I must admit I react poorly to the American Christians and their "Jesus is the reason for the season" slogan, seen on hoardings/billboards here, newspaper adverts, &c. Even though is probably the usual American Christian "in yer face" bit that seems to be a norm (I mean, who splashes some reference to the Torah across a highway bridge or goes door to door asking if you've accepted Buddha?), it also is an incredible arrogance only forgivable if accepted as the usual complete ignorance of history so pervasive here. Some of you lurkers (knowing who you are) are already seething, but stick with me for a minute.

First, a little history. Long before Christianity claimed the season as their own property, the peoples of the Northern Hemisphere have celebrated the winter solstice for a number of reasons. In Europe, the germanic and norse/scandi peoples had and still hold "jul", the early peoples of Britain likewise, just examples. If memory serves, the various known henges were often already 2500-3000 years old when Jesus walked the lands of the eastern Med.

The physical evidence is there. Indeed archeologists theorise, by carbon-dating, the first stones of Stonehenge were being arrayed well over 2000 years BCE and the henge itself is but a small part of a pretty elaborate site that can be dated in parts to before 3000BCE. That is but one famous site of many across northern Europe, England, Scotland, and Ireland; one example of many having in common the ability to mark winter and summer solstices by design.

So, why the winter solstice? It's a good time to celebrate the human spirit. Defeating the longest night of the year; defeating darkness. The new beginning as the days get longer from then on, the beginnings of that journey to warmth, light, plantings, on to the summer solstice; hope. It's a good time to give thanks for a harvest, hopefully a good one. It just makes good emotional and spiritual sense.

In many ways, there is a practicality to be marked. A feast? Makes some sense to mark it as a tipping point between feeding, say, a cow the grains you might need yourself later in winter and the butchering of that cow for the meat, meat that needs either eaten or somehow preserved in Neolithic/early Bronze Age times up through the Machine Age and the ease with which we today can preserve foods.

Many traditions of the season have their roots here. Bringing something alive and green indoors to admire when its cold and brown outside is a Germanic thing, the tree, the mistletoe. Candles and later lights as the fingers raised to darkness. The Yule Log; warmth against the cold (not to mention a pleasant fragrance against the stench). And the feast again; plenty against hunger. Sharing it so none goes waste. Make with the feast!

So, how did Christianity get into this, or the Abrahamic religions as a whole? I only know enough to notice Chanukah hitting nicely into the window, and just enough to understand it marks the beginnings of a successful revolt only some 150-200 years BCE. Whether that time of year really was the event or if the date was set by Northern Europeans to coincide with the solstice, I cannot presume to know.

The actual birthday of Christ is unknown, however, and the Christian involvement in the season is actually perhaps cynical. It certainly is genius, marking the occasion of Christ's birth with the "new beginning" already so important to those who Christianity refers (sometimes with more than a little condescension) as pagans. Why? Spreading the faith, converting the peoples of Europe whilst best preserving that message of hope, joy, and the revelry of Yule so important to these people, a message that had existed from millennia before the arrival of Christianity. It would appear it was a conscious move by the institution, the Church, in its spread over Europe.

All this I intend as an enrichment, inclusion rather than a matter of divisiveness; this joy in the face of the longest night and why it is and has been celebrated quite probably since agrarian man first noticed the seasons and the power those seasons held over him. To the Christians I can give you lot the idea that "Jesus is a reason for the season" and an important one, part of that rich fabric that makes the time of year special. But you lot don't somehow own it, but really need to share the joy! The rest of us have for thousands of years.

Welcome! Glaedelig Jul! Merry Christmas! A happy Hannukah! Hope, Light, Warmth, New Beginnings, to all here!