A very happy Diwali to all my Hindu and IndoPagan readers. Diwali, the festival of lights, is a major Indian holiday representing a spiritual new year, and a triumph of good over evil. Depending on the region and tradition, this day commemorates the return of Lord Rama, the birth of Lakshmi, and the Austerities of Shakti (among other events). Celebrants usually light lamps, set off fireworks, play cards, and will occasionally pray to computers to commemorate the day. Of special note this year is that Barack Obama became the first US president to participate in the White House Diwali ceremony.

Hindu puja on the eve of Diwali.

“Obama became the first US president to personally take part in a White House ceremony for the festival of lights, lighting a “diya” oil lamp inside the executive mansion and bowing respectfully before a Hindu priest. “While this is a time of rejoicing, it’s also a time for reflection, when we remember those who are less fortunate and renew our commitment to reach out to those in need,” Obama said.”

Not to be outdone, the British Prime Minister held a “historic” Diwali celebration at 10 Downing Street. For more information on Diwali and its traditions, check out the informative Hindu Blog.

May you experience happiness and good fortune on this day, and in the year to come.

Today is the Autumnal Equinox (21:18 UTC) which signals the beginning of Fall in the northern hemisphere. On this day there will be an equal amount of light and darkness, and after this day the nights grow longer and we head towards Winter. In many modern Pagan traditions this is the second of three harvest festivals (the first being Lughnasadh, the third being Samhain).

Pagan circle at Autumn Equinox.
Photo by Chris John Beckett (CC)

The holiday is also known as “Harvest Home” or “Mabon” by Wiccans and Witches, “Mid-Harvest” and “Alban Elfed” by some Druidic and Celtic-oriented groups, and “Winter Finding” by modern-day Asatru. Most modern Pagans simply call it the Autumn Equinox. Here are some media quotes and excerpts from modern Pagans on the holiday.

“It’s the twilight of the changing seasons, that gray area in between summer and fall where anything goes as far as weather is concerned. It’s a sort of purgatory. Nothing is for certain. The verdict is out; nature is in the midst of deliberating.” - Tom Ragan, The Christian Science Monitor

“Mabon has become a time of celebration of reflection, grace, and balance. We may hold a seasonal rite at our “beautiful corners,” giving thanks for home and finance, school and knowledge, careers and accomplishment, and balance and relationships.” – Terry Smith, Alexandria Town Talk

“…celebrating Harvest Festival in church is a relatively recent practice. It was originally a pagan festival celebrated by those who had enough food and spare time to have a knees-up when the full moon – the Harvest Moon – was nearest the autumnal equinox. It was only in 1843 that the Rev Robert Hawker, from Cornwall, started the trend of holding a service, offering communion bread made from the first cut of corn.” – Charlie Brooks, The Telegraph

“It is sometimes called Mabon (in most Wiccan traditions) but I always think of the Autumnal Equinox as Harvest Home. It’s the middle harvest–the harvest of apples, eggplant, the young and tender fall kale. It’s the time to get some canning done–like you haven’t been doing that all summer long.” – Byron Ballard, The Village Witch, Asheville Citizen-Times

“In the rhythm of the year, Harvest Home marks a time of rest after hard work. The crops are gathered in, and winter is still a month and a half away! Although the nights are getting cooler, the days are still warm, and there is something magical in the sunlight, for it seems silvery and indirect. As we pursue our gentle hobbies of making corn dollies (those tiny vegetation spirits) and wheat weaving, our attention is suddenly arrested by the sound of baying from the skies (the “Hounds of Annwn” passing?), as lines of geese cut silhouettes across a harvest moon. And we move closer to the hearth, the longer evening hours giving us time to catch up on our reading, munching on popcorn balls and caramel apples and sipping home-brewed mead or ale. What a wonderful time Harvest Home is!” – Mike Nichols, The Witches’ Sabbats

May you all enjoy the fruits of your harvest this season.

Today (and last night) is the celebration of the Summer Solstice*, also known as Midsummer, or Litha. It is at this time that the Northern Hemisphere is tilted closest to the sun (the opposite being true for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere). It is a time of fertility and celebration: bonfires, maypoles, dancing, and outdoor festivals have been traditional during this time for most of human history. In some modern Pagan faiths it is believed that this holiday represents the highest ascendancy of masculine divinity.

Druids at Stonehenge on the Summer Solstice

Here are some recent quotes on this day from the press, along with some words from those who celebrate the Summer Solstice as a holiday.

“Druids began their incantations, Wiccan priestesses drew their cowls tight against the damp morning air and four half-naked Papuan dancers waved their hands in the air and went: “Woo, woo, woo” … A record 36,500 people had gathered at the prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain to watch the sun rise. So many turned out to celebrate the solstice that roads had to be shut and the vast field converted into a car park for 6,500 vehicles was full by 3am.” – Simon de Bruxelles, The Times

“They may be suffering from one of the world’s worst recessions but all the economic doom and gloom will not keep Latvians from having fun at a midsummer’s night festival dating from pagan times. “It is a tradition here,” 45-year-old Nina told AFP outside a Riga supermarket. “Everyone entertains themselves as they can. Sure, we’ll cut out small things to spend less this year but the tradition will remain.” Deeply rooted in pagan customs handed down from generation to generation, the “Jani” festival is held on June 23 as the summer solstice marks northern Europe’s longest day of the year — when Latvia enjoys almost 18 hours of daylight.” – Aleks Tapinsh, AFP

For ancient pagans in Scandinavia, cracking open a Carlsberg and singing ‘We love our Land’ around a bonfire, perhaps, was a bit unforeseeable.  However, pagans did light fires to heal pain and protected their souls on midsummer’s, or as it’s presently known in Denmark, Sankt Hans Aften or Saint John’s Eve.  The dear late Sankt Hans, or Saint John the Baptist, surely never imagined that decedents of those pagans would build pyres in his honour, nor that, after the rise of nationalism, a nation fondly known as Denmark would host those pyres.  Times surely have changed since the birth of the last millennium. – The Copenhagen Post

“Steeped in ancient rituals and traditions, Latvia’s Midsummer is a celebration unique in Europe, where many of the customs have long since died out. Most Latvians leave the cities enmasse to gather around ceremonial bonfires in the countryside to welcome the arrival of summer in the company of friends and family. During this time the countryside comes alive with all-night parties in which people make fires, sing songs, dance, make and wear wreaths of flowers, drink specially-brewed beer and eat homemade cheese.” – Kate McIntosh, The Baltic Times

“There is something very refreshing about the Wiccan way, the Druid approach. They have no expectation that they can explain everything or indeed anything. Unlike the organised religions, Wicca is all about stuff we can see; the sun and the moon, the holly and the oak. Their godheads are based on a necessary reality, an existence that once yolked humankind to the earth and earth to humankind. Their belief seems to be founded on the realisation that we are animals and locked into project planet. And while the notion of “harm none, do what ye will” might seem familiar to Bible-lovers, it comes in a refreshingly dogma-free version with our Wicca sorority and brethren. Given what we appear to be doing to the planet in terms of warming it, melting it and polluting it, it might not be a bad time to start acting on that mantra.” – Hardeep Singh Kohli, The Independent

A blessed Midsummer to you all!

* Technically speaking, the 2009 Summer Solstice occurs at 05:45 UTC on June 21st. Please check your local time-zone for accurate Solstice timing.

“What potent blood hath modest May.”
- Ralph W. Emerson

Tonight and tomorrow (in the northern hemisphere) are the traditional dates for many of the major spring/summer festivals in modern Paganism. Beltane, Bealtaine, May Day, Floralia, Protomayia, and Walpurgis Night, to name just a few. This fire festival heralds the coming of summer and is a high holiday, a liminal time when the barriers between our world and the otherworld were thin. In many traditions and cultures it is a time of divine union and fertility.

Walpurgis Night bonfire, near lake Ringsjo, Sweden
Photo by David Castor

Here are some quotes from the press, and from fellow modern Pagans, on the holiday.

“It is Beltane! The Earth softens under the caress of the sun and all the world is new. We emerge from the darkness of a long, difficult winter; our eyes drink in rolling green hills budding branches and tender shoots. We breathe deeply the fresh fragrance of radiant blossoms. Merriment calls!” – Selena Fox, Circle Sanctuary

“A sex ban imposed on performers before last year’s Beltane Fire Festival has had an unexpected, and happy, consequence – a baby born exactly nine months later. Rupert Smith, who was playing the part of a Red Man, during the fiery pagan event last year, celebrated the lifting of the ban with his partner – who just happened to be May Queen Fenella Hodgson – after returning from the Calton Hill festivities. The result was son Reuben, now three months old, and, for his efforts, Rupert has now been promoted to the leading role of the Green Man – the May Queen’s betrothed – this year.” - Catherine Salmond, Edinburgh Evening News

“May Day roots go back a long way. For Gaelic peoples it was celebrated as Beltane. Germanic tribes observed it as Walpurgisnacht. In the Middle Ages, the English would erect maypoles and hold “Morris” dances. Some typical ways May Day is celebrated is by crowning a May Queen, putting up a maypole and making May Day baskets and leaving them on the doors of your neighbors, friends and family members. In the late 19th century, May Day became a symbol of the achievements of the labor movement (which brought you the two-day weekend, the eight-hour work day and a minimum wage), and was celebrated as “Labor Day.” Cold War politics rescheduled America’s Labor Day. It is interesting to note Beltane and Walpurgisnacht both use bonfires as part of the celebration. Fires protected the people from spirits and purified the land for a good growing season. It reminds me a bit of prairie burning.” – Regina Murphy, The Emporia Gazette

“I will be back to celebrate the dawn on May 1, arriving well before dawn at Berkeley’s Inspiration Point in Tilden Park.  There, every year, in no matter what the weather, Berkeley Morris performs Morris dances to ‘bring up the sun’ and honor the day.  I have always felt something almost primordially right about this way of celebrating the dawn and the beginning of this season. I remember one year during a ferocious downpour they danced in the puddles and a decent crowd of us stood under umbrellas to honor them and the date.  More often they dance as the light gradually grows until the sun breaks through on the far eastern horizon, bathing us in its gentle light.  When the weather is decent, and it usually is, hundreds show up.  Not all are Pagans, but they are certainly Pagans at heart, honoring the turning of wheel, the sacredness of this day, and the warmth of community.” – Gus diZerega, A Pagan’s Blog

“Despite its modern links to Christianity, Valborgsmässoafton, which has been celebrated in Sweden since the Middle Ages, is one of two Swedish holidays which still resemble their pre-Christian merrymaking. The other is Midsummer. The original pagan festival heralded the onset of the growth season. It attempted to ward off evil, ensure fertility and cleanse the land of the dried and dead of winter. Today, it is still the accepted gateway to long and warmer days.” – Elizabeth Dacey-Fondelius, The Local

“Long before it was a code word for distress or a major holiday of the Soviet Bloc, May Day was a pagan ritual celebrating the arrival of spring. That primal, earth-mother definition drives the Phillips neighborhood’s May Day parade, one of the Twin Cities’ most visually spectacular festivals and a kickoff to Minnesota’s all-too-short warm-weather months. The parade’s most striking feature is the gigantic puppets built by local kids and neighborhood groups…” – Decider Twin Cities

“There are four great festivals of the Pagan Celtic year and the modern Witches’ calendar, as well. The two greatest of these are Halloween (the beginning of winter) and May Day (the beginning of summer). Being opposite each other on the wheel of the year, they separate the year into halves. Halloween (also called Samhain) is the Celtic New Year and is generally considered the more important of the two, though May Day runs a close second. Indeed, in some areas—notably Wales—it is considered “the great holiday”. “ – Mike Nichols, The Witches’ Sabbats

May you all be especially blessed this evening and tomorrow.

Recently Get Religion blogger and religion-beat journalist Mollie Hemingway, while discussing a major religion-based factual error in a piece by Slate.com, made this assertion concerning the media and the “pagan” roots of modern holidays.

You get a basic fact like what Candlemas commemorates wrong and it kind of casts doubt on the whole piece. Not to mention that Noah asserts the pagan connection without substantiating the claim elsewhere in the piece. There is literally no explanation — we are just to take him at his word. That’s my biggest beef with the “Christian holy days co-opt pagan festivals” meme that is so popular with the mainstream media. They just run with the story instead of investigating some tangled and complex histories that may not fit into the preferred narrative.

I think Mollie is being overly harsh here, puff holiday pieces are usually adverse to investigating “tangled and complex” matters, and most often settle for the “common wisdom” (whatever that may be at the time). Do we really expect Timothy Noah to read Ronald Hutton’s “Stations of the Sun” to learn that while Imbolc was almost certainly a pre-Christian festival, we have no real way of telling what, if any, traditions currently associated with the holiday actually date to pre-Christian times? That seems a bit much for a slight article about Punxsutawney Phil and his shadow. Further, there seems to be the implied notion that the “Christian cooptation of old Pagan holidays” meme stems solely from a secular journalistic bias or perhaps Wiccan wishful thinking rather than Christians themselves.

While most Catholics and Orthodox Christians seem rather untroubled with the notion of the (possible) integration of “sanctified” pagan elements into their faith, some protestant sects are genuinely and truly upset with the “pagan” foundations of modern Christian practice. Indeed, on the rightward fringe it’s something of an obsession.

A Tennessee historian and author best known for his searches for the Ark of the Covenant – the box containing the Ten Commandments – is now challenging much of modern Christianity, claiming the traditional version of the faith has more in common with ancient paganism than actual biblical content. “Today, it is amazing what is being presented as Christianity,” says Richard Rives of Lewisburg, Tenn., who has just released a book and DVD collection titled, “Time is the Ally of Deceit.” “First century believers would have never accepted [today's practices],” the 56-year-old ark hunter told WND. “We must earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.” In his new book and videos, Rives goes on a history-packed journey beginning with the creation of the world and Satan’s deception in the Garden of Eden, examining how worship of the sun god among ancient cultures influenced the worship of the true God of the Bible.

But it isn’t just the WND-loving fringe-types (not to mention Jack Chick) who perpetuate the “modern Christianity is mostly pagan” meme. George Barna of The Barna Group also wrote a book about it called “Pagan Christianity”.

Pagan Christianity makes an unsettling proposal: Most of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.

Which makes you wonder, who has the most invested in Christianity’s “pagan” past? Certainly modern Pagans are big believers in such theories, but we hardly have a lot of influence over the press (and even if some of those theories are ultimately debunked, we have no problem integrating contemporary ideas into our practice). Yes, secular journalists seem to swallow assertions of pagan connections somewhat uncritically, but is it because they aren’t friendly to Christianity (or too friendly to Pagans and atheist debunkers)? I would offer a third possibility, that the “Pagan Christianity” meme is kept alive by Christians. Whether it is from a belief that Christian worship is “tainted” by it, or that Christianity “triumphed” over paganism and kept the best bits, both allow the “mainstream media” to maintain the common wisdom of pagan survivals in modern Christian practice.

I would further argue that some conservative Christians have far more invested in the idea of a pagan-haunted world than a lot of Pagans do. This includes Christian authors parroting debunked and discarded modern Pagan talking points to inflate our menace. You see, Christians don’t like tangled and murkey answers to questions any more than journalists do. The real answers to “how much pre-Christian stuff has gotten into modern Christian practice” aren’t simple, clear-cut, or easy to explain. It is little wonder why both grasp for an easy and simple answer. So if mainstream journalism is uncritically swallowing the “pagan origins” meme, who exactly is feeding it to them?

Tonight and tomorrow is when most modern Pagans celebrate the fire festival of Imbolc sacred to the goddess Brigid, patroness of poets, healers, and smiths. Today is also the feast day of Saint Brigid of Ireland patron saint of poets, dairymaids, blacksmiths, healers, cattle, fugitives, Irish nuns, midwives, and new-born babies.

Brigid: Saint and Goddess.

In Kildare, Ireland’s town square, a perpetual flame is kept lit and housed in a statue that pays homage to the Pagan and Christian conceptions of Brigid. Festivities for La Feile Bride in Kildare started on January 25th and will continue through Febrary 3rd.

Here are a collection of quotes on this holiday.

I see and smell the first fragrant scents of spring——the yellow acacia beginning to bloom. Gradually if we walk slowly and quietly we’ll notice the subtle changes occurring in nature, here and there in the plant kingdom. Humanity needs fire festivals during the gray, wet, rainy, snowy days of winter, to chase away doldrums and light deprivation. On Feb. 2 we have Candlemas and Imbolc (pronounced Im-bolk). Both Candlemas and Imbolc are fire festivals…lighting the darkness, offering humanity hope. February 2nd is also the midway point between winter solstice and spring equinox – Risa D’Angeles, Esoteric Astrology

As with all quarter days e.g. mid summer solstice and Halloween it was customary for customs, festivities and rituals to be enacted and these have remained an unbroken folk tradition in practice in many west of Ireland’s rural communities. One such enduring tradition marking the 1st of February are the distinct strawcraft folk rituals associated with Brigit who symbolically on the same date deposes the goddess of winter thereby marking the beginning of Spring. Loved by young and old is the fashioning of various Brigit crosses, 3 armed, four armed, diamond and interwomen which occur in pre historic stone carvings throughout Europe where they are understood to be ancient symbols of the life giving earth mother goddess. – The Fermanagh Herald

Happy Imbolc 2009! “Again, we banish winter; Again, we welcome spring!” The Wheel has turned once more, and brought us to the next holiday of the Pagan Year, Imbolc, February 2nd. A day directly between Yule and Eostre. Pagans call the day the first day of spring, since it is the time that the first sprouts show through the snow. This day is the centerpoint of the dark half of the year. – Terry Smith, The Town Talk (Louisiana)

…the history of Groundhog Day is far more complex than what it has become: a staged event in which poor Phil is observed in the glare of television cameras so our local meteorologists have a cute sound byte and a brief close-up of his blinking, bewildered groundhog face, a yearly ritual that appears on the morning news. The origin of Groundhog Day is derived from earlier celebrations held on the cross-quarter day of February 2, dates variously known as Brigid’s Night in Ireland (festival of the Celtic goddess of poetry, birth, weddings, smithcraft, and healing), Oimelc/Imbolc/Imbolg in Scotland, and Candlemas in England. The cross-quarter days (Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasa) were always associated in ancient times with divination–the veil between the worlds is believed to be its thinnest, and the balance of energies between solstice and equinox was thought to be very significant. – Peg Aloi, “You Call It Groundhog Day, We Call It Imbolc”

“Candlemas” is the Christianized name for the holiday, of course. The older Pagan names were Imbolc and Oimelc. Imbolc means, literally, “in the belly” (of the Mother). For in the womb of Mother Earth, hidden from our mundane sight but sensed by a keener vision, there are stirrings. The seed that was planted in her womb at the solstice is quickening and the new year grows. Oimelc means “milk of ewes”, for it is also lambing season. – Mike Nichols, The Witches’ Sabbats

“I’d sit with the men, the women of God, There by the lake of beer, We’d be drinking good health forever, And every drop would be a prayer.” – Excerpt from “Saint Brigit’s Prayer”

Many blessings to you this holiday! Be sure to check out the fourth annual Brigid in Cyperspace Poetry Reading in your travels around the web tomorrow, I’ll see you by the lake of beer!

While most American Pagans are already looking towards Imbolc,  Lupercalia (or Valentines Day) and the Spring holidays, England is still finishing up their Winter observances, specifically the wassailing of trees. Timed around the old Epiphany feasts, this Anglo-Saxon tradition is undergoing a revival of sorts, with participants aware and comfortable with the pagan history of this event.

It was the second Wassail held at the orchard, which is run by volunteers. Events co-ordinator Yvette Grindley told the Mail: “The ceremony has certainly worked for us in the past. “We got a bumper harvest the year of the floods, even though we lost 10 per cent of the trees, and last year we also got a great harvest because of all the rain, with apples as big as saucers. “It’s all a bit of superstition and fun, but it’s great to bring back this tradition back to the area. In parts of the south, where there are more orchards this is a big event.” Visitors were entertained by the Raving Mae morris dancers and kept warm with hot mulled cider and apple tea.

You can see a short video of the proceedings, here. Other wassailing bands are far more deliberate in their Paganism, as evidenced by the festival held at Kenninghall.

Drummers beat out a wild rhythm and the moon glistened in the night sky as scores of revellers held a Pagan wassailing festival. Led by outlandish characters the Lord of Missrule and the Green Man, villagers gathered at the community orchard at Kenninghall, near Diss, for an ancient ceremony to honour the fruit trees and bring about a bumper crop this year. Gifts and lanterns were hung on an apple tree planted by local Scouts, as parish council chairman Steve Gordon ordered out the old year – in his guise as Green Man – and urged the gathering to toast the spring when new life comes creeping in.

It seems that there is a growing acceptance and acknowledgment among non-Pagans of the “pagan” origins of seasonal festivities (whether real or imagined), and a shift towards more celebratory observances. I’m not sure if this a grass-roots shift in attitude, or if the growth of modern Paganism and the recent journalistic trend towards finding/exploring pagan origins have influenced things a bit, but as tough fiscal times continue I bet people are going to look for more excuses to party, escape their day-to-day worries, and maybe propritiate the powers that be in the process.

Randy Shore of the Vancouver Sun takes a somewhat lighthearted look at the origins of our New Years celebrations from pre-Christian antiquity.

“If your head really hurts on New Year’s Day, you could point your finger at the Babylonians who started this new year revelry nonsense. Though the ancient Romans added the idea of alcoholic excess, or at least perfected it. Julius Caesar fixed the start of the year on Jan. 1 by letting the previous year run to 445 days rather than the traditional 365. The Roman citizenry made their winter festival Saturnalia a celebration without rules. So, let’s blame the Romans. Any way you slice it, New Year’s is among the very oldest and most persistent of human celebrations.”

Kissing on New Years? The Romans. Baby new year? The Egyptians and Greeks. Father Time? Well… that’s a bit more complicated.

“Father Time, who symbolizes the passage of time and the death of the old year, is a much more complex creature. His most ancient manifestations come from India. Yama the god of death and justice is described in the Vedas and the Upanishads, making him at least 3,500 years old and probably much older. Yama maintains order in the afterworld and assigns people their reincarnations, sometimes as a richer and more powerful person, other times a cockroach. As the ruler of death and new beginnings, Yama has profoundly influenced later precursors of Father Time such as Rome’s Pluto, Chronos, the Greek god of time, and the Grim Reaper of English and northern European tradition. He is a kindly looking old fellow these days, sometimes depicted holding Baby New Year, but few mothers in the ancient world would have willingly handed their infant to such a being.”

Christian taste-makers have tried to alternately ignore and sanctify January 1st, though it has stubbornly remained an almost purely pagan hodge-podge of revelry, mirth, and joyous excess. So while many Pagans celebrate the new year at different points, I can see no harm in another festival to help turn the wheel into 2009.

The Montreal Gazette sends reporter Al Kratina to cover a Yule Fair presented by the Montreal Pagan Resource Centre. What did he learn? That Pagans didn’t conform to his pop-culture associations and had their own winter religious observances!

“…paganism, it seems, involves neither Griselda the Witch from the Hilarious House of Frightenstein or minor key guitar solos on Viking metal records, as I had believed. “The word pagan is very generally used,” explained Robyn Stroll, a manager at occult shop Le Mélange Magique, which hosted the fair. “One can use ‘pagan’ to refer to anyone who follows a non-traditional religion, but more specifically it’s people who have a religion based in … a balance with nature.” This balance often includes a celebration of the Dec. 21 solstice.”

While the article on the whole is friendly, I still get hives when reporters try to be funny by cracking wise about some pop-culture witch or wizard while writing about Pagans. I can only imagine how a story about a local Catholic parish that repeatedly referenced “Father Ted” would be received by the faithful. But why settle for a fair and pageant when you can directly participate in a carefully secularized Winter Solstice celebration out in nature? That’s what’s on offer at Wisconsin’s Aldo Leopold Nature Center on December 19th.

“On Friday Dec. 19, the non-profit environmental education group Nature Net will hold the 8th annual Winter Solstice Celebration at the Aldo Leopold Nature Center in Monona. Under the night sky, participants will take part in a nighttime hike through the preserve, enjoy Yule log cake and hot cocoa and gather around a Yule log fire to learn about Solstice traditions from around the world, many of which have been celebrated for more than a millennium … While the norm during the winter season is to stay indoors and warm up on the couch, not being outside means missing out on some of the wonderful aspects of the season — including the other activities planned by Nature Net, including making Green Man masks (another legendary figure of the return of spring, growth and vitality), the Wassail Ceremony (drinking wassail “brew” and blessing the apple tree) and the Candlelight Ceremony (voicing gratitude for the good things in our lives during the past year and expressing our hopes for the new year).”

That actually sounds more robust and better planned than some explicitly Pagan celebrations I’ve attended! Looks like the nature center decided to graft in a little nature religion. Is this increased attention to pre-Christian traditions and Pagan groups during the winter a sign of our growth and inevitable mainstreaming? A secular yearning for tradition without the baggage and dogma of organized religion? A natural by-product of our increasingly post-Christian world? Perhaps it is a mixture of all these things. Next thing you know Italy’s La Befana will start replacing St. Nick!

December brings many things: snow, cold weather, people acting horribly at shopping centers, and journalists seeking a new angle on holiday reporting. A favorite in recent years is to talk of the “pagan” origins of the Christmas holiday. These often come in the form of editorials rebutting the inane “War on Christmas” prattlings by Bill O’Reilly and his ilk. For example, Pete Langr of the Budgeteer News has this to say.

“It’s ironic that the effort to put Christ back in Christmas is both so profitable and so willing to focus on the Christmas tree and on the word “merry.” The Christmas tree itself “has nothing to do with other religious holidays celebrated in December” says my letter writer. Except that the Christmas tree was apparently co-opted by Christians from a pagan celebration in which evergreen boughs were hung in the home. In effect, the pagans lost an earlier culture war. Perhaps they bartered buttons saying ‘take back our winter solstice celebration.’”

And so on, and so forth. Some reporters have even tried to debunk the “Christmas traditions aren’t really Christian” debunkers.

“Despite popular belief, the idea of Christmas trees did not come from Pagan rituals. In fact, the first Christmas trees are believed to have originated in 17th century Germany. It took two centuries for the idea to catch on in the U.S.”

To bad the Bible somewhat refutes that notion.

“Jeremiah 10:2-4: “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.” (KJV).”

The New York Times has its own formula for many beloved Christmas traditions: pagans invented them, Christians appropriated them, Dickens (and 19th century England) synthesized, secularized, and popularized them, and the public embraced the entire culturally tangled mess whole-cloth.

“Standiford, the author of four other non­fiction books, tidily explains the appeal of “A Christmas Carol,” its readership “said at the turn of the 20th century to be second only to the Bible’s.” Replacing the slippery Holy Ghost with anthropomorphized spirits, the infant Christ with a crippled child whose salvation waits on man’s — not God’s — generosity, Dickens laid claim to a religious festival, handing it over to the gathering forces of secular humanism. If a single night’s crash course in man’s power to redress his mistakes and redeem his future without appealing to an invisible and silent deity could rehabilitate even so apparently lost a cause as Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what it might do for the rest of us!”

So the answer to the “pagan origins” debate is that everyone’s right. A lot of “Christmas-y” stuff is pre-Christian in some form or another, but it is equally true to say that they have been fully absorbed into a Christian context. In turn, both the pagan and Christian contexts for hanging the holly and trimming the tree have morphed into a fully secular affair, complete with a popular mythology that is a mish-mash of pagan, Christian, and pop-culture elements. What the Christmas warriors don’t understand is that their war was lost long ago, and the majority of people who just wanted a reason to find hope, merriment, and camaraderie during the bleak midwinter won out.