Christmas is a time to feast and make merry, to gather the
family and exchange gifts, sing wonky carols, and get so drunk you forget your
own name. You decorate an unfortunate tree that’s been dragged inside your
centrally heated home, send greetings cards to people you spend the entire year
avoiding, lie to your children about a fat man dressed in red who climbs down
chimneys, and pursue your colleagues around the office waving mistletoe while
wearing a ridiculous jumper.
Oh, and it’s the birthday of Jesus.
What we call Christmas today is a hodgepodge of different
traditions or midwinter festivals. These annual celebrations have a long and
varied history, predating Christianity by hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Indeed, Christians didn’t bother celebrating the birth of Jesus until about the
4th century. Elements of the older midwinter festivals were
appropriated by Christianity and the birth date for Jesus was chosen to
coincide with the still popular pagan festivals.
Christmas has since been hijacked again by consumerism and
turned into an orgy of plastic toys, novelty chocolates, and celebrity
perfumes. We haven’t just lost the Christian meaning of Christmas, but the
original pagan meaning too.
So what is midwinter all about?
Midwinter Festivals
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice was observed
and celebrated as far back as neolithic times. Stonehenge (in Britain) and
Newgrange (in Ireland) are both aligned to the solstice point and evidence of huge feasts has been found, including the mass slaughter of cattle and vast
consumption of beer and wine. The end of year festival was an opportunity for
one big party and perhaps a spot of sympathetic magic to usher in hope for the
new year and the rebirth of the sun.
 |
| Stonehenge at sunset |
Yule is the
oldest pagan midwinter festival celebrated throughout northern Europe and is
associated with a host of deities, including the Norse gods Odin, Hodr, and
Holda, as well as the Holly King, Oak King, and Horned God of modern paganism.
Most of our Christmas traditions come from these Scandinavian and Germanic
festivals: feasting, drinking, and singing, decorating the home with wreaths of
holly, burning Yule logs, and a visit from Santa Claus.
 |
| Frau Holle |
The Germanic goddess Holda is an interesting figure. She’s known by a variety of names,
including Mother Night and Frau Holle. (Note the etymological link between the
words Holda, Holle, and holly.) Holda has a light and a dark aspect, connected
with summer and winter respectively, and appears as either young or old
accordingly. As a goddess of winter she brings the first snow and Yule is her
festival. In some traditions she travels the world in a carriage dressed in a
red or white cape, bestowing joy and good fortune on those who honour her, she
knows who has been good or bad and distributes presents. So much for Father Christmas!
Other midwinter festivals include Saturnalia and the
Mithraic Mysteries. Saturnalia was a
Roman festival held in December to honour Saturn and was another long party.
Gifts were given and the rich would provide banquets to feed the poor.
Meanwhile, the Mithraic Mysteries
were a celebration of the birth of Mithras, the Roman god of Light who was born
on December 25th and known as the Unconquerable Sun. This was a
Mystery Cult so only certain people would be initiated to take part in the
ritual feasts and celebrations.
The Christian story of Jesus’ birth derives from earlier
cults such as the Mithraic Mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries featuring Demeter
and Persephone, and the Orphic
Mysteries featuring Dionysus. These
mythologies had gods or goddesses who died and were reborn, and more examples
can be found all over the world: Attis
in Asia Minor, Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, and Osiris in Egypt. Of these, Osiris is
the oldest, around 2,400 BCE, and was born on 25th December to a
virgin mother – arguably the first virgin goddess, Isis.
In the Temple of Amun at Luxor there’s a depiction of the
nativity of Osiris being reborn as Horus which dates to around 1,390 BCE,
although there are older versions elsewhere. In the scenes, Isis is visited by
Thoth who tells her she will have a son. She then receives a visit from the god
Amun who holds an Ankh (symbol of eternal life) to her head and she becomes pregnant.
Horus is born and several men visit to celebrate bearing gifts. Sound
familiar?!
 |
| Nativity at Luxor |
What all the midwinter festivals have in common is a
celebration of the end of darkness and the return of the light after the
longest night. Jesus is just the most recent version in a long chain of Sun
Gods or Sun Kings who die and are reborn. The Wiccan version of this involves a
ritual battle between the Holly King
and the Oak King, who are sometimes
seen as two sides of the same Horned God. Holly represents the winter and
darkness, while the oak is summer and the light. The Holly and the Oak have a
stormy relationship and spend the whole year fighting for supremacy. Midwinter
is when the Oak King is reborn after dying at Samhain on October 31st at the hands of the Holly King. He’s reborn on 21st December and
grows in strength until he overcomes the Holly King at Beltaine on 1st May. But the Oak King doesn’t reach full power until the summer solstice on 21st June.
 |
| Oak vs Holly |
Although Osiris is a dying and resurrecting god, he isn’t a
sun god. His death and rebirth is associated more with the flooding of the Nile
and the growing of wheat, so he isn’t a perfect fit with these other midwinter
gods. Except for one thing – the oak tree in pagan mythology is connected with
the sun, so the Oak King is a Sun God. The oak tree is also associated with
Osiris.
Shortest Day of the Year
Ancient mythology can be seen as the earliest form of
astronomy. The myths are dramatisations of the movement of the stars and
planets, as well as providing insight into human nature, morality, ethics, and
the ultimate questions of life and death. They are celestial metaphors that we
can use to understand the purpose of our existence.
The birth of Jesus represents the rebirth of the sun after the
darkness of midwinter. All the myths of midwinter tell the same basic story –
the death of the sun god, followed by his miraculous rebirth. So how is this
reflected in the sky?
As the earth travels around the sun, the sun’s path appears
to follow a particular line through the sky, called the ecliptic. The earth
also wobbles on its own axis as it revolves which means it tilts away from the
sun for part of the year. In June the north pole is tilted towards the sun so
the northern hemisphere receives more sunlight and for longer hours. By
December the north pole has wobbled around so it points away from the sun and
receives less light.
What this means is that the sun appears higher in the sky in
the summer and lower in the winter. In the northern hemisphere the sun reaches
its highest point at the June solstice and its lowest point at the December
solstice. It’s the opposite way round in the southern hemisphere.
 |
| Far left: summer solstice in northern hemisphere; Far right: winter solstice northern hemisphere |
Viewed from the ground, it looks like the sun climbs higher
in the sky towards midsummer, and then descends towards midwinter. The climb
starts after midwinter when the nights are longer than the days. At the vernal
equinox in March the days and nights are equal in length, but after that the
days grow longer until you reach the summer solstice on 21st June,
which is the longest day. From this point the days grow shorter, and at the
autumn equinox in September they’re equal again. Finally, the days continue to
shrink until you reach the winter solstice on 21st December which is
the shortest day.
You can see this progression of changing light in the
mythology of the Holly and Oak Kings battling for supremacy. But there’s more.
When the sun reaches its lowest point in the sky at
midwinter, it appears to be stationary in the sky for three days. What this
means is that the sun rises to the same point in the sky three days in a row,
which it never does at any other time – except the summer solstice where it
rises to its highest point for three days in a row.
It’s this stationary sun that represents the dying King or
Sun God. But it only stands still – it doesn’t disappear altogether like it
does every night. In Egyptian mythology the setting sun is often associated
with Osiris, and the rising sun with Horus or the rebirth of Osiris. The Sun
journeys through the underworld, or Duat, in the night and is reborn in the
morning. But this isn’t a midwinter myth.
 |
| Northern Lights in Norway |
However, if you were to experience the winter solstice in
the far north you would see something very different. You wouldn’t see the sun
at all. Above the latitude of 66 degrees in the northern hemisphere, the sun
doesn’t rise at the solstice. For three days at midwinter, the sun never makes
it over the horizon and remains in the chthonic realm of the dead. In this icy
world, the Sun God truly dies.
If we want to understand the true origins of Christmas and
the myths of the dying and resurrecting sun gods, we must travel to the far
north into the land where these myths began.
The true origins of Christmas can be found not with the Sun
Gods, but with the earlier pole star religions of shamanism.
This is what we’ll
explore in part 2.
Images: Stonehenge; Luxor; Holly & Oak Kings; Solstice;
Northern Lights
