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Most of us are aware of the real beginnings of our winter holidays and traditions. Santa Claus, for example, is the evolutionary transformation of St. Nicholas, patron Saint of Russia, children, sailors, thieves and others. We also know that the Christmas tree is based upon the older Teutonic tradition of the Yule log and the mysteries associated with the evergreen. Hanukkah is a holiday that has had the religious thread of its continuity maintained throughout the centuries and is based upon an historical event. Yet all of these traditions may be linked to one phenomenon, the winter solstice.

To understand our holidays, it is often necessary to look to our ancient ancestors for help. The ancients viewed the world differently than we do. They didn't gaze at the heavens and see the Sun as a great ball of hydrogen gas that will eventually become a red giant and obliterate the solar system. They saw a manifestation of the power of God (or Gods) in their lives. Due to its life giving energy, the Sun came to represent the most visible and dramatic aspect of the power of Deity. Very early on it became apparent that without the Sun, eternal darkness would prevail and life would cease.

The Sun came to represent the visible "face" of God and the proof of God’s love. The eighteenth dynasty king of Egypt, Amenhotep IV, was so struck with the great beauty and power of the solar disk that he changed his name, his theology and the entire history of religion. Amenhotep IV (the father-in-law and perhaps father of Tutankhamen) changed his name to Akhenaton, proclaimed the worship of the sun disk (Aton) as the symbol of One, Almighty God to be the official religion of Egypt, and forbade the worship of any of the dozens of other Gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Some consider him to be the first monotheist. The ancient Egyptians considered him a heretic and eventually deposed him.

The ancient Egyptian worship of the sun, however, is more ancient than Akhenaton. The earliest records of organized religious activity in Egypt include the worship of the Sun God, Ra. In fact, the sun played an important part in Egyptian mythology throughout its history, as it did in the myths and religions of all cultures. Even the Monolithic structures at Stonehenge are theorized by some to be a massive observatory for charting the movements and eclipses of the Sun.

Our ancestors were wonderfully observant. In their philosophies, nature was the result of the hand, or hands, of deities. Through the observation of the laws of nature, all the wonders of the universe could be determined. This relationship between nature and mankind could be summed up by the great Hermetic axiom, "As above, so below."

To the ancient scientist/priests, the movement and activities of the planets and stars directly correlated to our lives. In essence, by investigating the obvious laws of nature one could uncover the great mysteries as well. It was for this reason that the life and death of the sun in the sky gave the old world so much interest. By understanding the cycle of the sun we could understand the nature of our own mortality.

The Winter Solstice is the time of the year, in the northern hemisphere, when the sun has reached its lowest angle in the sky. This low point upon the ecliptic causes us to experience the shortest day of the year. The sun begins the journey to this "death" when the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, passes. As the days get progressively shorter, the sun becomes weaker and was therefore viewed as dying. The dying God may be seen in the stories of Osiris in Egypt, Baulder the Beautiful of the Norse tradition, John Barleycorn in Europe, and many others.

The wonderful aspect of the Winter Solstice is that it marks the time of year when the days begin to grow longer again. In this fact, the Sun has been symbolically reborn to share its life giving energy for another year. As above so below; this gave ancient minds the relief of knowing that after death, a rebirth awaited them as well. This then became a time of celebration. Several ancient religions have placed this time as the birthday of their creator god.

In Rome this took the form of the Saturnalia. Saturn was the titan associated with the harvest, the father of Zeus the king of the Olympians, and the keeper of time. As the slowest moving of the planets, he was associated with old age and death. The Grim Reaper is carrying Saturn's Scythe, as is Father Time. The Greek form of Saturn was named Cronus (chronos, time), from whom we get the word chronometer, chronology and so on.

The Winter Solstice became the time of the Saturnalia, the festival of Saturn, a celebration of time and of the cycle of life and death. It started around December 17 and continued until December 21, the shortest day of the year and the symbolic death of the Sun. Rather than spending these five days in mourning, the believers abandoned themselves to the joys of life. Giving away of one's possessions, gift giving, orgies, feasts, drinking, strange behavior and pardoning of prisoners were the norm during the Saturnalia. A peculiar phenomenon occurs during the solstice. For about three days the sun seems to rise and set at the same location on the horizon and doesn’t change its altitude at noon from the day before. Many cultures viewed this as the time when the dead sun god was passing through the perilous underworld of the dead. This three day journey before resurrection is to be found in many myths. The sun once again begins its movement along the horizon towards the north on the 25th of December, the day of its rebirth. This became a day of renewed hope and joy for mankind in the fact that the sun survived another year, and by extension, so would the world.

The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem in 165 B.C. after losing it to the Syrians on or about December 25, 168 B.C. Christians celebrate the birthday of Jesus as December 25. This date was arrived at in the fourth century due to the pagan holidays that already existed at that time. The designers of the Christian calendar were ingenious in that they timed their own holidays as close as possible to those of the local pagan celebrations. In this way, the Christian holy day was accepted and eventually superceded the older traditions.

Many of our current customs still have the solar influence as their basis. The very term "Yule Log" means sun log and refers to latent heat in wood. Mistletoe is a symbol of rebirth and as it grew on oak trees, the mighty tree of solar fire and energy, it came to be the carrier of the sun's power of rejuvenation and fertility throughout the bleak months of winter.

I'm sure that we will always look to this time of year as a powerful and much needed time to reaffirm out faith, not only in ourselves and mankind, but also in the continued cycles of the heavens. I wish all of you happy holidays and the true joy of the season!

Copyright 2004 by Mo Abdelbaki