"Through your mercies, Lord, may the months
be for us the source of joys, the years, of delight;
let them bequeath to us in peace, O Lord:
Nisan has its flowers, Iyyar its lilies too,
Haziran its sheaves, Tammuz its heaps of grain;
let Ab and Illul bring along grape-clusters on poles,
let the two Teshris give response to each other in the grape-pressing;
let the two Kanuns bring rest, Shebat and Adar, the Fast.
To you, Lord, be the praise."
King’s prayer to help God Marduk “renew“ everything, a 12-day yearly AKITU Festival at the beginning of new year, Babylon, from 4500 BCE (some 6,500 years ago)
THE PAGAN CELEBRATION OF Winter Solstice (also known as Yule) is one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world. Ancient people were hunter-gatherers and spent most of their time outdoors. The seasons and weather played a very important part in their lives. Because of this many ancient people had a great reverence for, and even worshipped the sun. (And along the same lines the zodiac system was developed.) The Norsemen of Northern Europe saw the sun as a wheel that changed the seasons. It was from the word for this wheel, houl, that the word yule is thought to have come. At mid-winter the Norsemen lit bonfires, told stories and drank sweet ale.
Newgrange is a beautiful megalithic site in Ireland. This huge circular stone structure is estimated to be 5,000 years old (older than the Egyptian pyramids)! It was built specifically to receive a shaft of sunlight deep into its central chamber at dawn on winter solstice.
An utterly astounding array of ancient cultures built their greatest architectures - tombs, temples, cairns and sacred observatories - so that they aligned with the solstices and equinoxes. Stonehenge in the Salisbury plains of England was designed some 4,000 years ago to be perfect for both Summer and Winter Solstices.
The ancient Romans also held a festival to celebrate the rebirth of the year. Saturnalia ran for seven days from the 17th of December. It was a time when the ordinary rules were turned upside down. Men dressed as women and masters dressed as servants. The festival also involved decorating houses with greenery, lighting candles, holding processions and giving presents.
After the birth of Christianity, Christmas was transplanted onto Winter Solstice some 1,600 years ago (around the beginning of the end of the Roman empire near 400 CE).Carrying it into the 21th century, the festival has been transformed, commercialised, and have become soft of a “Holiday season” rather than “Christmas festivities”. While there may not be any literary objective objection to the changes for the sake of having a "progressive religion", the following dialogue may highlight the need to have a culture-centric festivity for the sake of peace and harmony in the society and her values.
Bill Moyers: The society has provided [the young people of today] no rituals by which they can become members…With that best spirit ever... Merry Christmas!
Joseph Campbell: There has been reduction… Reduction… Reduction of rituals even in Roman Catholic Church, by God… They have translated the mass out of a ritual-language into one that has a lot of domestic associations… Every time now that I read the Latin of the Mass, I get the picture that it supposed to give you… A language that throws you out of the field of domesticity, you know… The alter is turned so that the priest is with his back to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that… Now they have turned the alter around, judging you like a child, giving you demonstrations, and it is all homely and cosy… Hey listen, they have forgotten what the function of a ritual is! It is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time…
BM: So rituals that once conveyed an inward reality are merely a form…
JC: … Well, with respect to rituals, it must be kept alive… and so much of our ritual is dead… it is extremely interesting to read primitive, elementary cultures, how the folk-tales, the myths, that are transforming all the time as per the circumstances of those people…
