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Morning Open Thread. Again, the Real Reason for the Season: Dongzhi. [1]

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Date: 2022-12-24

“If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it, or you’re up to something.” – Saleem Sharma

Winter, the astronomically-inclined type, began back on the 21st, three days ago. Scientifically, it’s known as the Winter Solstice, and that means we’re already getting more daylight during each day now than we were in those days just leading up to the solstice. JOY!

Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum. This is a post where you can come to share what’s on your mind and stay for the expansion. The diarist is on California time and gets to take a nap when he needs to, or may just wander off and show up again later. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug. Grab your supportive indulgence(s) of choice and join us, please. And if you’re brand new to Morning Open Thread, then Hail and Well Met, new Friend.

The winter solstice, also called the hibernal solstice, occurs when either of Earth's poles reaches its maximum tilt away from the Sun. This happens twice yearly, once in each hemisphere (Northern and Southern). For that hemisphere, the winter solstice is the day with the shortest period of daylight and longest night of the year, when the Sun is at its lowest daily maximum elevation in the sky. Either pole experiences continuous darkness or twilight around its winter solstice. The opposite event is the summer solstice. The winter solstice occurs during the hemisphere's winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the December solstice (usually 21st or 22nd December) and in the Southern Hemisphere, this is the June solstice (usually 20th or 21st of June). Although the winter solstice itself lasts only a moment, the term also refers to the day on which it occurs. The term midwinter is also used synonymously with the winter solstice, although it carries other meanings as well. Traditionally, in many temperate regions, the winter solstice is seen as the middle of winter; although today in some countries and calendars it is seen as the beginning of winter. Other names are the "extreme of winter" (Dongzhi), or the "shortest day". Since prehistory, the winter solstice has been a significant time of year in many cultures and has been marked by festivals and rituals. It marked the symbolic death and rebirth of the Sun; the gradual waning of daylight hours is reversed and begins to grow again. Some ancient monuments such as Newgrange, Stonehenge, and Cahokia Woodhenge are aligned with the sunrise or sunset on the winter solstice. source: wikipedia

Note how I bolded that one sentence. Mark especially those words “since prehistory” and “marked by festivals and rituals”.

Now, how did the 25th of December become the ritual/festival we now traditionally observe? Magician’s trick, made of whole cloth, just plain invented, thievery, of course. The polite term we use however, is “co-opt”. [Bolding below is mine].

Big Think: How Christians co-opted the winter solstice. Celts began celebrating once the winter solstice arrived and rejoiced that the days were slowly getting longer, which meant that spring and the harvest was around the corner. This was most pronounced in their holiday of Yule. Early Christians, who, at that time, were seen by many as being members of an urban cult, worked hard to try to convert and ban old Pagan customs. But the rural pagan inhabitants of those lands were not convinced. Eventually the church realized they needed to co-opt some of these traditions. Around this time, the Church came up with the idea that Jesus Christ, their savior, was born on December 25th. In the 4th century CE, Christianity had begun to draw heavily upon Roman festival of Saturnalia. Christian leaders succeeded in transposing these festivities on to their new made-up holiday. The first mention of the Nativity feast and other early Christmas traditions appears in a Philocalian calendar dated around 354 CE. It was because of this pagan origin that celebrating Christmas was banned by the Puritans and made illegal in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681.

Heh heh. Check out that last paragraph. “...celebrating Christmas was banned by the Puritans...”. The first “War on Christmas?” Waged by Christians upon other Christians, no effing surprise there.

But, back to “co-opt”; meaning “hijack”, meaning “ripped off”:

Our modern-western Christmas holiday is a bastardized version of ancient solstice celebrations. There’s no record of December 25th being the birth of Christ in the bible. The earliest mention of this date was in the 4th century. Many believe the date was chosen by early Christians deliberately to encourage the spread of Christianity into northern and western Europe where solstice celebrations were already occurring in full swing. The theory was if they they made a Christian holiday (Christmas) look like a well-established pagan holiday, those people would be more likely to adopt Christianity. In the 17 centuries that followed, the holiday has been hijacked first by the church, and most recently by corporate consumer culture which uses it as an excuse to amp up consumption at at time where we should be reducing our consumption habits. --wellismo.com How Christianity Stole the Winter Solstice

None of this keeps this hard-core atheist from wishing y’all y’all a Merry Christmas. It’s what it means to you that counts.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/12/24/2140279/-Morning-Open-Thread-Again-the-Real-Reason-for-the-Season-Dongzhi

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