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Season’s Greetings!
This ezine is like a bowl of jelly beans. There’s got to be a bean of interest for you—you get to choose! I’ve traveled from continent to continent without leaving my desk, grabbing snippets of our histories, the stories, the myths, and hoisted a jelly bean tree adorned with essays for munchies.
Celebrating holidays is a perfect example for further defining cosmology. If you’ve still wondered what cosmology is, besides mathematical equations and scientists’ interpretations, cosmology is philosophies, religions and stories telling how the physical universe and our planetary home have influenced biotic communities of all life forms. Cosmologies gave billions of Earthlings before us purpose for making their choices from deified personifications of solar and lunar events written into legendary horrific and beatific stories.
From Alice Walker’s latest collection of essays élégantes, We Are the Ones We Have been Waiting For, The New Press, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-1-59558-137--2 (hc), introduction, pages 1-2:
It is the worst of times. It is the best of times. Try as I might I cannot find a more appropriate opening to this volume: it helps tremendously that these words have been spoken before and, thanks to Charles Dickens, written at the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps they have been spoken, written, thought, an endless number of times throughout human history. It is the worst of times because it feels as though the very earth is being stolen from us, by us: the land and air poisoned, the water polluted, the animals disappeared, humans degraded and misguided. War is everywhere. It is the best of times because we have entered a period, if we can bring ourselves to pay attention, of great clarity as to cause and effect. A blessing when we consider how much suffering human beings have endured, in previous millennia, without a clue to its cause. Gods and Goddesses were no doubt created to fill this gap. Because we can now see into every crevice of the globe and because we are free to explore previously unexplored crevices in our own hearts and minds, it is inevitable that everything we have needed to comprehend in order to survive, everything that we have needed to understand in the most basic of ways, will be illuminated now. We have only to open our eyes, and awaken to our predicament. We see that we are, alas, a huge part of our problem. However: We live in a time of global enlightenment. This alone should make us shout for joy.
It is as if ancient graves, hidden deep in the shadows of the psyché and the earth, are breaking open of their own accord.
~ Alice Malsenior Walker (b 1944), African-American author, feminist, 1983 Fiction Pulitzer Prize, The Color Purple
Oui, tout à fait. Ms. Walker puts eloquently the cosmology of our time; a cosmology that slices deeply the depths of intuited inequalities; a cosmology conjured after millennia of embedded dualisms, myths, traditions, and religious beliefs’ incongruous expectations engineered to mold humankind’s consent for profiteered seasonal celebrations to which we are hopelessly grinningly witlessly beholden.
Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof.
~ Stephen Leacock (b 1869), Canadian economist, writer, humorist
Yule
A likely origin for the term Yule can be traced via the Old English/Anglo-Saxon term Géol, which is connected with the word for yellow—geol. Old English Géol became the Middle English Yole and finally modern Yule; the word geol or geolu evolved to become the modern word yellow.All of the terms ultimately stem from the Indo-European root ghel meaning ‘to shine.’ Since the Yule festival is native to the northern European lands where midwinter is a time of short days and little light, it’s a strong possibility the original sense of Yule as a midwinter festival meant ‘bringing back the sun’ and creating bright, shining, gold or yellow sun- and fire-themed decorations and festivities. Other meanings might be Shining Time, Bright Time, or Golden Time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule
Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa (or Kwaanza) is a week-long secular holiday honoring African-American heritage, observed from December 26 to January 1 each year, almost exclusively by African-Americans in the U.S.
Kwanzaa consists of seven days of celebration, featuring activities such as candle-lighting and pouring of libations, and culminating in a feast and gift-giving. Kwanzaa incorporates a ritual similar to that of the menorah. Every day of the festival, celebrants light one candle in a seven branch candleholder called a kinara, representing each of the seven principles of Kwanzaa.Kwanzaa was founded by controversial black nationalist Ron Karenga, and first celebrated from December 26, 1966, to January 1, 1967. Karenga calls Kwanzaa the African American branch of ‘first fruits’ celebrations of classical African cultures. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwanzaa
Hanukkah
Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights or Festival of Rededication, is an eight day Jewish holiday that starts on the 25th day of Kislev (in the Hebrew Calendar), which may be in December, late November, or, while very rare in occasion, early January as was the case for Hannukkah, 2005–2006. Hanukkah concludes on the 2nd or 3rd day of Tevet (Kislev can have 29 or 30 days).
The first day of Hanukkah actually begins at sunset of the day immediately before the date noted on Gregorian calendars. The festival is observed in Jewish homes by kindling of lights on each of the festival’s eight nights, one on the first night, two on the second night and so on beginning sunset December 15 to sunset December 23, 2006.Hanukkah gelt (Yiddish for money) is often distributed to children to enhance their enjoyment of the holiday. Amounts are usually in small coins, although grandparents or other relatives may give larger sums as an official Hanukkah gift. In Israel, Hanukkah gelt is known as damei Hanukkah. (*)
The spiritual side of Judaism shies away from commemorating military victories, the Hasmoneans later became corrupt, and civil war between Jews is considered deplorable. Consequently, Hanukkah does not formally observe those historical events. Instead, the festival commemorates the Miracle of the Oil and positive spiritual aspects about the Temple’s re-dedication. In doing so, oil becomes metaphor for miraculous survivals of the Jewish people through millennia of trials and tribulations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukah
Christmas
The word Christmas or Christ’s mass is derived from Middle English Christemasse and from Old English Cristes mæssem, first recorded in 1038. The name of the holiday is sometimes shortened to Xmas because Roman letter ‘X’ resembles the Greek letter (chi), an abbreviation for Christ. The usage is first recorded in 1123.The idea that December 25 is Jesus’ date of birth was popularized by Sextus Julius Africanus in Chronographiai (221 AD), an early reference book for Christians. December 25 is nine months after the Festival of Annunciation (March 25) as well as the date the Romans marked as the winter solstice, which they called bruma. When Julius Caesar introduced the Julian Calendar in 45 BC, December 25 was close to the solstice date.
A reference from 360 AD indicates Christmas well established in Rome. Christmas was promoted in the east as part of the revival of Trinitarian Christianity. Christmas was especially controversial in Constantinople, the ‘fortress of Arianism,’ as Edward Gibbon described it. Apparently, the feast disappeared between 381 AD and 400 AD.
In Scandinavia, the midwinter festival was called Yule, celebrated by burning logs to honor Thor, god of thunder. Each spark alluded a new born pig or calf in the coming year. Feasting evidently continued until the log burned out in as many as twelve days. Scandinavians still call Christmas Jul. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
The Christmas tree is often explained as a Christianization of an ancient pagan idea that the evergreen tree represented a celebration for the renewal of life. According to legend, Saint Boniface attempted to introduce ideas of the deified trinity to pagan tribes using cone-shaped evergreen trees because they were triangular in appearance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
American_Christmas_traditions
Saint Nicholas
There’s a proper noun in Greek that means ‘Victory of the people,’ and is the common name for Saint Nicholas of Myra, who had a reputation for secret gift-giving. Saint Nicholas is commonly identified with Santa Claus, Father Christmas, or in The Netherlands and Belgium as Sint-Nicolaas or Sinterklaas.
Saint Nicholas lived in 4th century Myra in the Byzantine Empire’s Lycia, modern day Demre in the Antalya province of Turkey. That is as much as is generally known about him in the West.
In the late 1950s, during a restoration of the Saint Nicholas chapel in Bari, Italy, the Vatican allowed a team of their own scientists to photograph and measure the contents of the crypt.
In the summer of 2005, a report of Nicholas’ remains were sent to a forensic laboratory in England. Review of the data revealed he was barely five foot in height (while not exactly small, still shorter than average even for his time) and had a broken nose. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas
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Staying Awake :: an ezine with your awareness in mind