Christmas Carols In Old America. Patrizia Barrera

      It may be hard to believe but Christmas is actually a pagan feast. It was actually rather a feast reserved to wizards and witches that used to dance around a tree or, much more likely, around stone circles on the winter solstice day, that is on 22 ^nd December. It was an orgiastic celebration, with dances, grass and sex, to propitiate the favor of the gods in the winter period, that in ancient times was really frightening.

      Its origin? Some say it came from Druids culture and it had Celtic roots. If any of you has ever read Asterix and Obelix comics can, in a funny way, get a gist of it, even though these people’s esoteric tradition was much more complex. The period is from IV to III century B.C. and the place is the British islands but with expansions to as far as Italy , Iberian peninsula and Sweden. We know them as BRITONS and the Stonehenge mystery is what probably tickles us more of their past, rather than their religious traditions. Yet all the Christmas magic and enchantment we still feel today derives from these extinguished people.

      Romans, that defeated Celtics and colonized their territories several times, absorbed their customs and traditions and that was how the winter solstice feast became a tradition of the Empire. The celebration of Winter solstice was actually present in several cultures: in ancient times natural cycles were well observed and the fact that the shortest day, and therefore the seeming abandonment of the sun, occurred around 21 ^st of December was a well known phenomenon, but not considered “automatic”. The sun was a life giver god; and as all gods he was prone to excesses, grudge and acts of violence. Therefore men needed to get in good with it, so that it continued to donate its warmth. The days immediately following 21st of December were therefore lived with terror and fear by ancient people, especially when light got inevitably weaker and nights longer. Man could be confident that the sun was back and that a new year was beginning for humanity only on 25 ^th of December, a day when, for a series of astronomical laws that I’m not going to explain here, the sun seems to be born again, powerful and victorious.

      In a few words there’s a new birth. This simple interpretation can maybe explain the success of the festivities linked to winter solstice that we find in several cultures throughout the world.

      When Romans “recycled” pagan dances they were reinventing the wheel. And after them the Christians did the same. Joining fetishes representing Christ and the virginity of Mary to the pagan dances, they were actually connecting to much more ancient myths and customs. The Madonna with Child is indeed not a Christian heritage.

      In Egypt, for instance, 2000 years before Jesus birth the god Horus (the Sun) was portrayed as a child in the arms of the goddess Isis (the Moon) who was a mother and sister. Even before that in Persi the myth of the god Mitra should make us think: it seems that he had been given birth by a virgin, he had twelve disciples and above all he was called “The Savior”! The Babylonian sun god TAMMUZ is not less surprising: he was also portrayed in the arms of the mother goddess ISHTAR, he had a halo made of twelve stars, representing the twelve zodiac signs. (12 like Christ’s disciples, don’t you think?) It seems that he also died and resuscitated after 3 days… and this in 3000 B.C.

      I won’t talk about the horrid Dionysian rites, where a child god was literally cut into pieces by women who had gone insane, to be born again more beautiful and strong than before; and I just touch on a sun god in the Yucatan, he too was given birth by the virgin CHRIBIRIAS . But I would like to highlight that the rites that took place in the winter solstice were not present only in this hemisphere, but in the other one too, as even Incas celebrated the sun god WIRACOCHA on their winter solstice, that is on June 24th!