|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
The Fast of Ramadan lasts for one month. Hanukkah covers
a little more than a week. Christmas lumbers on forever. Or at least it lasts
from the first tinkles of Christmas carols on Nov. 1 until Jan. 6, if you
toss Epiphany into the mix. The busiest day of the Christmas season is undoubtedly
the day after Thanksgiving. Then it is that some Dionysiac-induced madness
descends upon the region and implants in the minds of the unsuspecting a
frenzied compulsion to hop in their cars and head for the shopper’s
Shangri-La, more commonly known as Prime Outlets. Since the parking lots are jammed to the nines, our
voyagers abandon their cars, jee-jawed and catawampus, along the westbound
shoulder of Route 60. In a state known as “shopper’s trance” they then with
intrepid insistence navigate the oncoming traffic of a four lane highway,
credit cards in hand, in order to sell their economic souls to Liz
Claiborne. What occasions all this was the birth of the baby Jesus
in Bethlehem sometime around 1941 B.C., or Before Cheney, as columnist
Maureen Dowd would have it. According to the Gospel of Matthew, three magi,
following a star, came in search of the baby and brought with them gifts of
gold, frankincense and myrrh. Now this is where Prime Outlets comes in, because ever
since the day of that miraculous birth, gift-giving has become part of the
Christmas tradition. The problem is that few people these days are
well-heeled enough to be lugging gold around, and almost no one has any idea
what frankincense or myrrh are, much less where to find them. Just recently I
asked one of the clerks in the Food Lion where they kept their frankincense,
and he sent me to the aisle with the matches and charcoal briquettes, which I
suppose is about as close as you’re going to get. Because of the scarcity of gold, frankincense and myrrh,
this part of the tradition was obviously in deep trouble and another
tradition had to be developed to compensate for the fact that Wal-Mart
carried none of the magi’s gifts. Enter Santa Claus. How Santa Claus became linked with the birth of the baby
Jesus is hard to say, though we do know that frankincense and myrrh are not
products indigenous to the Arctic Circle, where the brain-frozen people who
dreamed up this hoary old man and his reindeer live. In order to keep the
gift-giving tradition alive, other types of merchandise obviously had to be
added to the original list. Now Santa, his wife and his elves reside at the North
Pole and crank out things like iPods, computers, video games, toasters, DVDs,
cell phones, knife sharpeners and plasma TVs. That none of this gadgetry
would have been appropriate for the baby Jesus seems to bother no one other
than the manufacturers of gold trinkets, frankincense and myrrh. Adding even more to the occlusion of the Christmas
tradition’s Christian origins is the fact that, in addition to the
infiltration of Santa Claus, there soon appeared on the scene what’s known as
the Christmas tree. And this despite the fulminations of Jeremiah (10:2-4)
and the prohibitions of William Bradford and his Puritans, who knew a heathen
ritual when they saw one. The tree tradition predates both the ice people and the
birth of Jesus, who probably never saw a Christmas tree. In ancient Asia
Minor there was a fertility divinity known as Cybele. One day, Cybele
discovered that her consort, Attis, was flirting with some nymph and so
ordered him to castrate himself, which he did immediately. The blood from the
ghoulish operation fell to the ground beneath a pine tree, which absorbed it
and, as a result, became a sacred icon. As part of the ritual of Cybele, a
pine tree was cut down each year in remembrance of the sacrifice of
Attis. Soon the Romans inherited the cult of the goddess and
adopted the tree-cutting ceremony as part of
their own winter festival, called the Saturnalia, in honor of the
agricultural god Saturnus. It was this tradition that they passed on to the
ice people. The ice people,
who desperately wanted to break out of the doldrums of the Winter Solstice,
simply marveled at the idea of hauling a dead tree into the house in honor of
just about anyone, including Wotan, Santa and the baby Jesus, and decorating
it with colorful doodads and candles. Many of us no longer use dead live
trees, but have switched to the artificial variety for the sake of
authenticity Man is by nature nyctophobic and hence given to lighting
up the dark. As a result, the guiding star has survived nicely as an icon of
the Christmas tradition. That we now frequently stick a star of Bethlehem
atop Cybele’s sacred tree should trouble no one. That’s about all there is to know concerning the
traditions of Christmas. Now it’s time to go out and hang lighted icicles
from our gutters in honor of the ice people, to set up replicas of Santa’s
sleigh in honor of the old chimney slider, and to decorate Cybele’s tree in
honor of poor Attis. But most of all, and regardless of how garbled the
tradition has become, it’s time to reflect upon the birth of the baby for
whom gold, frankincense and myrrh were probably very special gifts. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||