I am an objectively terrible Christian, but do like this time of year.  It feels sacred, even to someone born without any religious inclinations.  While the Christian message of selflessness is a nice change from humanity’s usual behavior, our species has been marking this time of year in a variety of ways since around the discovery of agriculture some 12,000 years ago.  Some practices like feasts, gift giving, St. Nicholas, the cessation of work, evergreen plants, tipping support staff (who were slaves for much of human history), long distance travel, and artificially illuminating the darkness have ancient roots that continue today, some predating the Roman Empire.  Other common practices, like no-holds-barred debauchery and orgies, were sadly phased out by the world’s three common era religions because religious men and human sexuality have always had an uncomfortable relationship.  The hedonistic behavior isn’t really gone, it just moved to a week later.  That said, I have never attended a New Years Eve orgy.   

Early societies with no known contact independently came to celebrate this season, from the Inca to the Greeks to the Vikings to the Chinese.  This points to humanity’s broad homogeneity – after all we are not much different from each other.  Despite our conviction that, somehow, we are unique and special in this world, to celebrate this time of year is to recognize our common humanity throughout deep time and across cultures.  This time of year matters, if only because for the northern hemisphere it marks the return of the sun, of warmer days ahead, a hopeful return to growth and prosperity.  In the Southern Hemisphere, Christmas marks a celebration of Summer, of the bounty the Earth, God, or nature has provided, the longest day of the year spent leisurely gathering on the beach or by the lake with family.  Not unlike the Fourth of July to the United States, actually.  I suspect there’s a reason Independence Day in the U.S. falls so close to the Summer Solstice, but that’s just a wild Lance theory.  

Books have been written about the true meaning of Christmas or the commercialization of Christmas.  Mid-century Americans did much to commercialize the holiday, mainly to move product and support an economy based on consumerism.  Rudolf, the well-known reindeer, came to us in 1939 as a way to entice people into Montgomery Ward for example.  Coke helped popularize (no, it did not invent) Santa Claus in the incarnation we commonly know — a jolly, rotund, bearded white man with rosy cheeks.  The holiday has constantly changed or adapted to the current era, whatever that era was, to suit whoever happened to be in charge.  The Puritans, when they came to power in England, banned Christmas; it is not mentioned in the Bible specifically.  The boisterous partying, drinking, gambling, and eating are all, technically, sins.  Some of my favorite, actually.  I suspect general sickness from over indulgence and sexually transmitted infections were thought a bit unnecessary and un-Godly, too.  Puritans preferred a day of … “fasting and humiliation before God.”  Zero fun, which checks out.  From History.com: “The noted Puritan minister Increase Mather wrote that Christmas occurred on December 25 not because ‘Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian ones.’”  Pro-Christmas rioting eventually ensued, and the holiday was brought back with the return of the monarchy.  It stayed banned in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts for a generation.  Like Prohibition, the ban never really took.  People still partook, just not publicly. 

So however you celebrate the season, know you are participating in an ancient ritual that unites humanity in a way few things do.  While the details have changed, the basic message has always been the same: with joy we give thanks and celebrate what has been, and with humility we give thanks and celebrate what is yet to come.  It’s a philosophy I try to embody year round.   

So whatever belief system you cling to in the dead of night which helps allay the fears of your eventual death and the nothingness we all suspect follows, happy solstice.  Or Christmas.  Or Yule.  Or holidays.  You know, whatever, don’t be a jerk about it.  It’s all the same.