Thank You for Whatever you can do.

The Bergen Record, Bergen, New Jersey, USA., has an article by a Wayne, NJ., Rabbi, concerning the religious observations related to the Winter Solstice, Paganism, Monotheism, etc.:
http://www.bergen.com:80/home/wylen02199912029.htm

Thanks to Lowell McFarland <lowell@optonline.net> who sends out reports of interest to Pagans and others from time to time.  If you enjoy the article, e-mail him with thanks and ask to be put on his mailing list.

Loch Sloy!
Tuan Today
Lowell McFarland <lowell@optonline.net>
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The Bergen Record

Thursday, December 2, 1999

By STEPHEN M. WYLEN

Followers of the monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- have mixed feelings about celebrating the seasons of nature. 

As scriptural people, we celebrate the singular historical events of divine revelation more than the eternal cycles of winter and summer, seedtime and harvest.

Long ago, Jews remade the three ancient harvest festivals of the [Pagan] Canaanites into the three festivals of Creation (Tabernacles), Revelation (Pentecost), and Redemption (Passover).

Christianity and Islam likewise celebrate singular historical events that will never recur, events in the life of Jesus and in the career of the prophet Mohammed.

Nature's cycles are so significant to human life and society that we [monotheists] must acknowledge and sanctify them, but we do so with reluctance.  Pagans celebrate the eternal cycle of being, and there is a hint of ancient Pagan ceremony in our celebration of the seasons.  The concept of progress, from Creation to ultimate Redemption, is a monotheistic idea.

Those who worship many gods live in the realm of the eternal recurrence.  Pagan rites maintain harmonious relationships among the gods; thus, these rituals guarantee the continuity of nature's cycles, which traditional human societies depend on for their sustenance.

At the Winter Solstice we feel most acutely the tension between the origins of our [monotheistic] religion in Pagan nature worship and the evolution of our religion into historical remembrance.  No wonder many people have their doubts about the permissibility of Hanukkah and Christmas, despite the passage of two millennia (plus another century and a half, in the case of Hanukkah).

The [Pagan] ancients had a ceremony on the 25th day of the winter month to welcome the return of the light of the sun.  The Romans called it the Saturnalia.  The Greeks chose this holiday to rededicate the Jerusalem Temple to a Pagan deity, much to the horror of the Jews.  On this exact date three years later, the Jews rededicated the Temple to the one God we serve.

The first Hanukkah took place on the very day of the annual Pagan rite. Christians chose this same ancient holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus, whose birth date is unspecified in the Gospels.

In [Pagan] nature religion, the return of the sun represents the return of hope.  Prehistoric man perhaps feared that the sun would keep on sinking until it went away forever.  I'm sure they knew it wouldn't. They were as intelligent as we; they just didn't know as much. But it is only human to fear the darkness.

When the sun came back, fear receded and hope returned.  Monotheistic religion is historical, not natural.  What, in historical time, represents the first glimmer of hope in human events?  To Jews, it is the restoration of the worship of the one true God of the universe by the tiny community of the faithful.  That is what Jews celebrate at Hanukkah.

To Christians, it is the birth of their savior, which is what they celebrate at Christmas.

Stephen M. Wylen is rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah, a Reform congregation in Wayne.

May the gods lead you to the right path.

When we part, we always say:
Blessed Be!

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