The Yearning Underlying Each Day, Especially Each Holiday: How Do We Rescue Clarity and Order from Chaos?

We can expect so much from a holiday, like Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s. And it’s not just because of the hype, the commercialization, or the social demands. Just think of what and why we feel as we do about any holiday. The desire for a break, to let loose or rest, to see friends and family, to celebrate inspiring people, our history, culture, and coming together as a community, for a religious observance, or to start life anew.

 

We’ve all experienced the excitement and anticipation that preceded the opening of gifts or the joy of attending celebrations of a holiday. Or the sense of disappointment when things did not go as we wished they would. I remember as a teenager how awful and alone I felt when I didn’t have a date for one New Year’s party.

 

And it’s not just because as children or as adults we got off from school or work on a particular day or week. The social and commercial hype can be so strong only because there’s something in us humans that yearns for what the holiday hints at, something even beyond the social world.

 

Many of us know that Christmas, for example, has roots preceding Christ, in ancient Rome and beyond, in celebrations around the winter solstice; Chanukah, Kwanzaa and New Years are also about the solstice ⎼ and new beginnings.  The first month of the year was named for Janus, the double-faced Roman god of doorways and the portals to Heaven, who looks both forward to the future and back to the past.

 

According to author Diana Ferguson, in her book The Magickal Year: A Pagan Perspective on the Natural World, December 19th was the original date of the Roman Saturnalia. This holiday commemorated a lost Golden Age and was presided over by the fertility god, Saturn. As the old god relinquished his throne, the sun was hidden, and chaos and darkness ensued.

 

When the Julian calendar replaced the old Roman one in 45 BCE, the celebration was moved to the 17th and extended to the 23rd. The people of Rome let loose. All work came to an end, schools closed, criminals went unpunished, and sexual inhibitions were forgotten.

 

After a brief respite, came January. New consuls, or rulers took office. 3 more days of celebrating ensued. Fires were lit. People decorated their homes with laurels and there were celebrations, and groups singing in the streets. When Rome became Christian in the fifth century C. E., the church adopted much of the old revelry.

 

Christmas Day was originally set on January 6 and is still celebrated on that day by the Eastern Orthodox Church. (We now have a very new significance for this date.) With the adoption of the Julian calendar, 11 days were eliminated from the year, and the holiday moved to December 25th. That date had earlier been celebrated as the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, to Mithra, a personification of the sun, who first appeared in Persia around 1,400 BCE, and became popular with Roman soldiers by the first through fourth centuries CE.

 

According to Ferguson, even further back, in ancient Babylon and elsewhere, there were celebrations staged on that date for a seasonal rebirth of light out of darkness, and life out of death. The Babylonians celebrated the first birth of everything, the Creation itself, when the god Marduk was born from the formless, watery womb of the mother goddess, Tiamat (who Marduk killed when she threatened the world with chaos).

 

And before that, ancient peoples must have always wondered, as the world grew dark, would the light ever come again? Were these changes due to some cosmic drama, or just changes the whole universe naturally goes through? And what role if any could we humans play in these transitions?

 

There’s this yearning many if not all of us feel, to get beyond the human social world to something deeper or bigger, something more real, maybe; more meaningful. To feel the seasons in ourselves?

 

If we believe in God, to feel the truth of God. To understand death and its place in our lives. Maybe to get to the home of consciousness itself, to where feelings, thoughts, and explanations are created. To get to where mind emerges from matter, like light from darkness. Or maybe it’s the other way around? Maybe matter emerges from mind, or they both are born together from an indefinable emptiness, like Marduk from the formless womb of Tiamat?

 

How do we bring light to our world and rescue order from chaos? Or how do we bring more clarity and kindness to our moments of life, or to our decisions about how to live? How can we find in nature the strength to bring compassion and justice to the human world? This is one thing we might want from a holiday, time to put aside so we can wrestle with such questions.

 

Happy Holidays! And may some clarity come to us all.

 

*This post was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

 

 

A New Year’s Wish: We All Share the Community of Breath

I want to celebrate. It is the solstice, and so many holidays are here, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, New Years. But the days have been getting so dark lately, not just in terms of being the darkest time of the year, but emotionally. It’s also cold today. And the numbers of those sick from COVID is frightening. Two friends of mine are suffering now from the illness and must quarantine. No holidays with friends and family this year.

 

It can seem like we are all in quarantine, at least emotionally. When some of us are in quarantine, a part of all of us is in hiding, from the news and crazy weather if not from the pandemic.

 

In the four years that DJT was unfortunately in office, he fostered fear and oppression, hate and violence. He did this it seems in an effort to shock us so frequently or create enough chaos we would surrender and allow him to crown himself King or anoint himself absolute ruler just to turn off the fear. This is why the GOP have been working feverishly to strip away  our voting rights and protections. But to allow him to seize power would only make the threat inconceivably worse.

 

And even though, thankfully, we now have a caring and rational President in Joe Biden, this might seem to many like just a pause, a calm before the storm. It might seem like the efforts of those who would rip our rights and lives from us are succeeding.

 

And the state of the earth itself is adding to this darkness, not only with normal seasonal changes but with abnormal roars of dismay and anger over our abuse of the planet. Historic windstorms and tornadoes last week followed record droughts and fires in the summer and fall, shaking us to realize what happens when the earth warms too precipitously.

 

What is there to celebrate?

 

My wife and 2 of our 3 cats are sitting near to me. We create a place of safety, a haven or home for each other. Outside, the green grass is lightly coated with white. The tufted titmice, blue jays, and chickadees are energetically diving down to get the food we left for them and carry it off to eat.

 

The winter solstice clearly signals both an end, and a beginning, but of what, besides a date on a calendar? Our ancestors, the earliest humans, might have met the dark unsure if the light would ever come again. They might have felt they were returning to the birth of the universe or of life itself, when the world was born from the womb of matter or chaos. They might have wondered what they had done to create the dark. But if creation could triumph over destruction, then maybe light would return; maybe they would not only survive but thrive.

 

The universe itself can thus remind us of what is possible. The movement and tilt of the earth as it rotates around the sun brings seasons, night, and day. Likewise, we can help bring a new season of light to the human world….Protecting Voting Rights

 

**To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Happy Holidays! A Time to Remember That What We Need Can Be Fought For and Won

As many people do, I have almost always looked forward to the holidays. When I was a child, I looked forward to gifts. As a student and teacher, I looked forward to a vacation from school. For most of my life, I looked forward to getting together with family and friends. However, there were years in college and as a teenager that I dreaded the holidays, especially the New Year, if I didn’t have a party to go to or a date.

 

The holidays have become so commercial that many now dread them. This commercialization is characteristic of our contemporary culture and it buries the deeper meaning of such moments in time. My wife and I ignore gift-giving for ourselves. The only gift we give each other is our presence.But for the children we know and charities⎼ that is a different story.

 

The holidays could be so rich. Hanukah is a festival of light and freedom. Kwanzaa of family, community, and culture. Christmas of joy in the birth of Jesus. So many holidays.

 

Humans have celebrated the winter holidays possibly forever. The time is obviously near the solstice and the longest reign of night, at least in the Northern hemisphere where I live. For us northerners, it is the darkest and coldest time. It is traditionally a time to engage in rituals to assure that the sun will come again, that spring will follow winter, renewal follow hibernation, warmth follow cold.

 

Many holidays have this sacred dimension or shadow that connects us to a depth of history. This history is not just about days of religious significance. These holidays provide workers a break from intense labor. They signify a recognition of shared humanity, however dim that recognition often was in the past and might be so again today.

 

Every one of us needs time to rest and connect with others. Every one of us needs time to step back and contemplate why we are here on this earth, to renew our selves, our relationships with fellow humans and the earth that sustains us. The fact that we have days of rest is beyond a right; it is a sacred necessity.

 

Americans, as well as people from most nations, fought in the past for a five-day workweek. They fought against those who would oppress them and were successful. But today, the GOP are giving to the rich and taking from most of us, so we need to fight this same battle once again.

 

This year, everything is both normal, like always, and yet totally different from any other time. Never have Americans had a President who has threatened so many of our values and institutions, and who brings with him the possibility of a truly frightening future. Yet, day follows night. We wake from sleep. Many things continue as they have.

 

Much is changing; much is staying relatively the same. It is time to determine exactly what, on the level of our daily lives, might benefit from a change. For many of us, it might be finding ways, each day, we can integrate opposing the President and his cabinet and working for justice and democracy. Or there might be local issues that drive us. We might dedicate ourselves to improving our understanding of history and ourselves.

 

This time of ritually facing the darkest time of year might remind us that in some ways, this is what nature calls to us to do, to face the darkness so the light will come again.

 

Have a great holiday season and New Year. Renew, enjoy, and celebrate with friends and family. It is something we all need, deserve, and share. It is a reminder that we do share so much, and that what we need can be fought for and won.