Twas the Month Before Christmas

Well Halloween has come and gone and you know what that means... CHRISTMAS

That's right boys and girls Christmas is coming - or if you live in my world - it arrived with a vengeance. The lights are out on the streets, the malls are congested, I even saw a Christmas tree in some one's front window while walking the dog the other night (It must be fake - poser).

All this early Christmas got me thinking about two things. CHRISTMAS HASN'T STARTED YET! and secondly, Santa with the letters rearranged is Satan...

But I digress. In a continuing effort to counter the misinformation that our more right handed denizens foist upon an unsuspecting population... I offer the truth!

The Season of Christmas

Christians did not even start this festival - in fact, the Vikings did! And it was all about light and dark - winter and spring.

In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated Yule from December 21, the winter solstice, through January. In recognition of the return of the sun, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, which they would set on fire. The people would feast until the log burned out, which could take as many as 12 days.

In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia - a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture — was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, slaves would become masters. Peasants were in command of the city. Business and schools were closed so that everyone could join in the fun.

So how did the church get on board? well, it all started when we decided to co-opt the pagan holiday... The Bible never mentions a time of year for Jesus birth - our best guess, and it is already a generation after the fact, is that there were shepherds hanging out in the field. But ti really didn't matter... there was a ready made holiday just waiting... Pope Julius I chose December 25 in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival.

First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

WHAT ABOUT SANTA?

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St. Nicholas. It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around 280 A.D. in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey. Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends. It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick. One of the best known of the St. Nicholas stories is that he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father by providing them with a dowry so that they could be married. Over the course of many years, Nicholas's popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors. His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6.

St. Nicholas made his first inroads into American popular culture towards the end of the 18th century. In December 1773, and again in 1774, a New York newspaper reported that groups of Dutch families had gathered to honor the anniversary of his death. The name Santa Claus evolved from Nick's Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas).

Stores began to advertise Christmas shopping in 1820, and by the 1840s, newspapers were creating separate sections for holiday advertisements, which often featured images of the newly-popular Santa Claus. In 1841, thousands of children visited a Philadelphia shop to see a life-size Santa Claus model. It was only a matter of time before stores began to attract children, and their parents, with the lure of a peek at a "live" Santa Claus. In the early 1890s, the Salvation Army needed money to pay for the free Christmas meals they provided to needy families. They began dressing up unemployed men in Santa Claus suits and sending them into the streets of New York to solicit donations. Those familiar Salvation Army Santas have been ringing bells on the street corners of ever since.

In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore, an Episcopal minister, wrote a long Christmas poem for his three daughters entitled, "An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas." Which we now know as "Twas the Night Before Christmas". This poem is largely responsible for our modern image of Santa Claus as a "right jolly old elf" with a portly figure and the supernatural ability to ascend a chimney with a mere nod of his head! Although some of Moore's imagery was probably borrowed from other sources, his poem helped to popularize Christmas Eve - Santa Claus waiting for the children to get to sleep the now-familiar idea of a Santa Claus who flew from house to house on Christmas Eve - in "a miniature sleigh" led by eight flying reindeer.

MY POINT!

Is really two-fold. First and foremost; Christmas is a festival that predates Christianity and Santa predates the shopping malls... whether we are celebrating the winter solstice and the 'light' coming back into the world or the birth of a mythical baby in Jerusalem - the intent is the same. It is a reminder in the darkest days that good things are on the horizon. And santa, far from being Satan as some fo our brethren claim, is the epitome of all that is good and right in this world.

Or to qoute Francis P Church's editorial, "No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."

And secondly... Christmas is moving; it is evolving. The church ahs fought to keep the season where it should be (the proverbial twelve days of Christmas, December 24th to January 6th) for a long time and we jsut are not winning. Better to embrace the changes, roll with the punches, and admit that whenever and for whatever reason people choose to celebrate - they are celebrating what God intends us to celebrate. Light, life and love.