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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Yule enjoy Christmas! The festive season belongs to us all By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 794 words Publication date: December 18, 2005 I grew up in Scotland in the 1950s. It was a country gray in color and mood. Clouds were more frequent than sun. The stone buildings lining the streets of Edinburgh were black with centuries-old soot. Post-war rationing had only recently ended and the shops – closed every evening, Saturday afternoon and Sunday – had little to offer. Television and long-distance telephone calls were a luxury and the only entertainment was the movie theater or the pub. I spent every Christmas at my grandparents’ house in a middle-class suburb of the town of Dundee, a two-hour train ride away. On the 23rd or 24th, we would buy a small Christmas tree to place in the living-room window. On Christmas Eve I would be absorbed for an hour or two by the ritual of hanging the ornaments – always the same from year to year – and insuring the fairy was set in her place at the very top of the tree. Though abuzz with anticipation, by nine o’clock I would be in bed and by eight the next morning downstairs again. There sat the empty glass and plate where milk and a cookie had been left for Santa. And there lay the presents. There was always one for me from Santa, the note written in my mother’s hand, which gave me the first inkling that maybe he was not real. Then it was time to get ready for Christmas lunch. Not once do I remember any reference to Christ within the family, although all the adults were nominally members of the Church of Scotland. Of course some of the cards littering the room had Biblical themes and at some point there would be carols on one of the two television channels. There might even be a preacher on the screen reminding us of the “true” meaning of Christmas, but all these references washed over me. Christmas to me was the color of the tree and decorations, the comfort of our small family being together, the freedom from school, the meeting of friends, the feasting, the playing with presents, the lying on the floor in front of the coal fire as I watched comedy and drama on television, the knowing that I could stay up late. Looking back, I realize it is these things, not the birth of a mythological baby, which offer the true meaning of Christmas. More accurately, they were the heart of Christmas long before the legend of Christ arose.* The manger, the shepherds and the Magi are no more than Johnny-come-latelys, superstition tacked on to the older, more authentic celebration of Yule. Yule is a northern festival, the feast of the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year. Yule offers comfort, light, warmth, a belly full with food and drink. Yule is companionship, laughter, shared pleasure in life. Yule recognizes that we are surrounded by darkness but it says we create our own light. Yule reminds us of both our mortality and our capacity for joy. It is the most human and therefore the most worthy of festivals. Both Santa Claus and the Christmas tree have roots in Yule, not Bethelehem. The tree symbolizes light and – at least those which are planted – long life. Fat Santa may have been born Saint Nicholas, but his laugh and toys epitomize not Christian righteousness but unrestrained pleasure. (Santa’s elves have a longer pedigree, as the Yule elves of Scandinavian folklore.) Charles Dickens, in A Christmas Carol, knew the true meaning of Yule. Scrooge’s redemption comes not from faith in Jesus or a supernatural deity, but from within himself. It is rooted in awareness of his own mortality and his recognition that all our actions, and inactions, impact, for better or for worse on others. Yule is almost unknown in America. In Britain its traditions, and even the word itself, have all but died out. It persists only in Scandinavia, where the word Christmas does not exist and December 25th is universely known as Jyl. It is time for America to celebrate Yule. Purists may say that sun-kissed California or Florida should refrain; the candles and eggnog should be restricted to Canada and a narrow band of states from Washington to Maine. I disagree. Yule is for everyone. Others, wanting a complete break from Christmas, suggest bringing Yule forward to the night of the Solstice (December 21st / 22nd). I say we should extend it from the darkest night to the early New Year. Let the twelve days of Christmas be the twelve days of Yule and may we rejoice on every one. And so, my readers, atheists, humanists, freethinkers, secularists, human beings, believers, wherever you are, I hold high a glass of cheer and wish all you a very Merry Yule and a prosperous New Year. * For discussion as to whether Jesus actually existed, read this previous column.
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If God existed, he would... admire the beauty of a universe that he did not create recognize that eternity is meaningless deny both heaven and hell disown all men and women who speak in his name denounce the harm caused by religious "morality" help the human race to thrive without him If God existed, he would be an atheist. |