Seasonal greetings and thanks to all my readers and commenters, and every good wish for 2015. It has been a most enjoyable year for me on Astrology: Questions and Answers. Do keep your ideas for posts coming in, and do keep dropping by with your thoughts and questions!
Whilst reading the recent issue of the UK’s Astrological Association on-line monthly newsletter In the Loop I found this interesting, well-informed and reflective seasonal piece by writer and researcher Andy Thomas. Andy has been kind enough to let me re-publish it here. What are your thoughts on this subject? Do leave a comment and let us know!
“…Although generally known for discussing unexplained mysteries and hidden histories of many kinds, in recent times I have found myself giving presentations with the above title in an effort to inspire some meaning back into a festival that deserves perhaps more respect than it is sometimes given in these cynical times.
Christmas is hardwired into us. For all the modern grumbling about the stresses of the season, the ancients didn’t mark the ascent from the lowest point of the sun’s annual journey for nothing, and the symbolism of light-in-the-darkness still has currency today. Every little plastic light twinkling amongst the decorations in essence represents our star, and the return of its warmth in northern climes.
Stars have always been an inherent part of the Christmas story. There has been much debate over the origins of the star that guided the wise men, for instance, men who were plainly astrologers. Most scholars agree that the most likely candidate for the Christmas star would have been the very close Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of 7BC. This would have been seen in some quarters as very portentous, and the beginning of some kind of new era. The traditional placement of the wise men in painted nativity scenes – two together and one apart – may even represent the three planets which would have been visible in the sky in 7BC, with Jupiter and Saturn close and Mercury as the loner. Others have equated the ‘three kings’ (although they only become ‘kings’ in descriptions from later centuries) with the three stars in the belt of Orion. There are many potential layers of astrology and astronomy buried in the Nativity story, with other echoes going back even further, to the earlier madonna-and-child mythology of Isis and Horus.
In terms of its celebratory nature, the Roman feasting times of Saturnalia and Kalendae, celebrated respectively in December and January, plainly influenced the path of the later Christmas festival, which in itself was superimposed onto the 25th December birthday of the God-man Mithras. The celebration has undergone many changes over the years since, absorbing other cultural festivals along the way, not least the originally Germanic and then Viking feast of Yule (Jol). Many of the British traditions that still remain in at least basic form, such as ‘Wassailing’ – i.e. toasting with drinks – or the sense of anarchic ‘misrule’, such as that still seen in seasonal pantomimes, have their origins in these earlier forms of celebration.
That entrenched sense of misrule and jollity was not welcomed by the rise of the Puritans, naturally, and their resistance to such frivolities saw Christmas, incredibly, actively banned in 1647 (in the wake of the deposing of Charles I), to much protest. It would not return until the restoration of the monarchy with Charles II in 1660. Even so, the festival had been damaged, and the eventual rise of the industrial revolution, which took many families out of the country and into the unforgiving rigours of the factories, saw the decline of many Christmas traditions, to the point that around 1800, ‘The Times’ newspaper didn’t see fit to even mention Christmas in at least twenty of its supposedly seasonal editions.
The arrival of Prince Albert into Queen Victoria’s life around 1840, brought with him many of the still vibrant Germanic Christmas traditions, the popular portrayals of which inspired a strong revival of the festival in Britain, something strengthened further by the publication of Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’. Many elements of what we now see as the ‘traditional’ Christmas – trees, cards and crackers – began around this time, and the Santa Claus mythology also started to solidify its own fascinating (and long) evolution. In essence, we still celebrate the Victorian Christmas now, for all the echoes of more ancient times.
Rampant commercialisation and the horrors of the arrival of ‘Black Friday‘ shopping riots, with all the other attendant strains of preparing for Christmas, have created an unfortunate cynicism towards the festival in recent years. This seems a shame, and it becomes us all to perhaps make a separation between the abuses of the season and the true meaning of its symbolism. The little plastic stars can still remind us that this time of year was always about the return of light, either genuinely or metaphorically, along with the acknowledgment of the key role that the cycles of nature and the heavens still play in our lives.
The idea of a long, dark winter without Christmas, in truth, would be unthinkable, however much some people might think otherwise. Humankind created the festival because it needed it, and when Puritan authorities took it away, people fought to get it back. We still need it now, and to a degree, it comes down to it being what we choose it to be. Do what’s necessary, but then have the Christmas YOU want, and find a place in your heart, in some quiet moment of your choosing, to reflect on what we are really marking when we celebrate it. As the classic Christmas song by Greg Lake has it:
‘The Christmas you get, you deserve.‘…”
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About Andy Thomas…
Andy is a well-known mysteries and truth issues researcher, and author of the acclaimed books ‘The Truth Agenda’ and ‘Conspiracies’. He has made many radio and TV appearances, and is married to the psychological astrologer Helen Sewell. Find out more about Andy at:www.truthagenda.org
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1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Andy Thomas 2014
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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