mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (10/23/89)
There are several things which bother me about how this discussion has gone. In the first place, we need to get our history in line. The pagan holidays which were replaced/absorbed by Hallowe'en and Christmas are very old. In the case of the holiday traditions we have, the holidays in question are those indigenous to the country, co-mingled in this country partly by immigration and by the victorian elevation of holidays in general. Easter, on the other hand, is the oldest of the three as a *christian* holiday, and records of its celebration predate the general conversion of pagan Europe. Its date has always derived from Passover, not from the various pagan festivities of the same season. The presence of All Saint's and Christmas on their dates is by human design. (Although there is a curious tradition which holds that Jesus lived exactly N years from his *conception* to his death. The Feast of the Annuciation is on March 25, exactly 9 months before Christmas-- and in the period in which Easter/Passover may fall. I believe that this tradition postdates the setting of Christmas's date, however.) Easter is clearly there because of the date of Passovver, so we can forget the babylonians on this one. Now the curious thing about Easter AND Passover is that they share a similarity with the pagan spring festival. They are all rites of rebirth. And the curious thing is that christian literature mixes the three images together not only with abandon, but seemingly with no notion that there is anything odd about it. This shows up even in scripture. In I Cor. 15:35ff Paul refers several times to the present body as a "kernel" or "seed"-- then switches to the words of Genesis. The question of the relationship between all of this is not at all moot. It is quite common for neo-pagans, among others, to hold that christianity is essentially a "heresy" of pagan religion, and that its fixation on the supposed uniqueness of Jesus is exactly what is wrong with it. They might also say (and perhaps they do) that Judaism is in a similar position. And the similarity between the holidays is suggestive. Now, obviously I don't agree with this. The real resurrection of Jesus figures so heavily in orthodox christianity that it is hard for me to see how this feature, which is the aspect of christianity which is MOST unlike the pagan religions, arises from those religions. Nevertheless, the similarity remains. Some authors, C.S. Lewis being the most promenent example, suggest that there is somehow some sort of a reverse connection-- not that christianity inspired the pagan holidays, which is absurd, but that somehow the pagan holidays represent some sort of damaged spiritual foreknowledge of the (then) coming christian faith. I have lots of problems with Mark Woodhouse's approach, on the other hand. In his longish preamble, he writes: >We see it in the activity of Satan in so many churches where he is building >into people's lives all of the symptoms of salvation without a genuine >experience of being "born again". Personally, I have no truck with the *experience* of being "born again", especially if it means someone's notion of what such an experience is like. If going against what Jesus commanded is "Satan's work", it can be found all over, among the supposedly born-again and among the merely baptized. >Christmas is really the celebration of the birth of Christ (although we were >never commanded to remember His birth, only His death). I don't recall being told NOT to remember his birth. I am in agreement with the assessment that in our time the religious elements of christmas have largely been supressed in popular culture. As sort of the apotheosis (if you'll pardon the pun) of this, consider the soi-disant "Christmas Song". This song is supposed to sum up Christmas, but their is not one mention of anything religious in it. However, I am a bit concerned about this seemingly morbid fascination with seeing Satan in everything. It's positively medieval, and I'm not being metaphorical about that either. The evolution of christmas in particular is fairly obviously due to the worship of the Almighty Dollar. Perhaps we may see Satan here, in that "the love of money is the root of all evil," but my point is that the history of modern christmas is adequately explained in the rational persuit of business, not by some sort of occult influences. It is sufficient to show the evil of a situation without naming it "Satan's Influence!" and thus essentially ascribing the situation to unknowable forces. In this case, the forces are plain and obvious, and while I would say that they are forces of evil, it is to our advantage to understand them as purely natural phenomena of ordinary human behavior. Also, it seems to be the natural tendency of american protestants to be very ethnocentric. To the best of my knowledge, the USA is unusual in being dominated by the secular celebration of Easter. In RC and Eastern Orthodox areas, the religious celebration is MUCH more prominent. Likewise, I don't think that Hallowe'en figures outside of areas dominated by europeans, and especially not the candy collection of the USA. Most of christendom is now in cultures which simply don't have the cultural roots for the pagan holidays, much less the commercial forces which lie behind american practices. What we are talking about here is, it would seem, largely an anglo-american issue. -- C. Wingate + "Our God, to whom we turn when weary with illusion, + whose stars serenely burn above this earth's confusion, mangoe@cs.umd.edu + thine is the mightly plan, the steadfast order sure mimsy!mangoe + in which the world began, endures, and shall endure."