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How Christmas Has Morphed. Here's a hint: It's taken more than 12 days.
December 5, 2008
by Bradley Osborn
The date on which we now celebrate Christmas was not set until the fourth century. Church fathers had no precise notion of when Jesus was born, and there wasn’t an official holiday commemorating the event. Today, it is thought that little Yeshua (Jesus in Aramaic) was born in autumn, the season when shepherds would have been in the fields, tending their flocks overnight.
In 350 A.D., Pope Julius I proclaimed Dec. 25 as the feast day to honor the birth of Jesus. He did this not only to establish a uniform liturgical fete, but also to usurp the pagan holidays of Saturnalia and Yule, which occurred around the time of the winter solstice. Some say a further usurpation was intended to displace the secretive, mysterious religion of Mithraism.
Julius’ decree did layer in Christian observances on top of what were often wild, debauched pagan celebrations, but the new Christian rites did not push out the old revelries; those persisted for a millennium. These raucous, carnal festivities were the reasons that the English Puritans and their early American cousins banned Christmas altogether. In the years after the Julian dictum, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches saturated Christmastime with saints’ days and holy feasts, attempting to dilute the taint of that distant pagan debauchery.
So for these reasons, it is clear that the modern “War on Christmas” is just a contrivance – an imaginary imposition of victimhood that stabs at reactionary ideologues every time they hear or read the phrase “Happy Holidays” between Thanksgiving and Epiphany.
Our culture evolved the modern Christmas in the 19th century, when the Dutch Sinterklaas morphed into a big-bellied Santa Claus, we borrowed the pagan evergreen as the Christmas tree, and the successes of the industrial revolution allowed us, as a society, some spending money and leisure time to shower gifts on our children. Add in greeting cards, brilliant marketing and crass commercialization, and voila – a 1.5-century-old Christmas heritage that is truly worthy of warring against.
Just before the Americanization of Christmas – away from debauchery and toward wanton capitalism – an English song came to the fore – “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Its generous protagonist did take to heart the goal of emulating the greatest gift of all, but he carried it out in a rather blatant and grandiose way. As many readers know, the Twelve Days of Christmas begin the evening of Dec. 25 and runs through the evening of Jan. 5 passing into Epiphany.
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” has been derivatized and lampooned innumerable times over the years. Owning most of the listed gifts en masse would require the lease of a barnyard, and the remaining goodies might be gathered together only at some collegiate halftime show.
Here’s a more queer version of the manifest.
The Queer Twelve Days of Christmas
The number of times the Andy Williams “It’s the
Most Wonderful Time of the Year” commercial about
Branson, Mo., airs during your favorite television program.
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh
month – Veterans Day. Honor LGBT veterans; repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Dec. 10 is Day Without a Gay (daywithoutagay.org).
Call in “gay” to work, and volunteer instead.
Number of hours spent watching Adult Swim in your parents’ basement during the holidays.
Repeal Prop. 8.
Number of coronary bypasses Paula Deen’s studio audience
will require after sampling her Christmas buffet.
Kinsey Sicks, bitches.
Five golden rings. You know, Eddie Izzard was right. Everybody loves this one. It should stay, especially in this economy.
Number of ways to win using Paul Lynde as the center square.
Number of openly gay legislators in the Missouri General Assembly in 2009.
Number of penguin dads in Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson’s same-sex parenting tale.
Number of legal same-sex marriages performed in Iowa. If the Hawkeyes can do it, so can we.
Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, Jesus!
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