Your source for news in Hot Springs County

An unlikely Christmas story

If you’ve been counting down the days until the Winter Solstice (the shortest day of the year) congratulations, we made it and now the days start getting longer.

If it doesn’t seem that way perhaps it’s because, while the sun begins to set a little later from here until summer, it rises a little later in the day until January 3.

So when Christmas rolls around this Sunday, even though you’ve told yourself, “the days are getting longer,” your eyes aren’t seeing the light of day any earlier.

Some sleep scientists attribute this annual phenomenon as explanation for the Christmas Blues.

But maybe this is why Christmas falls so close to the shortest day of the year - to give us hope.

Despite all the commercialism, a lot of people still celebrate December 25 as the day Jesus of Nazareth was born but most theologians acknowledge that date was chosen out of convenience.

Ancient Greeks marked their harvest with the arrival of the great winter planet and the god for which they named it, by celebrating.

As winter presses on, Saturn arcs higher into the sky and although no one knows for certain, this is likely how the late December celebration came about - because Christmas-time is that time when the planet Saturn is at its highest point. As it begins to descend, the days get longer and everyone knows, summertime is coming.

That sounds like a good reason to party.

According to the Greek poet Lucian, the festival Saturnia was marked by widespread intoxication, going from house to house while singing naked and eating human-shaped cookies - a gingerbread man.

About 13 centuries ago, Saint Boniface was sent into the forest to convert the tree-worshipping Germans. Tradition holds, he cut down the mightiest tree and had it brought into his church to get his congregation started.

Imagine you’re some poor Hun looking for your giant wooden god but all you can find is the stump.

A bell rings in the distance and so you make your way into the church.

“Oh Tannenbaum,” you say, “there you are.”

And you worship.

A couple centuries prior to that (and some four hundred years after the birth of Jesus) the Church was able to convert pagans into the fold by allowing them to continue with their festival, Saturnia.

But as good as eating and drinking and cutting down nice looking trees makes us feel, it is a poor recipe for long-term happiness.

But with any luck Christmas morning will find you with family and hopefully a few children around.

And you’ll watch each other unwrap one gift after another and hopefully recognize how fortunate we are to have each other in our lives.

And find hope in the birth of a baby some two thousand years ago, and faith that better, longer days lie ahead.

 

Reader Comments(0)