Native American Christmas Cards

Christmas is a mystery to most people. It's like a rich uncle octogenarian. You love him, it is wildly funny and provocative, it gives you really good and this might give you an Italian villa in his will. But it must be taken to the bathroom regularly, requires much attention, is obstinate and makes you absolutely crazy when you take her to a fancy cocktail, because you never know when he will pass gas or to say something really outrageous, both of which he strong.

On the one hand, we all have a joyful anticipation of the season - the ridiculous and heart-warming movies and specials, decorations, children sing songs at the mall and all those paid days off. And secondly, many of us fear the pressure and pace of Christmas cards, shopping, crowds, and, finally, (line) with family gatherings mandatory.

This complicates psychosis social season enough, but when you add in the rhetoric of the religious war of Christmas, Jesus is the reason for the season, so you make even deeper layers of self-condemnation and the anxiety. What do I do?

A good starting point is to untangle the hairball at several levels of traditions and religious implications that have come to define Christmas. Like most of our modern heritage, there is more to this than meets the eye kaleidoscope. Once we can see what all happens, then maybe we can bring a little common sense and enjoy the celebration of it.

The Christmas story. In fact, we talk about the history of the Winter Solstice celebrations, which date back over 4,000 years. Most of our "Christmas Traditions" were behind the rituals celebrated centuries before Christ was born. The presentation of gifts, carnivals, parades, singers go from house to house, holiday parties, and performance can be traced to the early church Mesopotamia (1500 BC).

Persians, Babylonians, Scandinavians, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians all had elaborate rituals that were celebrated at the winter solstice intended to pay homage to the mythological significance of the sun and the cycles of perennial nature. But do not be too quick to dismiss the ancient traditions as pagan rituals altogether. In fact, they were very spiritually oriented.

It is true that the peoples who inhabited what is now the Middle East 3000 years before Christ were polytheists they had many gods. But they were also very religious. A large part of their culture has been concentrated on research to learn the will of the gods, and the beginning of winter solstice traditions reflect this orientation. The Romans decorated the halls with holly and candles in tribute to one of their most powerful gods, Apollo. The Norse built huge bonfires and feasts held that lasted for days as a way to help defeat their sun-god of the power of darkness. These bonfires and feasts are the beginnings of our famous Yule log - the "12 days of Yuletide" was a ceremony announcing the long-term power of their gods on the domain of evil.

This beautiful ceremonies and ancient traditions, it attempts to do what our Christian traditions to celebrate now modern domination of supernatural forces of the cosmos through the earthly world of man. They sought to honor their gods, and sometimes even help in the ongoing battle over darkness.

So who put the "Christ" in Christmas in the first place? "Well, now is an interesting and not entirely finished, historical detective story. Its most popular by archaeologists, anthropologists and biblical scholars is that the pagan traditions were co-opted by the early Christian Church. During the first three centuries after Christ's death, there was no prescribed "celebration" to mark the birth of Christ. This is partly because nobody really knew where or when.