Don’t despair, though, but Christmas isn’t really over - in fact it’s still a good six months away. If you still haven’t heard, and this may be a shocker, Jesus Christ
wasn’t really born in December but scholars place it some time in the fall season. In those days nobody really kept track of birthdays. Of course, nobody celebrates birthdays if they don’t know when they were born. Only “sinners” and heathen despots and rulers like pharaoh or Herod or the Roman emperors celebrate birthdays. Birthday celebrations are considered as a paganistic practice. Naturally early Christ followers never celebrated his birthday. It was the Romans who invented the Christmas tradition that we now celebrate on December 25.
A bit of historical background: a Roman holiday, Saturnalia, which was a harvest festival, was celebrated during December in honor of their god Saturn. This was a time of merrymaking and Romans exchanged gifts. Another pagan celebration, which was the Persian celebration of the birth of their mystery God Mythra, happened in December as well. In Europe the Celtic Yule festival during winter was a celebrated with fire and light and lots of food. The Romans thought it would be a cool political idea to make the early Christians happy if the birth of Jesus Christ be celebrated in combination with all these pagan festivals.
Since nobody really knows when Jesus was actually born just keep on celebrating Christmas every day - a swell idea, right?
Now here’s another messy tradition - those pretentious New Year’s resolutions. Why in the world would people wait for the new year to come to make improvements in their lives. An overweight lady I know is so resolute to lose weight. Every new year she vows to embark on a weight-loss program but only a couple of months into the new year her resolution get’s a little tweaked from its original form - like instead of the watch-those-calories to nomore-sugar-only diet-coke-afterevery-buffet.
Happy New Year (and try the new Korean buffet in Coquilam!
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|