Christmas

Being that I will be visiting my family in Michigan on Thursday and won't be back until the following Wednesday I figure I should take what little time I have and write a Christmas Uncooked blog. Christmas has quite an ancient history so this may turn out to be quite a long blog.

The holiday dates back to the cradle of civilization; Mesopotamia which existed in what is present day Iraq from about 5000BC to 400BC . This predates Christianity by quite a significant margin. Anyways, the Mesopotamians believed that their chief god Marduk would do battle with the forces of evil for 12 days during roughly corresponding to the vernal equinox. The Mesopotamians would hold a celebration during this time called Zagmuk. This, obviously, is part of the founding tradition of the 12 days of Christmas.

The Mesopotamians believed that their king needed to be sacrificed on the last day of the calibration so he could join Marduk in battle against chaos. Since the king obviously had no desire to be killed a policy of "replacing" the king for 12 days was created. A criminal was chosen, anointed king, and venerated as the Mesopotamian ruler for these 12 days. This criminal had the time of his life as the ruler of, quite literally, the first human civilization on earth for 12 days he went from a criminal in a jail to the ruler of civilization to a cold dead corpse on the 12th day. The Mesopotamians sacrificed this criminal and the original king stepped back up to take his rightful place as ruler.

As a little interesting side note, the Mesopotamians chose another criminal to set free to "balance out" the sacrifice of the other criminal... a similar story is repeated somewhere in the Bible...

The Zagmuk celebration evolved into many different festivals through out the centuries. Persians and Babylonians would celebrate by having masters and slaves switch places during a huge feast. The slaves were to command, the masters were to obey. Scandinavians lived in a region of the world where the sun would vanish for 30 days at a time. When the sun was first spotted again a festival was held called the Yuletide where a Yule log would be burned. Romans had a celebration called Saturnalia where they decorated their hallways with laurel garlands and candle-lit trees. They would exchange "lucky fruits" and then, once again, the masters would be made to obey and the slaves would be made to rule. All of these celebrations were fun and festive and took place at roughly the same time of year... so all of earth was having a good time from early December to early Januray.

As another side note, this was a time of year that agricultural civilizations slaughtered most of their livestock because they didn't want to have to feed animals through the winter and, since it was cold, meet could be "refrigerated" and kept for much longer than during any other time of year. This was one of the few times of year that fresh meat would be in abundance.

Then the Christians came along and fucked everything up. These pagan celebrations resembled Mardi Gras in their revelry and decadence. They were tired of all this happiness and joy (and sex! We all know Christians hate sex for some bizarre reason), especially during a time of year that was supposed to be fraught with hardship and turmoil. They were tired of all these pagan gods being celebrated and wanted everyone to celebrate Christ instead... but they didn't want him to be celebrated, exactly... they wanted the holiday to be solemn and religious. Round about 98AD Christians had had enough with 5000 years of festive happiness and started holding Christ's Mass to correspond with all the crazy festive holidays going on in other civilizations. So, if you were living n this time period, your Christian friends would invite you to some boring mass and your Pagan friends would invite you to a kick-ass party... not quite sure how the Christians eventually won out on that one.

By 137AD Rome had become heavily Christian and ordered the birthday of Christ Child to be celebrated as a solemn feast (never mind the fact that there is no way in hell Christ was born in winter, let alone December 25th). In 350AD the Romans chose December 25th as the observance of Christmas.

So, now you have an idea of the foundations of our modern Christmas holiday but there are some other pieces of the puzzle that haven't fallen into place yet.

Fortunately, while Christian leaders may not have wanted anyone to have any fun actual Christian regular people did. This guy Saint Nicholas, bishop of Myra (a city existing in what is now Turkey) was supposedly possessing of magical powers and generous with his wealth to the poor. He died in 340AD... and when the crusaders were shuffling back and forth between Europe and the Middle East, slaughtering innocent Christians and Muslims alike in a conflict lasting centuries, they managed to become distracted from their bloodshed long enough to notice Saint Nicholas' remains and trucked them over to Italy.

Christian pilgrims started kicking it over to Italy to visit the church of Saint Nicholas and brought his teachings of giving and goodwill toward men back to their respective countries. The holiday took many forms across Europe but was essentially a day of gift giving. Since Saint Nicholas was originally a bishop, and bishops wore red garb, Saint Nick was depicted as wearing a red outfit. In German/Dutch Sain Nicholas became Sinterklaas... later we bastardized the name and it became Santa Clause.

One of Saint Nicholis' acts of charity during his life supposedly involved visiting the family of a poor widower. The widower had three daughters who couldn't get married without dowries (marring for love is a modern concept. Back in the day women needed to pay the families of their husbands because male children were the laborers in a family and you were 'taking' part of a families labor force. You married someone you kinda got along with and paid the mom and dad of your husband-to-be. This tradition still exists in the form of the woman's parents paying for the wedding.). Anyways... The father was poor and had no choice but to sell the daughters into slavery and prostitution. One night the daughters had hung out the days laundry to dry by the fire, specifically the socks. Saint Nicholas showed up (probably because he heard there were three sisters who were going to be 'open for business' shortly) broke into the house by smashing down the door while standing shirtless with chiseled and throbbing sweaty chest (I made that part up to make the story sound cooler). He decided he didn't want any nookey (musta been tired from smashing down the door) and dumped gold in the socks of the women so they would have dowries. This is where we get the tradition of hanging stockings... we don't want to be sold into prostitution by our parents.

The idea of Saint Nick took on a number of different forms through the centuries and is the origin of the idea that children must be good. Some traditions believed that Saint Nick would give presents to good kids and have an assistant kidnap the bad ones. Other traditions had Santa smacking the bad kids with a stick. Santa was a mean bastard in some traditions.

While all this gift-giving and red-garbed fat-man worshiping was going on there was another pagan symbol that was popular in winter, primarily in what is now Germany... when all things were dying, going into hibernation, or moving to warmer climates there was one thing that seemed to have magical powers capable of withstanding the icy chill of winter; the evergreen tree. Ancient pagans decorated evergreen trees with 12 candles, fruit, holly, and other things to venerate the magical energies that allowed this one tree to withstand the winter season.

So Christians are like; "fuck! How do we jack this tree thing and make it our own?" And some other Christian's were like; "I know! We'll make up some lame story about St. Boniface cutting down an oak tree, sacred to the pagans, and having an evergreen tree miraculously emerge from the stump. We'll then say this story represents the death of paganism and the birth of Christianity in its place... everyone will totally buy that bullshit!" And they were right. Grermans decorated evergreen trees. Some English queen married some German prince and brought the tradition of decorating evergreens to England where people paid attention to what their rulers did (much like Paris Hilton today). People eventually started decorating evergreen trees and just accepted it as some weird aspect of the Christian holiday of Christmas never realizing that ancient religions worshiped the evergreen for entirely different reasons.

Another side note is the mistletoe which is also a pagan symbol. It was believed that two enemies who meet under a mistletoe must declare a truce for the day. Since you now know a little more about the true nature of marriage, dowries, and whatnot from a few paragraphs ago... it is easy to see how people were quick to adopt this tradition... So, for ONE DAY, you can not fight with your spouse and maybe get a piece.

So, Christmas existed in many forms all over the western, predominantly Christian world. In the 1800's to 1900's media shaped our modern vision of Christmas (media is the new religion in many ways). In 1820 Washington Irving wrote the book 'The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall" and In 1822 Clark Moore wrote the poem 'A Visit From Saint Nicholis' (T'was the Night before Christmas and all through the house... etc.) which is the FIRST appearance of Santa's reindeer within the Christmas tradition. In 1860 Thomas Nast illustrated Santa Caluse in the red garb we recognize him in today. Eventually Coca-Cola adopted this image and became the primary illustrative work by which we recognize him. The ideas of gift giving, goodwill toward men, feasts, family, trees, and everything else was thrown into one massive collective pot, churned around for a bit, and now manifests as the holiday we know of today. Christmas became an Oklahoma state holiday in 1907 and every other state and, eventually most countries around the world, followed suit.

I will close with this; I may have taken on a condescending view of Christianity in this blog but I should note that that was not my intention. Christianity, in many ways, won out over most other world religions and became what it is today through absorbing the beliefs of paganism into itself. That is a fact. If there's any condescending attitude it's comes from my distaste for people claiming, with righteous fury, that a holiday is one thing when, in truth, it is not.

I like Christmas... I grew up in a town that was decorated like Christmas 365 days a year so I'm a little desensitized... but the holiday is sill fun and there's nothing I like more than watching a fire while snow falls outside. Gift giving aside, I like to take time to indulge in good company of family and friends and don't personally take much credence in the religious undertones of the holiday. Christmas is a personal holiday for each of us and whether you're sitting in church or getting lit, enjoy every second of it.

Tagged with: Christian, Christmas, December 25th, Jesus, Pagan, Saint Nick, Santa Clause