Help protest the Christians' stealing Yule again this year!

[Jackpine Radical]

Yule (known among our southern brethren as the Saturnalia) is the biggest pagan holiday of the year. It is set at the time of the winter solstice, when the sun reaches the southernmost part of its annual journey and begins its return to the north. The Christians arbitrarily set their celebration of their God's birth to coincide with, and co-opt, the ancient and profoundly spiritual (not to mention incredibly fun) celebration of the turning of the great Wheel (Jul or Yule in the old Germanic languages).

Take for example what these upstarts are doing with the "Santa Claus" business:

Most religious historians agree that St Nicholas did not actually exist as a real person, and was instead a Christianized version of earlier Pagan gods. Nicholas' legends were mainly created out of stories about the Teutonic god called Hold Nickar, known as Poseidon to the Greeks. This powerful sea god was known to gallop through the sky during the winter solstice, granting boons to his worshippers below.

When the Catholic Church created the character of St Nicholas, they took his name from "Nickar" and gave him Poseidon's title of "the Sailor." There are thousands of churches named in St Nicholas' honor, most of which were converted from temples to Poseidon and Hold Nickar. (As the ancient pagan deities were demonized by the Christian church, Hold Nickar's name also became associated with Satan, known as "Old Nick!")

Local traditions were incorporated into the new Christian holidays to make them more acceptable to the new converts. To these early Christians, Saint Nicholas became a sort of "super-shaman" who was overlaid upon their own shamanic cultural practices. Many images of Saint Nicholas from these early times show him wearing red and white, or standing in front of a red background with white spots, the design of the amanita mushroom.

St Nicholas also adopted some of the qualities of the legendary "Grandmother Befana" from Italy, who filled children's stockings with gifts. Her shrine at Bari, Italy, became a shrine to St Nicholas.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3136.html

I say it's time to take back our Solstice holiday from these tradition-thieves.

[Pab Sungenis]

1. We must fight, and win, the War On Saturnalia!

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Keep the Sol in Solstice! n/t

[LiberalEsto]

4. The word Sol

may actually refer to a sun goddess.

In Great Britain, her name was Sulis. In Latvia and Lithuania there is still an active pagan religion called Romuva, and they recognize Saule as the sun goddess. Her main holidays were the summer solstice on June 21, and the winter solstice on Dec. 21.The words sol-sulis-saule are linguistically connected.

So yes, let's keep the Saule in Solstice, by all means.

Link to some info on Saule and Romuva:
http://altreligion.about.com/library/faqs/bl_romuva.htm

[TechBear_Seattle]

11. Sulis was a god of the hotsprings

He didn't become a she until the Roman conquest, when a local god of the hotsprings was fused with the Roman goddess Minerva to create the syncretic deity Sulis Minerva, who held sway at the Roman temple and baths in what is now Bath, England.

The deity to which I was referring (you heretic, you! :hi: ) is Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, a deity of the Roman Empire whose birthday was on the Winter Solstice.

[LiberalEsto]

16. Sulis was a goddess as far as I've heard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulis

"In ancient Celtic polytheism, 'Sul or Sulis (also found as Sulevis: see Suleviae) was the deification of spring-water, especially of thermal spring-water, conceived as a nourishing, life-giving Mother goddess. She is known especially from Bath, where she was worshipped as Sulis Minerva."

http://paganastronomy.net/sun.htm

"Often assumed to be a male deity, among the Indo-Europeans the sun was a goddess, and the moon was male. In all descendant languages such as German, Gaelic etc., the word for sun is still female. Typically this was a sign of people who had lived in colder climates, where nights were cold and days warm. As a reflection of the sun's importance, ancient maps always depicted the east at the top, although today we use north. Many words still in use today also reflect an ancient solar association. In Sanskrit "sun" was Surya, in Gaul Sulis, Lithuanian Saule, and in Latin and German Sol. Today, the official English name of our sun is Sol."

[TechBear_Seattle]

21. The deity depicted on the pediment of the temple of Sulis Minerva

Is pretty clearly male:



It was almost a law of Roman religion that a temple dedicated to one or more deities displayed that/those deities on the temple's front pediment (the part of the building above the main door and below the roof.) The above photo is from the remains of the pediment of the Temple of Sulis Minerva found in the Roman settlement of Aquae Sulis, what is today the town of Bath in England.

The image clearly has a mustache and beard. If the Romans found Sulis as a female deity, it is very likely she would have remained as such, especially when combined with the goddess Minerva. The hybrid deity Sulis Minerva was usually depicted as a goddess, but there are many representations of Sulis Minerva as a god: not just the temple pediment but also a large number of the tens of thousands of votary objects that have been recovered, and even on some of the memorial altars left behind by wealthy patients of the temple.

This is typical of other cases where Roman invaders created a syncretic deity that mixed a goddess and a god, and has never been seen in cases where the Roman and native deity were the same (perceived) gender.

And, I want to add: I'm pretty sure that Germanic languages do not have a consonant shift from /l/ to /n/. The Anglo-Saxon word for sun is sūnna which is masculine, not feminine. The closest living language to anything that would have existed in Bath at the time of the Romans is Cornish; the Cornish word for "sun" is howl. The Cornish word for Sunday is dé-Sül, a cognate of Latin dies Solis, "day of the sun", rather than the Cornish equivalent, deth howl (or deth howlik, I can't find a definite answer.)

[LiberalEsto]

28. Howl might be related to the Greek Helios

who was definitely a male sun god.

I had never heard of any association of Sulis with a male god, so this is very interesting. Thank you for posting it.


This is about Minerva/Sulis
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0075-4358(1955)45%3C97%3ATTOSAB%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

Here is a website that contains the god image you posted, but these doesn't seem to be anything that refers to him as Sulis. There is an image on this page of Minerva-Sulis. http://www.pyrrha.demon.co.uk/oinscr2.html


And here is a reference to a pre-Roman god Sulis, as you had posted:
http://www.carfaxhotel.co.uk/bath/spring.htm

However I have to point out that there is a tendency to "masculinize" the names of female deities in history:

for example, at this link: http://www.bookrags.com/research/njorr-eorl-10/

"A major problem in discussing Njo̹rðr is his relation to the mother goddess of the Inguaeonic tribes, Nerthus, whom the first-century CE Tacitus (Germania, ch. 40) says was worshiped on an island in the Baltic; he equates her with Terra mater (Mother Earth). Njo̹rðr and the Latino-Germanic Nerthus reflect the proto-Germanic *nerþuz, but why is the earlier deity a goddess and the later one a god? The change has been ascribed to the "masculinization" of agriculture that occurred between Roman times and the Viking Age, for according to Tacitus, the early Germanic tribes left the cultivation of the land to women, the elderly, and the weaker members of the extended family (Germania, ch. 14), whereas farming in the Viking period was carried out by men."

[bleedingheart]

12. my family (although raised catholic) celebrates the pagan holiday

as part of our "christmas" tradition...

we are Lithuanian and take pride in being the last european country christianized...(by force too)...in the 1400's...

Sventu Kaledu

[PinkUnicorn]

8. Well, some of it

Can we leave the 'head-ona-stick' bit out though?

"William Smith, in his Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities...notes this is stated distinctly in Macrobius who tells us that 'on the Saturnalia presents were made with little pottery figures or faces.'... And he adds that, as with Dionysus, 'We have then the propitiation by human sacrifice once real and afterwards simulated, at festivals of Jupiter, and of gods connected with death, Saturnus (to whom human sacrifice especially belonged...). These masks or figures were hung upon the boughs of trees for Vergil speaks of a pine. There can be little doubt that (they) represented sacrifices'."

Macey, Samuel L. Patriarchs of Time: Dualism in Saturn-Cronos, Father Time, The Watchmaker God, and Father Christmas. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987

Now you know where those christmas ball things originally were. I really don't want to know what the original 'angel sitting on a pointy pine tree' originally was....:crazy:

[LiberalEsto]

3. Hear, hear

My ancestors came from Estonia, where they still celebrate Joulud - Yule. Estonia and neighboring Latvia were about the last European nations to be forcibly christianized, so they still retain many pagan aspects of the holidays.

The info linking St. Nick and the hallucinogenic amanita muchroom is interesting. I hadn't heard it before. Have you read "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" published in the 1960s?

BB

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Mushroom & Cross--Yes. Read it years ago. Interesting notion,

the faking of the resurrection.

Like the Baltic states, Scandinavia surrendered late, reluctantly & only partially to Christianity. Parts of Sweden were still pagan in 1100 a.d., and many of the old pagan things persist to this day. Latvia & Estonia held out the longest, though.

There is a book, "When Santa was a Shaman"--rel. cheap, in a paperback trade edition, by a Dutch author whose name escapes me right now.

[WillParkinson]

10. Would that be this one?

http://www.amazon.com/s/002-6150353-0624047?ie=UTF8&index=books&rank=-relevance%2C%2Bavailability%2C-daterank&field-author-exact=Tony%20van%20Renterghem

[Morgana LaFey]

33. I love all the "St. Nicholas" or "Grandfather Christmas"

dolls and statues and Xmas cards and such that are really shamanic in nature. Nearly everything ABOUT Christmas except the Nativity and Jesus himself is quite, quite pagan.

If you stop and think about it, our contemporary Christmas celebrations and holidays are really an incredible tribute to how powerful the Winter Solstice/Yule celebration really is, how deeply down in our DNA this annual impulse to celebrate the descent into winter and the return of the sun. It's a real human need, ritual and community and celebration and so forth, and even the Christians couldn't kill it, so they tried to co-opt it and not all that successfully given how much pagan undergirds it all.

[Lerkfish]

5. as a christian, I support your cause!

:)

[msongs]

7. if you can't successfully co-opt them you can always do them in - that's the approved method nt

[BushOut06]

9. What about Easter?

Another prime example of Christians stealing a pagan holiday.

[Greyhound]

14. It's their way. n/t

[Jacobin]

13. Send this to Bill Oh'Really and give him a heart attack

:rofl:

[happyslug]

15. Sorry, we stole it over 1500 years ago, it is our...

Some sort of Celebration of light has been characteristic of Solstice celebration for Millennia. That the Catholic and Orthodox Churches put a Christian spin to it starting about the time of Constantine was one more step in the evolution of this time of lack of light.

One of the great contradictions in history is a Celebration of Light during the time when we have the least light. The reason for this is many people suffer from depression during this time period, it is believed do to the lack of sunlight that people are exposed to during this time period (Thus the "Christmas blues"). This depression was known in ancient times and became the basis for trying to pick people up by having a party with lights. Thus the "Christmas Blues" is NOT a symptom of the Celebration of Christmas, but why we have Christmas. The Celebration is to pick people up, and given how depressed some people get this time of year that is a good thing.

The real switch in Solstice celebration by the Christians was the emphasis on HOW the holiday was celebration. Solstices became Christmas as part of the replacement of the Ancient Tribes of Rome with the Modern Concept of Community. As Europe became more Christian blood ties became less important than being a member of the community (Which was Christian). Christianity emphasis community (Thus the existence of a Church to hold ALL members of the parish which means all members of the Community a opposed to the select priests who entered the ancient Temples). This Christian Sense of Community replaced the ancient Roman and Germanic system which empathizes Tribal basis (Even in late Roman days your position in Roman Society was still determined by what ancient Roman Tribe you belonged to). The Roman tribes were still strong as the Roman Republic involved into the Roman Empire. The near collapse to Rome in the Third Century seems to have dealt a death blow to the concept of Tribe as a basis of social Structure within the Empire, but remnants of this tribal survived till the fall of the Empire in the West. That is how important the blood ties (and adoption ties) were important in the Roman and Ancient World.

With the adoption of Christianity being a member of the community as set up in the form of your local parish became more important then your blood ties. The Church emphasized this by forbidding cousin marrying (one of the hallmarks of a tribal society is cousin marrying so that the tribal wealth stays in the tribe). Now the Church was NOT completely successful in this (Cousin marrying within certain families contained from Roman days till today) but as a rule this ban made the switch to community from tribe complete.

My point here is if you want to celebrate Ancient pagan holidays this time of year, go ahead, but remember they were always celebration of one's tribe, even in Rome it was the celebration of being a member of one of the 12 tribes of Rome. Christianity made the switch to the celebration being one with the community as a whole, an emphasis downplayed in the last 200 years as more and more of Christmas became the Celebration of the Nuclear family (The emphasis on Presents, and Santa Claus for Example and less emphasis of doing things as a group even if that only means setting up a soup kitchen for the poor).

The real war on Christmas the last 150-200 years has been the Switch from a Celebration with ALL members of Society to one of celebration with one's nuclear family (and other blood or by marriage relatives and friends as opposed to the community as a whole). The Switch was encouraged by Commercial businesses for what one does as a Community is rarely profitable (The English community Football games is an example of this, not a game of professionals but local boys playing together in front of their families and the rest of the Community). Singing Carols, collecting for the poor, feeding the poor are thing the community can do, but rarely is profitable. On the other hand buying gifts for one's own children and other members of one's own family can be profitable. Thus for the last 150-200 years Christmas has became less a Community activity and more a "Family" Activity (With the Family defined as the Nuclear Family not the extended family and NOT the Community as a whole). Thus the war on Christmas as it was celebrated from Constantine till Napoleon is still there but it is a much smaller celebration than the modern celebration of Christmas within the Nuclear Family.

P.S. I know of the Puritan s's hatred of Christmas. While the Puritans pointed out the Pagan Roots of Christmas, the real reason Puritans hated Christmas was its then emphasis on the community and helping the poor. While Charity was part of the Puritan dogma, the Puritans did not like anything that interferer with Business and the Celebration of Christmas prior to the Reformation (and Napoleon in Catholic Europe) had been a two week community celebration where people gathered together and did things as a community (including going to Church and having community parities and meals, visiting each other and making sure people could survive the upcoming winter). This two weeks celebration was why the Puritans hated Christmas not the pagan Roots of Christmas.

Today, while we do shop for weeks (and the business community encourages such activities) Christmas is a one day Holiday. Most students get the week off, but most workers do not. This restricts what people can do as a community for while some people are off, most are not, Thus since about 1800 and the Industrial revolution Christmas has ceased being a Celebration of the Community into one of Celebration of the Nuclear Family. Some aspects of Christian Christmas still remains in the concept of giving to the poor and meals to the poor, but most Community activities are gone (With Parties at groups and Schools being some of the remains). The Pagan Celebration of Lights remain and with Electricity has expanded, but its origin is lost as is the community celebrations which were the heart of Christian Christmas.

[LiberalEsto]

18. Interesting take

Thanks for posting it.

My personal experience was that the Christian celebration of Christmas was loaded with guilt. For example, if you weren't good, you wouldn't get presents. If you weren't Christian, you weren't entitled to celebrate Christmas.

In my family's old Estonian tradition, children had to memorize a song or poem and recite it in front of "Santa Claus" and the rest of the local Estonian Lutheran community -- or no goodie bag & gifts. I was a terribly shy kid who dreaded speaking in public, so I blew it every year. Bad kids were traditionally given birch rods to remind them they would be whipped if they misbehaved.

It wasn't until I began learning about the pagan aspects of the Yule holidays as an adult that I was able to enjoy celebrating them without all the baggage of guilt.

[happyslug]

26. The reformation was the start of the Change to the "Modern" Concept

Pre-Reformation Europe celebrated Christmas without Santa Claus, without presents etc these are All post-Reformation additions to Christmas (and most emphasized in the post-industrial Christmas of the last 200 years). Now some giving was expected during the Christmas season but it was to the poor NOT to your children. Children were part of the celebration (and often received presents as being "poor" i.e. to make the giving of presents to the poor less "Here I am being good here is your trinkets" and at least on its face more from the heart, gift to the poor were often hidden as gifts to the Children (You gave gifts to ALL of the Children thus the poor were not made to feel like they were NOT a burden on Society).

Now the Lutherans were less offended by Christmas than the Puritans, in fact Luther himself celebrated Christmas. The problem is being a social event people in he community were expected to participate even if they did not want to. At the same the Reformation was driven as much by the economic raise of the Middle Class than by religious dogma. With the raise of the Middle class you start to she a hierarchy among the lower classes and people trying to be "better" than their peers.

In the Middle ages, the poor were poor but had more rights than under the Roman Empire (Basically if you wanted to live in any period other than now, it is the high middle ages for it had a better sense of Justice and treating people fairly than the later Renaissance and Reformation periods). One of the thrusts of this time period was maintaining the sense of community, and that is by having community Celebrations such as Christmas, May Day, Halloween, Easter, and "Harvest Feast" (Which became our Thanksgiving).

On the other hand such community get together are often hard on shy people or people who do are NOT joiners. A good community recognize this problem and addresses them, first by making people comfortable, then by making a joke of most punishment (i.e. the punishment is they but never used). Unfortunate you have idiots who insist on following the "Rules" and kids and other people are "punished" like you were. It is stupid and self-Defeating but is done. It hurts the sense of Community but you always have people who want to feel superior to others.

You should see some of the medieval celebration of Christmas, when christmas was at its height. Many of the good aspects of the Pagan days were retained, but with the addition of a deeper sense of Community emphasized by the Christian clergy. This started to decline with the raise of the Middle Class and that classes desire to be able to hire and fire people at will (a concept NOT fully added to the Law till the mid-1800s). Medieval Christmas in Europe held on in Rural Communities as long more people worked the land as opposed to work in industry. As more and more rural people worked in industry (Mining and even factory production prior to 1800 was more often than not in rural areas) Medieval Christmas was replaced by our Modern Christmas. Often this occurred 100 years before most people lived in Urban areas (For example the first US Census with more people in urban areas than rural areas was 1920, but Rural manufacturing had been big for 100 years before that date).

As to the "Guilt" baggage of Christmas, it seems to have creep-ed into Christmas during the Black Death. During times of Plague people would want to "Solve" the reason and they basic reasoning said it was do to some fault of the Community. Thus guilt worked its way into the Celebration of Christmas at that time and has never really worked its way out. Some people wallow in the guilt so it looks like it will stay even if you take all the other Christian concepts out of Christmas. The guilt is often tied in with the over all depression some people suffer at that time of the year, but is also independent of it. I bring it up to put it in context but hopefully people will accept Christmas as a Celebration of life to be happy about not to wallow in guilt and depression.

[dubykc]

19. I personally much prefer our solstice celebration and welcoming ...

the rebirth of the sun at dawn over any Christmas celebration I have ever taken part in.

[JNelson6563]

22. Nice reply.

I appreciate the thoughtful contribution to the dialogue that the informative OP kicked off.

Julie

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

17. Wohlkum Yol

That was the carol I learned in high school-don't remember the rest of it, but it was in Old English, I believe.

[hootinholler]

20. I'm in! n/t

[noonwitch]

23. I have a snow globe with Grandmother Befana in it

My brother gave it to me, it's really cool. I just put out my Christmas snow globes-I have a nativity one that plays "Silent Night" and a Santa Claus one that plays "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". I can't figure out what the song is that Befana's globe plays-the label says Ave Maria, but it is definitely not any version of Ave Maria I have ever heard.

[Ian David]

24. Jesus was born on the 15th if Tishlav, during the Jewish festival of Sukkot

Also, Hitler celebrated Christmas:

Hitler celebrates Christmas with his soldiers, next to a decorated Christmas tree.

See:

Do we really want to celebrate the same holiday that Hitler did?
Topic started by IanDB1 on Nov-24-06 02:19 PM (45 replies)
Last modified by dwickham on Nov-27-06 02:29 PM
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=214&topic_id=97928

[jazzjunkysue]

25. Stop the war on Yule! They hate our logs!

This is fun.:hi:

[Jackpine Radical]

27. Glad to see ou've picked up the spirit of the season, or

the season of the Spirits, or whatever...

[kineneb]

29. this year: celebrating Un-Christmas

As a musician, I am involved in 'way too much Christmas stuff: rehearsals for productions, church services, etc.

We follow the Buddhist path, so the celebration of birth of the Bodhisattva Jeshua ben Joseph is noteworthy, but not that important. Sooo, this year, we have invited our our Jewish friend to join us for an Un-Christmas. We will light the real candles on the tree on the 24th to call back the light, and then the next day have a jolly meal. And we will listen to seasonal music, from BBC and MDR on streaming radio, and from the "ancient" stereo. Nothing fancy.

[Clark2008]

30. Ummm...St. Nicholas was a real person.

Now - the STORY behind Santa Claus may have come from the Teutonic god, but let's get our facts straight before we try to be sacrastically obvious.

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=38

However, you can still gig the fundies by pointing out that, not only was St. Nick CATHOLIC (they hate us Catholics), but that he lived in, ahem, the MIDDLE EAST (in Turkey).

Carry on with your point. I just wanted to add in this minor "correction."

[Jackpine Radical]

31. The comment about Nicholas' nonexistence was from my source,

not me. I have no particular position on the nixing of Nick.

[Qutzupalotl]

32. Axial Tilt is the Reason for the Season.

:evilgrin:

[jazzjunkysue]

34. "We three kings of ax-i-al tilt." "Axials that tilt on high!"

"The first axial tilt, the angels did say: Your days will get longer from now on, either way."