This is my holiday for it precedes all the others that have come to be during this season of shortening days. This year
December solstice 2014 is coming up this Sunday, December 21 at 23:03 UTC. Celebration time!
Everything you need to know: December solstice 2014
3 Things To Know About Pagan Yule Celebrations
In ancient Rome, the weeklong feast of Saturnalia honored the sun god Saturn. Celts believed the sun stood still for 12 days, making it necessary to light a log fire to conquer the darkness. During the Iron Age, the Celts and other ancient Europeans welcomed the winter solstice by feasting, merrymaking and sacrificing animals. Today modern pagans celebrate the holiday by lighting candles, throwing bonfires, hosting feasts and decorating their homes.
In ancient Rome, the weeklong feast of Saturnalia honored the sun god Saturn. Celts believed the sun stood still for 12 days, making it necessary to light a log fire to conquer the darkness. During the Iron Age, the Celts and other ancient Europeans welcomed the winter solstice by feasting, merrymaking and sacrificing animals. Today modern pagans celebrate the holiday by lighting candles, throwing bonfires, hosting feasts and decorating their homes.
Celebrating the rebirth of the sun can be seen in other cultures throughout history. While these typically took place during the coldest, darkest days of the year, winter solstice traditions were celebrations that gave people hope sunny days lay ahead.
Egyptians celebrated the return of Ra, god of the sun, on a daily basis. Ancient Greeks held a similar festival called Lenaea. The Roman Empire held Saturnalia celebrations. Scandinavia's Norsemen called the holiday “Yule.” Families would light Yule logs where they would eat until the log burned out – which could take up to 12 days. Each spark was believed to represent a new pig or calf that would be born in the new year.
Germanic peoples would celebrate the winter festival by honoring the pagan god Odin. Many believed he would fly through the night sky (on a magical flying horse) and determine who would be blessed or cursed in the coming year. Many decided to stay indoors, fearing Odin’s wrath.
If you don't see the ironic humor in all this please read on below.
I went through a period of really resenting the way Christians force their seasonal practices on everyone until I learned that it was the other way around. They were forced to adopt these in order to compete with normal people.
The word Pagan used to be a pejorative when I was young and being taught by the churches. Now it is a badge of honor. I do nothing to practice "paganism" but I like what the word connotes:
Defining paganism is problematic. Understanding the context of its associated terminology is important. Early Christians referred to the diverse array of cults around them as a single group for convenience and rhetoric. While paganism generally implies polytheism, the primary distinction between classical pagans and Christians was not one of monotheism versus polytheism. Not all pagans were strictly polytheist. Throughout history, many of them believed in a supreme deity. (Although, most such pagans believed in a class of subordinate gods/daimons—see henotheism—or divine emanations.) To Christians, the most important distinction was whether or not someone worshipped the one true God. Those who did not (polytheist, monotheist, atheist, or otherwise) were outsiders to the Church and thus pagan. Similarly, classical pagans would have found it peculiar to distinguish groups by the number of deities followers venerate. They would have considered the priestly colleges (such as the College of Pontiffs or Epulones) and cult practices more meaningful distinctions.
Referring to paganism as "pre-Christian indigenous religions" is equally untenable. Not all historical pagan traditions were pre-Christian or indigenous to their places of worship.
Owing to the history of its nomenclature, paganism traditionally encompass the collective pre- and non-Christian cultures in and around the classical world; including those of the Greco-Roman, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic tribes. However, modern parlance of folklorists and contemporary pagans in particular has extended the original four millennia scope used by early Christians to include similar religious traditions stretching far into prehistory.
The idea that some sort of religious "instinct", for lack of a better word, has been around as long as the species has appeals to me. I am especially attracted to the notion that early humans were more in tune with nature, even though hey had no "science" to mislead them.
In our book Jim Coffman and I trace the loss of understanding of nature to the replacement of the real natural world with a model based on a philosophy centered around reductionism.
This model, our Western world view, has led to our almost complete loss of any effective way of relating to nature. The word "science" is an umbrella for a lot of things including the reductionist way of seeing the natural world.
The link between this divorce from nature and our economic system is very tight. Science that prevails is that which produces technology that sells. It is the whole mindset that allows drug and insurance companies to dominate medicine.
I have written much about the systematic nature of all this. There was no conspiracy, no one planned all this. We operate politically within the system mistakenly pointing our fingers at all sorts of bad guys who are as much a product of the system as Global Warming is.
So when we watch the good "Christians" do Black Friday and the rest of the materialistic orgy that they have turned the season into, we can celebrate in our own way by remembering how it must have felt way back when. The sun was disappearing. Darkness was growing. Then suddenly, for some reason, it ended and the sun returned. Happy Winter Solstice.