celebration

The longest night

PNRJ current events, futurism, politics , , , ,

Dec 21 JDN 2461031

When this post goes live, it will be (almost exactly) the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. In our culture, derived mainly from European influences, we associate this time of year with Christmas; but in fact solstice celebrations are much more ancient and universal than that. Humans have been engaging in some sort of ritual celebration—often involving feasts and/or gifts—around the winter solstice in basically every temperate region of the world for as far back as we are able to determine. (You don’t see solstice celebrations so much in tropical regions, because “winter” isn’t really a thing there; those cultures tend to adopt lunar or lunisolar calendars instead.) Presumably humans have been doing something along these lines for about as long as there have been humans to do them.

I think part of why solstice celebrations are so enduring is that the solstice has both powerful symbolism and practical significance. It is the longest night of the year, when the sky will be darkest for the longest time and light for the shortest—above the Arctic Circle, the night lasts 24 hours and the sky never gets light at all. But from that point forward, the light will start to return. The solstice also heralds the start of the winter months, when the air is cold enough to be dangerous and food becomes much scarcer.

Of course, today we don’t have to worry about that so much: We have electric heating and refrigeration, so we can stay warm inside and eat pretty much whatever we want all year round. The practical significance, then, of the solstice has greatly decreased for us.

Yet it’s still a very symbolic time: The darkness is at its worst, the turning point is reached, the light will soon return. And when we reflect on how much safer we are than our ancestors were during this time of year, we may find it in our hearts to feel some gratitude for how far humanity has come—even if we still have terribly far yet to go.

And this year, in particular, I think we are seeing the turning point for a lot of darkness. The last year especially has been a nightmare for, well, the entire free world—not to mention all the poor countries who depended on us for aid—but at last it seems like we are beginning to wake from that nightmare. Within margin of error, Trump’s approval rating is at the lowest it has ever been, about 43% (still shockingly high, I admit), and the Republicans seem to be much more divided and disorganized than they were just a year ago, some of them even openly defying Trump instead of bowing at his every word.

Of course, while the motions of the Earth are extraordinarily regular and predictable, changes in society are not. The solstice will certainly happen on schedule, and the days will certainly get longer for the next six months after that—I’d give you million-to-one odds on either proposition. (Frankly, if I ever had to pay, we’d probably have bigger problems!)

But as far as our political, economic, and cultural situation, things could get very well get worse again before they get better. There’s even a chance they won’t get better, that it’s all downhill from here—but I believe those chances are very small. Things are not so bleak as that.

While there have certainly been setbacks and there will surely be more, on the whole humanity’s trajectory has been upward, toward greater justice and prosperity. Things feel so bad right now, not so much because they are bad in absolute terms (would you rather live as a Roman slave or a Medieval peasant?), but because this is such a harsh reversal in an otherwise upward trend—and because we can see just how easy it would be to do even better still, if the powers that be had half the will to do so.

So here’s hoping that on this longest night, at least some of the people with the power to make things better will see a little more of the light.

Why I celebrate Christmas

PNRJ core principles, current events, personal , , , , , , ,

Dec 22 JDN 2460667

In my last several posts I’ve been taking down religion and religious morality. So it might seem strange, or even hypocritical, that I would celebrate Christmas, which is widely regarded as a Christian religious holiday. Allow me to explain.

First of all, Christmas is much older than Christianity.

It had other names before: Solstice celebrations, Saturnalia, Yuletide. But human beings of a wide variety of cultures around the world have been celebrating some kind of winter festival around the solstice since time immemorial.

Indeed, many of the traditions we associate with Christmas, such as decorating trees and having an—ahem—Yule log, are in fact derived from pre-Christian traditions that Christians simply adopted.

The reason different regions have their own unique Christmas traditions, such as Krampus, is most likely that these regions already had such traditions surrounding their winter festivals which likewise got absorbed into Christmas once Christianity took over. (Though oddly enough, Mari Lwyd seems to be much more recent, created in the 1800s.)

In fact, Christmas really has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus.

It’s wildly improbable that Jesus was born in December. Indeed, we have very little historical or even Biblical evidence of his birth date. (What little we do have strongly suggests it wasn’t in winter.)

The date of December 25 was almost certainly chosen in order to coincide—and therefore compete—with the existing Roman holiday of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (literally, “the birthday of the invincible sun”), an ancient solstice celebration. Today the Winter Solstice is slightly earlier, but in the Julian calendar it was December 25.

In the past, Christians have sometimes suppressed Christmas celebration.

Particularly during the 17th century, most Protestant sects, especially the Puritans, regarded Christmas as a Catholic thing, and therefore strongly discouraged their own adherents from celebrating it.

Besides, Christmas is very secularized at this point.

Many have bemoaned its materialistic nature—and even economists have claimed it is “inefficient”—but gift-giving has become a central part of the celebration of Christmas, despite it being a relatively recent addition. Santa Claus has a whole fantasy magic narrative woven around him that is the source of countless movies and has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity.

I celebrate because we celebrate.

When I celebrate Christmas, I’m also celebrating Saturnalia, and Yuletide, and many of the hundreds of other solstice celebrations and winter festivals that human cultures around the world have held for thousands of years. I’m placing myself within a grander context, a unified human behavior that crosses lines of race, religion, and nationality.

Not all cultures celebrate the Winter Solstice, but a huge number do—and those that don’t have their own celebrations which often involve music and feasting and gift-giving too.

So Merry Christmas, and Happy Yuletide, and Io Saturnalia to you all.