Hypocrite Me

You know I love the Christmas season. I don’t actually know why, but I do. It doesn’t have anything to do with getting anything but it may have a lot to do with my childhood memories spent with family during this time of year – oh yea, and the meals.

But I am troubled with myself also about the holiday. I mean, I was taught that it is the celebration of the birth of Jesus, but it seems that I have learned otherwise. At least since I learned that the twelve days of Christmas actually start on the 25th and end on January 6 (the day orthodox Christians acknowledge the birth of Jesus Christ.

Of all the holidays celebrated via European tradition, Christmas is probably the most Western or European of them all. In the early days of this fledgling country, Christmas was not even celebrated and was even outlawed in certain parts of the colonies in the late 1600s. It wasn’t made a federal holiday until June 26, 1870. It was only until after the civil war; with the influx of German immigrants to the United states did it actually begin to spread across the country.

The term Christmas comes from the old English 'Criste Maesse,' and may also be connected to the German word, 'Weihnacht' (Holy Night). Thus I aint surprising that Santa Claus himself also comes from German. But I don’t know if his name “Kris Kringle” or “Sinter Klaus” (which means Klaus of the cinders or as some put – the demon saint of Christmas - in picture with body guards), has anything to do with the Romans (Dionysus was said to have been born on December 25th also-in painting), Horus ,or the birth of Jesus.

History suggest that the Roman pagans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, “a week long period of lawlessness celebrated between December 17-25.” It was the celebration of the “Lord of Misrule.” “Each Roman community selected a victim whom they forced to indulge in food and other physical pleasures throughout the week. At the festival’s conclusion, December 25th, Roman authorities believed they were destroying the forces of darkness by brutally murdering [these] innocent men or women.”

Horus, the Kemetic/Egyptian God of the Sun to was said to have been born on December 25 and that during the times of the Roman empire, during this time period, celebrations were conducted to honor the sun at its farthest distance fro the Earth, returning to bring warmer days – this as during the winter solstice, my birthday Dec 22.

With all of this, and my whimsical feelings toward celebrating a holiday that all I can see objectively merely provides to buttress western economic powers by bringing up sales at the end of the fiscal year and increasing the gross domestic product, I still love this time of year. Why, like I said, my memories of family unity more than all else, so I guess that makes me a hypocrite, hypocrite me, kind of like American me.