The reason for the season

The solstice is the reason for the season, of course, which usually fell around December 25th in the old Julian calendar. The moment of the solstice, of greatest angular tilt, happens on different days this year in the US. In the Eastern and Central time zones this year, the solstice is actually early morning of December 22nd, at 1:08am EST. But since I don’t consider the day to really change over until 3:30am, today is solstice day. Days will get longer for the next six months!

The morphing and mixing of various winter-solstice celebrations eventually gave us Christmas. Much of this happened when Pope Gregory I told his missionaries to re-brand Pagan traditions as Christian. The pagan roots of Christmas celebrations and, no doubt, the fact that seventeenth century English celebrations of Christmas had degenerated into something that resembled a cross between Mardi Gras and Halloween were part of the reasons that the Pilgrims started the War on Christmas by outlawing its celebration. Now, I don’t particularly extol the puritanical approach to life, but as an atheist whose cultural background is nominally Christian, I have occasionally been conflicted about whether to celebrate religious holidays, including Christmas. In the end, I decided that I’m comfortable keeping those Christmas traditions that the Christians borrowed from the Pagans, which fortunately covers most of the good stuff.

Including, of course, gift giving. The Pagans were well-attuned to the natural world, and knew that as the winter Solstice approached, the sun was sinking lower and lower in the sky. They believed that through an intense flury of forth-quarter consumer spending, the invisible hand of the market economy would pick up the sun and move it higher in the sky. Which is more or less what everyone believes these days.