self-recrimination. The two boys had been obviously protected from the press because they had not been seen all week. Earl Spencer had occupied himself with the banalities of the administration.

As they entered into the London streets, a small group of hysterical individuals started wailing and throwing rose petals at the coffin. We started to wonder if that was going to be the precedent, but fortunately the rest passed off with dignity. As they progressed along towards Hyde Park, the thousands of people in the vicinity of the southern side of the space rushed towards the roadside to catch a glimpse of her passing. We three followed the wave towards the road barriers, the only empty area of streetside barricades until we arrived en masse. This was the only, rarest and strangest moment of excitement we had had in the fifteen hours we had been in London. We were all, without exception, there to see her. The only time I saw the Princess of Wales was in a coffin. I barely looked at the others, transfixed by her alone, even after death. The feeling of seeing her was enough fulfillment and we all processed back to our abandoned picnic places, rucksacks and foldable chairs, which were, of course, all still there, untouched. That was a day when even the thieves took a day off.

As she approached the final part of her journey to the Abbey, the bell of the tower was rung a pre-calculated number of times. Precisely upon the final stroke of the bell, the military stopped at the entrance. It was one of a string of impressive events of that day. Not least what was to happen next. The music which accompanied her up the aisle of the Abbey was so impressive, repressive, oppressive, that it was the moment even the stoniest of hearts let their tears flow. I was losing litres through my eyes and was not ashamed. Most of the funeral was a blur of hypocritical religious mumbo-jumbo which the princess would have had to accept simply because it was her funeral.

Then Sir Elton John stepped up to the piano and sang "Candle In The Wind", a song originally dedicated to Marilyn Monroe but rather controversially re-worded for Diana. Most people thought "Your Song" to be more appropriate, including the proxy-assassins at the tabloid newspapers, as that was genuinely one of her favourite songs and the reason why Sir Elton was there at all.

Earl Spencer climbed the stairs of the pulpit and began his eulogy, perhaps in time seen as the defining moment of the day and which made the shortlist of the Guardian's Great Speeches of the Twentieth Century, where he joins a line-up of great men and women like Sir Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King and Jawaharlal Nehru.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatspeeches/story/0,,2060134,00.html

As his pained words flowed out, rising above his shaken voice, the world sat transfixed at the eloquence, simplicity and raw power of his speech. He did not hold in his grief. He spoke for everyone and did not revert to hidden messages. And then people were no longer sitting. They were standing all over London, applauding. The growing applause dopplered its way towards the doors of the Abbey and then inside that formal, stuffy sanctum where it brought dignitaries out of protocol, also clapping probably embarrassed to be seen not to, just how Diana would have liked it. Although the rest of the funeral was a typical royal ceremony, those moments were unforgettable. As the service finished, people drifted back to normality, back to the pubs, cafés and railway stations. Reality set in, paradoxically bringing the solidarity shown before crashing to the ground as cars, buses, even white vans, reclaimed their positions as the city's chief noisemakers.

By early afternoon, reality had hit hardest on my own energy levels, artificially pumped up for that most surreal night and saddest of mornings. We three went our separate ways and I took one of the extra trains provided to carry British citizens out of London, dawdled aimlessly in a homeward direction and collapsed in my bed, despite the raging sunshine outside. I slept in a way I had not been able to all week - finally in the most peaceful of circumstances.

You are now wondering why I chose that title. It was playing on my mind yesterday while watching the concert for Diana at Wembley Stadium, the home of modern folklore. Despite the film "The Queen", which did no favours to Diana and virtually turned her into a manic depressive, manipulative little maid, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. She surely became depressed and fairly unpopular in The House due to how she was treated, although I don't think she did herself many favours. I am sure she was tricked into marrying Charles, whom she loved dearly despite his lack of amorous advances. Once she had produced an heir, a handsome successor, she was surplus to requirements, although she could have been a much more admired figure in the royal household if she had Played The Game. But that wasn't her style. She hated all the formalities and protocols. When she went on holiday to Klosters with Sarah Ferguson and the four children once, the tabloid press lambasted her and especially "Fergie" for "giggling like schoolgirls" and behaving like ordinary people, not super-royals. What did they expect? That they would ski in golden boots and go to bed at nine?

And for this reason I believe we have seen exactly how a Messiah could have been manufactured for us 2000 years ago. When you see the photos of Diana shaking hands with leprosy sufferers, AIDS patients, terminally ill children; when she walks in landmine clearance zones, visits youth theatres, takes her boys to a theme park and makes them queue up with the rest, this rings a very familiar bell. It is now, in her death, that she is the humble member of the royalty who was one of the people. All the television documentary witnesses, like the parents of terminally ill patients, right up to ex-presidents, queued up to tell of how she touched their lives so readily, how she was the true divinity which saved their hospital from closing, or which got crucial publicity for their plight in the media, or which lit up the face of a dying boy. Didn't some Jewish man do similar things two thousand years before?

For People's Princess read King of the Jews, for Queen of Hearts, read Lamb of God. We are getting ourselves a secular saint. Would this be the example of how the story of Jesus Christ was purveyed, embellished with a few miracles and urban myths? Don't forget, in those days, in order to Big Someone Up, they had to have performed some mighty things. That meant even if they were bending reality, like being able to walk on water, knowing where a huge shoal of fish was and performing life-saving surgery on your friend's daughter, this meant the person was great.

I see nothing wrong in making legends out of mere mortals, but I see a great moral corruption in turning the tabloid press (who never gave her a moment's peace) into the pharisees, the royal biographers as the Gospel writers, Britain into Judea, and the individuals she met into the Lazaruses, lepers and disciples. But this seems to be what is happening. A new phase in the rehabilitation, a beatification from the masses. I truly believe there are individuals who deserve special status in our respect, who we should try to emulate, but we are also in danger of allowing ourselves to be thrust back into a new religion just as we are finally rejecting them.