Obsessive Tradition Disorder

If you went to a mental health professional and said “I tend to do the same thing over and over on a set schedule with no idea as to why I do it. What would you say that is?” I would be willing to bet dollars against doughnuts that the shrink would say “Well, those are signs of obsessive/compulsive disorder.”

Now.

Having said that.

Why do you put a tree in your house and decorate it every year? And “Because I’ve always done it” or “because it’s Christmas” aren’t acceptable answers. Both of these equal “because I’ve always done it”. Repetition of a compulsion does not make it NOT a compulsion. Why do you put a wreath on your door at the same time? What do eggs have to do with Easter, the celebration of the risen Christ? And why do you say “Easter”, when in fact, you’re trying to celebrate a resurrection day?

Do you see what I’m getting at? I get a lot of flack about not celebrating “holidays” (meaning = “holy day” when, in fact, we’ve removed just about all of the holiness from them) the same way that “everyone else” does. (“Everyone else” in this context means “me, the person making the statement”)

So why do we celebrate these holidays the way that we do, and what do they REALLY have to do with the Christian celebrations that they are meant to represent? The answer to the second question is “not much”.

For instance, we can’t really be sure when Jesus was born, but we can be fairly confident that, if the statement about shepherds watching their flocks by night is true, then it wasn’t on December 25th. Why? Because Shepherds watch their flocks by night when it’s hot so that they don’t have to suffer the heat of the day. In December in Bethlehem, the average temperature is 10 degrees Celsius, which is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Which means warmer than 50 degrees during the day, colder than fifty degrees at night. I tend to think that, by that statement, we should be celebrating the birth of Christ sometime around summer solstice, not winter solstice.

Which brings me back to the first question… why do we celebrate these holidays the way that we do? When the Christian church starting expanding outside of Judea and Rome, they had to make their beliefs palatable to the pagans that they were now serving. (And pagan, by the way, is not meant as an insult, nor should it be taken as one. It is from the Latin “pagani” meaning “simple folk”.) As modern conservatives who insist that there is some sort of inane “war on Christmas” have discovered, there are MANY holidays celebrated in December, and many of that many predate Christmas. So by putting our holidays in the midst of THEIR holidays made it much easier to celebrate.

All of the other things have the same sort of genesis (Greek for “beginning”). For instance, the “Christmas” tree? When Christians went into the frozen Norse lands, they discovered that every year around winter solstice, the Vikings and Vandals would drag an evergreen tree into their longhouse, and cover it with lighted candles. Not to celebrate the birth of Christ, mind you, but because they were fearful at that point that they were never going to see the sun again. So they wanted to lure it back with these smaller lights. And the evergreen, with it’s logic-defying and mind-boggling greenness in the middle of all the snow seemed like the perfect metaphor for life in lifelessness. Hence… the Christmas tree.

And the wreath? Well, the tradition that surrounds that comes from a little farther south. The Celts had a god called “The Green Man”. He was the god of nature and wildness and sexuality. When you wanted a child, you appealed to the Green Man to bless you with a child. One way to do this was to have intercourse in a wild place. I mean a thicket or glade, not on your mother-in-laws steps. Another way to do that was to make a simulacrum of the place through which we all entered the world. A hole surrounded by a thatch in other words. They did this by weaving the branches of a tree into a circular shape. I’m not ENTIRELY sure how the Christians associated this faux-vagina with Christmas, but that’s how the thing got it’s start.

And what about Easter? Well, let’s start with the name. Anybody know what Easter means? I mean the word? Anyone? No? Well, would it surprise you to find out that it’s the name of an ancient fertility goddess? More properly “Eoster”, but the pronunciation’s the same. Eoster’s day is celebrated on the Spring equinox. Now, as any learned Christian knows, Jesus was crucified the weekend after his Passover satyr (the last supper) and resurrected three days later. Passover is celebrated on the 14th day of Nisan, the first month of the Jewish religious calendar. (ALL calendars except the modern Gregorian calendar celebrate the beginning of the year at the start of spring, not in the damned stupid middle of winter.) So, we celebrate the resurrection during Passover, right? Wrong. The early church fathers had a driving need to separate Jesus from his Jewish heritage as much as possible. So how do we figure Easter, anyone know? I mean, sometimes it’s in March, sometimes April. Seems to me that I’ve even seen it celebrated in May, although I could be wrong. Anyone? No guesses? Well, believe it or not, it’s the first Sunday after the first full moon following spring equinox. I’m NOT kidding. So, when the Christians wanted to force their religion on the Anglo-Saxons, naming the celebration after their fertility goddess seemed the way to go.

And what about the egg? And the chick? And the lamb? Along with spring itself, these are all symbols of rebirth. So, even though they have nothing directly to do with the resurrection story, they seem to fit the theme. And the “Easter” bunny? Pure fertility, man. I mean, what are bunnies most known for? That’s right… like the wreath… they’re just more fucking symbolism. (Sorry, couldn’t pass it up.) My favorite line about the confusion that this clash of religions creates came from a child. When asked what we celebrate on Easter, the tyke responded that it’s the day that the Easter bunny brought chocolate eggs to Jesus on the cross.

So all that I’m asking, folks, is that you take the time to consider these traditions before you blindly follow them. That’s all.

Peace.

Randal