December 24, 2007--The Shortest Day
Our neighbor Saturday night hosted a Winter Solstice party. We learned about it when returning from the funeral and Mass for Barbara, our dear friend.
Quite a juxtaposition between the Catholic and pagan. It made me recall reading Sir James Frazer‘s Golden Bough while a college freshman. No other book, though it would not hold up well to contemporary analysis, had a more profound effect on my innocent and unshaped mind. How Frazer tracked the absorption of elements found in pre-Christian ritual and worship into Christianity itself. Yes, this evidence spurred in me skepticism about the revelatory nature of all of the Religions of the Book; but it also inspired me and my eager classmates to look critically at all assumptions and especially any doctrines or ideas that propounded a special claim on truth.
The Mass for Barbara, seen through this lens, was full of “primitive”-seeming activities. Without wanting to do anything to sully this season of joy and hope, I never, seated beside her body, was so aware of how much of Christian practice is about matters visceral—about the Body and Blood of Christ. It was not hard to see the sources for some of these beliefs and practices.
The Winter Solstice party made no pretensions about its sources—“primitive” to the root. The host said, “Isn’t this the most important day of the year?”
Knowing where he was going with this, I said, “Yes, if you live in the northern hemisphere, well above the Equator.”
He smiled back at me, “Precisely. What’s important is not that it’s the shortest day but that at the very moment when the sun is at its lowest ebb and we have less daylight than any other day of the year, just then, right now, our days begin to lengthen.” I nodded, “And this means that the warmth will return with the light and before too long we will be able to plant our crops in the certain knowledge that we will be able to sustain ourselves for another year.”
I didn’t challenge him on the “certain knowledge” claim, after all we had just come from the cemetery. Or that not that much crop sowing goes on in Manhattan. But I’ll take as much light and warmth as this day promises. And try to go on from there.
With that said--happy whatever you’re celebrating!
Quite a juxtaposition between the Catholic and pagan. It made me recall reading Sir James Frazer‘s Golden Bough while a college freshman. No other book, though it would not hold up well to contemporary analysis, had a more profound effect on my innocent and unshaped mind. How Frazer tracked the absorption of elements found in pre-Christian ritual and worship into Christianity itself. Yes, this evidence spurred in me skepticism about the revelatory nature of all of the Religions of the Book; but it also inspired me and my eager classmates to look critically at all assumptions and especially any doctrines or ideas that propounded a special claim on truth.
The Mass for Barbara, seen through this lens, was full of “primitive”-seeming activities. Without wanting to do anything to sully this season of joy and hope, I never, seated beside her body, was so aware of how much of Christian practice is about matters visceral—about the Body and Blood of Christ. It was not hard to see the sources for some of these beliefs and practices.
The Winter Solstice party made no pretensions about its sources—“primitive” to the root. The host said, “Isn’t this the most important day of the year?”
Knowing where he was going with this, I said, “Yes, if you live in the northern hemisphere, well above the Equator.”
He smiled back at me, “Precisely. What’s important is not that it’s the shortest day but that at the very moment when the sun is at its lowest ebb and we have less daylight than any other day of the year, just then, right now, our days begin to lengthen.” I nodded, “And this means that the warmth will return with the light and before too long we will be able to plant our crops in the certain knowledge that we will be able to sustain ourselves for another year.”
I didn’t challenge him on the “certain knowledge” claim, after all we had just come from the cemetery. Or that not that much crop sowing goes on in Manhattan. But I’ll take as much light and warmth as this day promises. And try to go on from there.
With that said--happy whatever you’re celebrating!
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:16 AM
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