Unwrapping Christmas...Yippee!

(Cue the theme music to the movie "Jaws"...)

It's back...

...It comes back every "year" (Linear time? Haha!) like hay fever... or that flu thing... or those relatives whom you're glad live so far away that they can only visit once a year (Whew!) ...it's Christmas and, overnight - it seems, anyway, that Satan's...ummm, excuse me... Santa's Helpers have plastered Everything Red and Green with annoying little blinking lights throughout... If Santa and the reindeer (Rudolph included - blinking red nose and all.) exploded, it would look like this.



The holidays start rearing their tinsel-topped heads at the earliest possible moment each year..... this year the warning signs were visible far in advance - beginning on November 1st... or as quickly as Walgreen's could get all of the Halloween left-overs stuffed into a shopping cart marked " 75% Off!".



Fights broke out between the Christmas decorations and the Thanksgiving decorations for shelf-space. Well, okay... not quite, but if they did fight, at least they would have some entertainment value.



Speaking of value...

Here's an article of educational value related to some of the not-so-long held traditional symbols that much of the modern world associates with Christmas, but whose origin is far from Christian. I'd like to say that I feel this provides some semblance of balance...hmm. But actually, no, it's nowhere near as sensory overloading... It is my own litte countermeasure to off-set all the Ho-Ho-Holey Hooey Holidays.

That said, really, I'm no scrooge... I just believe in being thankful daily and in being compassionate and generous the whole year through... Not just 1 or 2 months out of the year (toward those who have less than I do/are in need, especially.)

One more item of note... One of the more sad sights - in the days and weeks following all of the manic tree-choosing or assembling/decorating/oooh-ing and aaah-ing, shopping, party-throwing, gift-giving, duraflame log-burning (FYI - I know... all lit up, with dancing flames, in your fireplace, they're pretty (...Whoa, the colors, dude!) , But, to the innocent civilians outside skating or walking, in the 'fresh air'... those things stink!), etc... It's kinda heartbreaking... seeing the seemingly endless number of unceremoniously discarded and dumped, oh-so-quickly forgotten, (once living) "Christmas" trees...Left out with... as trash... with little, sporadic tendrils of tinsel flickering on some branches in the cold wind.



Just a thought.
To those who, instead, choose live trees and replant them afterwards, Thank You!
Happy Present Moment.
-L.



Unwrapping Christmas
What's underneath the traditions that decorate the day

Patrick Langston, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, December 16, 2006

A world-class scavenger, Christmas has ransacked everything from Druid ceremonies to Norse myths for its glorious, overstuffed sack of traditions and rituals.

Christmas lights? Try old-time Babylonian lighting ceremonies. Held at the winter solstice, they ushered in warmer and shorter days ahead.

Gift-giving? Another rip-off of those pagan party animals, who swapped presents during ancient Rome's Saturnalian shindigs.

As for Santa, well, he's a conglomeration of many folks including third-century St. Nicholas, the Anglo-Saxon god Woden, a 16th-century Moor called Black Pete who kept lists of bad kids (in Holland, he whipped them) and Coca Cola's marketing team. And it was the U.S. Surgeon General's 1964 report on smoking and cancer that apparently led to the demise of Santa's pipe.

Heck, even Christmas Day probably isn't really Christmas Day. Aside from the fact that not one of the four gospels actually mentions him, the fellow who apparently owned the stable where Christ was born was an innkeeper, not a birth registrar, and it's anybody's guess when baby Jesus drew his first breath.

As with many Christmas traditions, Dec. 25 was probably just a handy way to pool a bunch of existing pagan rituals, thereby smoothing the way for Christianity's expansion. (It made the "Conversion" choice - as in "Convert or Die" - easier to swallow when 'their' big holy days happen to be around the same time as yours -L.)

We all love traditions, which help give structure and continuity to our lives. Here's a definitely non-definitive look at some of our favourites.

Candy Canes

No, they weren't invented, as some have suggested, to symbolize Jesus (white for purity, red for blood, upside down "J" for, well, you know). Instead, it seems a canny 17th-century Cologne Cathedral choirmaster realized that candy sticks, curved like shepherds' staffs, would distract fidgety kids attending Nativity enactments. Fast forward to the beginning of the 20th century and candy canes are rotting teeth on both sides of the Atlantic. In the 1950s, another churchy fellow, a Catholic priest named Gregory Keller, invented the mass-production machine that turned his brother-in-law's company, Bob's Candies, into the world's leading candy cane manufacturer.

The Yule Log

One angry website auteur condemns Christmas cakes in the shape of yule logs as a remnant of the "vile phallic worship" once endemic among Scandinavians. Well, the Vikings did carve magical runes in the shape of logs during their solstice celebrations, but then yule logs feature prominently in many traditions. The Druids apparently blessed and burned a log -- must have been a big one -- for 12 days during the solstice, keeping a piece to light a new log the following year. Yule logs and cakes, the latter appearing in Victorian times, can still be found in some of the best Christian homes.

Carolling

For major-league carolling, you need look no further than Luke 2:14, where an entire heavenly host proclaims Christ's birth. More earthbound, the Celts went wassailing during the solstice, walking, or more likely stumbling, from house to house where they sang, drank, ate and drank. (Speaking of stumbling and carolling... To the pickled people who put great gusto into destroying (...to call it singing would be a sin) some traditional xmas carols outside my window in The Haight last night...no, this morning(!) Thanks! I'm guessing that the bar tossed you out on your christm-asses.-L.) They also visited orchards, dousing the tree roots with cider to ensure a bumper crop the following year. Somehow, it all wound up entwined and we've been carolling the neighbourhood since at least the Middle Ages, when the earliest Christmas carols emerged. Carols took an official beating during the Reformation, but the 19th century, never averse to a little sentimentality, kicked them back into high gear.


Mistletoe

Popular at least as long ago as ancient Greece, mistletoe is a sure bet for bestowing good luck, extinguishing fires, enhancing fertility, and alleviating gout. Who wouldn't want it hanging in their house, especially since smooching under it ups the chances of marriage in the coming year? Which may explain the kissing-under-the-mistletoe fad that swept 18th century England and Wales, enshrining it as a holiday tradition. Mistletoe etiquette alert: pluck a berry for every kiss, but stop kissing when the berries run out.

Christmas Stockings

Centuries ago, Dutch kiddies, instead of leaving empty wooden shoes to warm by the chimney on Christmas Eve, started stuffing them with hay for Sinter Claes' horse and adding a little something for the man himself. He reciprocated, throwing candies down the chimney to land in their shoes, a tradition that eventually morphed into stockings hung by the chimney with care. In Italy, meanwhile, it was the good witch, La Befana, who filled the kids' shoes, one legend claiming that she was on her way to bring toys to Jesus, got lost, and figured any child would do. (Apparently it's La Befana, maybe ticked at being lost, who started the coal-for-bad-kids tradition). Yet another story has it that three dowry-less maidens hung their stocking to dry by the chimney. Saint Nicholas, taking pity on the young ladies, dropped gold coins into their stockings, making them good marriage prospects and cheering up their penurious nobleman father. Choose the origin you like best.

The Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree sprang, it seems, from numerous origins including gifts of evergreen branches at Kalends, the ancient Roman new year; the Tree of Life in Genesis; the intertwining of Christianity and the pagan mythology of sacred trees in eighth-century Germany (St. Boniface apparently used the fir tree to explain the trinity to Germanic pagans); and the decoration of wooden trees for medieval English mystery plays. Certainly, Christmas trees were hugely popular by the 18th century in Germany, and proliferated in Britain thanks to Queen Victoria's enthusiasm for them. They jumped to North America, some say as early as 1710, with either German or Dutch immigrants. Edward H. Johnson, Thomas Edison's assistant, was the first guy to live longer by swapping candles for electric Christmas tree lights.

Poinsettias

Native to Central America, this ubiquitous symbol of Christmas was once prized by the Aztecs for its decorative qualities and the purplish dye they extracted from its leaves. The Aztecs also considered it a symbol of purity while Christian Mexicans used it in Nativity processions, seeing its star-shaped leaves as representing the Star of Bethlehem.