Pagan Christmas: light in darkness
I am not a huge fan of Christmas music-I know some people love it! Sure I have a soft spot for some songs, you can sometimes catch me singing You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch, and I sometimes enjoy hearing The Carol of the Bells. In my own house we listen to Lorena Mckennitt during what we call Pagan Christmas. We celebrate on Christmas Eve by eating German dishes that are traditional where my people come from in the Schwartzwald (Black Forest), Sauerbraten and Knödel to be specific. It is essentially beef soaked for 3 days in red wine then slow cooked, and a giant dumpling made from a boiled pizza dough that serves as a gravy sponge. After dinner we open all our gifts.
But truly, my favorite song for the Yule season is Dar Williams' The Christians and the Pagans. If you’ve never heard this delightful little tune, it starts out something like this:
Amber called her uncle, said "We're up here for the holiday,
Jane and I were having Solstice, now we need a place to stay."
And her Christ-loving uncle watched his wife hang Mary on a tree,
He watched his son hang candy canes all made with Red Dye No. 3.
He told his niece, "It's Christmas Eve, I know our life is not your style, "
She said, "Christmas is like Solstice, and we miss you and it's been awhile."
This Song feels most familiar and relatable to my own experience growing up during the holidays. My parents were both the religious “black sheep” of their respective families. My mother was raised in Germany and baptized a Catholic at age 12. She said that when she was asked to confess her sins she really couldn’t think of any, and just made something up (forgive me Father, I’ve lied to a priest!). My father rebelled against his Mormon upbringing at age 18 and became a staunch atheist when he moved to New York. He found himself as a young bisexual man, leading the charge against the HIV/AIDS epidemic by handing out condoms in gay clubs. When he later found himself in recovery from alcoholism and heroin addiction, my father became a Zen Buddhist. He frequently wrote about ex-mormonism and the alienation he felt in that community. And yet, my Mormon grandparents and cousins always accepted and loved us, sinners that we may be.
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
And just before the meal was served, hands were held and prayers were said,
Sending hope for peace on earth to all their gods and goddesses.
After my parents separated, my mother found a new-age spiritual community in the interdenominational congregation of Denver’s Mile High Church of Religious Science. For the first time in our lives, we went to church on a weekly basis and took classes. But instead of Bible study, Mile High offered us courses in life after divorce, and moving on passed grief. I’ve visited a lot of church communities in my life, from traditional Christian and Catholic congregations, to Hare Krishna temples, to Zen Buddhist silent meditations, but nothing would ever compare to the music, inspirational conversations, and community we found at Mile High. The most memorable service for me was always the Winter Solstice and Christmas celebration. The interdenominational celebration took this opportunity to highlight the reality that celebrations of light in darkness are the thread of connection between faiths around the globe on the Winter Solstice. The service would culminate in a candlelit prayer as we passed the little flames, one person to the next until the whole sanctuary was alight with flickering candles.
You see, long before white Christians ever set foot on the Americas, the indigenous religions of their homelands had all but been appropriated, and the pagan religions of Europe colonized into secrecy. Indeed, the Solstice has been celebrated on every continent on earth by civilizations ancient and modern alike. The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Jews, and Persians, throughout Europe by the Greeks, Romans, Norse, Celtic, Germanic and Slavic peoples, and by the native inhabitants of North and South America, the Far and Near East, and Africa all recognized the rebirth of the Sun at this time of year (Franklin).
This really is no coincidence. Ancient man would have seen how short the days became, the Sun hanging low in the sky and casting long shadows as the darkness continued to increase until the shortest day and longest night of the year. Our ancestors would have recognized that life itself is dependent on the Sun’s light, and that failure to expand, to grow and harvest crops and animals in the warm months would lead to death, starvation and despair in the cold night of winter. Humans and animals alike shelter and keep warm in their homes, and fires are lit to stave off the cold.
Like the body, the human psyche also finds winter as a time of retreat, rest, and recuperation. This is a time we go inward and nourish the self, not only in the physical body, but in the emotional and mental realms as well. We reflect cozily in our homes. We are restored by the light in the darkness as we celebrate with the friends and family we have spent the year cultivating relationships with. We rejoice in warm foods and take comfort in tasting the sweetness of summer that we have stored away in our pantries. We share, and love, and give, and wait for that glimmer of light and hope to return. If the light does not regenerate, life itself will not either. But we have faith that the light will return, as it always has.
At the end of the longest night, the Sun returns and the hope of the world is reborn. The Romans called this day Deis Natalis Invicti Solis, “the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun”, and celebrated on December 25th, when women would parade in the streets and shout “Unto us a child is born!” (Franklin).
The Sun God, always reborn of a Virgin Mother on the Winter Solstice or a few days after, has borne many names; from Horus an Ethiopian-Sudanese God, born 25th December, of the Virgin Mother Isis around 3,000 years before Jesus, to Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, Hercules, Thamuz, Dionysus, and Adonis, to name just a few.
So here we all are, in a modern time celebrating an ancient observation. As our Christian friends like to say in the song O Holy Night:
Long lay the world, in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
In my spirituality, this phrase evokes in me not the reference of a man born of a Virgin Mother in a manger in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago, but the birth of what I have heard called the Christ Consciousness in all of us. The light of the Song of the Universe, the Creator, the Divine within that illuminates us when we love ourselves, and each other. To me there is no “War on Christmas”, only the battle between ourselves when we fail to see the divinity in others and respect the individual path to Consciousness in all people.
As Dar Williams says:
Where does Magic come from?
I think Magic is in the learning,
Cause now when Christians sit with Pagans
Only pumpkin pies are burning! …
So the Christians and the Pagans sat together at the table,
Finding faith and common ground the best that they were able,
Lighting trees in darkness, learning new ways from the old, and
Making sense of history and drawing warmth out of the cold.
References:
Franklin, Anna. The Hearth Witches Compendium. 2017.
Dar Williams. The Christians and the Pagans: https://darwilliams.com/songs/f/Many_Great_Companions/134
