Tag: christmas

Boxing Day and Economic Justice

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment


Boxing Day is a largely but not exclusively British tradition of gift-giving to the poor after Christmas Day. Some sources trace it to the medieval obligation of the lord of the manor to provide certain necessities each year to his peasants and serfs. It was not charity but duty, including cloth, flour, and other necessities of life. Another tradition is to empty the tip jar at commercial establishments and divide the money among the firm’s workers. In both cases, it was not charity but earned cash or goods, much like the Christmas bonuses that many firms share today.
Both traditions exist side-by-side. In fact, it is now observed more as a shopping day than a giving day, although both can be combined. The notion that the profits of the firm should be shared with the workers who made it possible is less and less popular in our winner-take-all free market society, but the Christmas bonus is a remnant. In the 19th century, the practice of emptying the church alms box on Boxing Day (also known as the Feast of Saint Steven) and Victorian influences shifted the emphasis to post Christmas charity as the coldest days of winter were just beginning.
Both of these kinds of giving and receiving are issue of economic justice, the only holiday for which that is the primary focus. What do we owe to those who earn low wages doing essential work, or to those unable to support themselves? A poem for Boxing Day

A Holiday for Justice

One day a year we follow feudal Lords
In earned and festal sharing of the wealth
Created by many, but possessed by few.
It is not a time of charity
But limited admission that
Abundance is the work of many hands.
In modern times, earned sharing seems to be
A voluntary act of charity
Begrudged when it is often fairly earned.
What do I woe? To whom is payment due?
Our what do others deserve but not receive?
Justice is not charity. May we
All receive more than we deserve,
And in gratitude, pass it forward.

Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Fact, Myth, Truth and Santa Claus

Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.Thursday marked the beginning of a long season of our individual and collective reaction to cold and dark. Some of us want to cocoon. Some will party until tomorrow starts earlier in the day. Some of us suffer through seasonal affective disorder and get depressed. So it is no wonder that we have more stories, songs and holidays that we observe to fend off the cold and dark until light and warmth return. In case you didn’t start counting, Thanksgiving is followed in rapid succession with the spending holidays—Black Friday, Small business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday if you have any money left. A short break interspersed by family, friend s and organizational parties and parades until we reach Christmas, Boxing Day, football tournaments, New Years Day, Epiphany or Three Kings Day, Martin Luther King Day, and ends with the Superbowl and the Celtic holiday of Imbolc with the first signs of spring. In between are holidays from other traditions, Hanukkah and Diwali in particular.
It is unfair to the season not to tell retell the old myths, while at the same time it is a challenge for those among us who don’t connect with the myths, just the facts, ma’am. Life invites on an endless search for truth and meaning. Sometimes truth is meaning, sometimes truth is facts, but the best truths are those that emerge from the marriage of myth and fact.
Most myths are grounded in some facts or experiences. Consider Santa Claus. The original Santa Claus was Nicholas, Bishop of Myra. He supposedly put gold coins in the stockings of three virtuous young women so that they might have a dowry to find a husband and avoid the possible life of prostitution. These are the facts, more or less. Elves, reindeer, chimneys, those are myths. The truth that emerges from fact and myth is the spirit of generosity, an understanding that the world is or should be a safe and loving place.
Small children are concrete thinkers and having a concrete embodiment of faith and hope and love and kindness and generosity that works until…like Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge and are forever changed. When they recognize that the facts don’t square with their experience, or their logical brain. Some discard the myth and are angry with their parents for a while for misleading them. Others cling to their faith despite all the evidence to the contrary. Out of this experience we hope there will arise an appreciation of myth and the broader horizons that come with accepting myth as a carrier of meaning.
The central myth of the season is the story of Jesus’ birth. Fact: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. But it had to be Bethlehem, because it was important to the myth, emphasizing Jesus as a continuation of the House of David. The registration for tax purposes that sent a pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to deliver was NOT a fact.
Jesus was certainly born in a Jewish family and preached and taught and was crucified. Those are facts. Angels, shepherds, wise men, manger, are embellishments. They are myths. Myth is a carrier of deeper truth, the lessons taught in parables, the bearers of inspiration and hope in a time or darkness, not just winter. Jesus was probably born at some other time of year, but winter had other advantages when the church chose a date to celebrate his birth. December was a way of connecting the Jesus story to the experience off birth and rebirth and hope to the solstice winter Yul myths. It was also a time of year when the despair among God’s chosen people over the Roman oppression coincided with the cold and dark of the winter season. Jesus was the original Christmas present.
The other gift bringers are myths, probably even more mythical than the nativity story and the Santa Claus story. Most of Europe, including the British Isles, has a gift bringer. La Befana I Italy. Mother Holle in the ancient British Isles, Father Christmas in more recent times, the Three Kings on Epiphany in Hispanic cultures.
Drawing a strict line around fact, truth, and myth as three separate entities will oversimplify the rather complex painting of the world we live in, whether in our bodies or in our heads. Biblical literalism is a prime example. If the Bible was dictated by God and is inerrant, then it represents a God many of us can’t related to or identify with. But when we discard it as irrelevant, we throw out the baby with the bath water. Our right brain resonates with the stories of Abraham and Isaac, Moses and Aaron, Ruth and King David, the Maccabees and Jesus and the apostles.
Myths are not just religious. We have myths in our culture, as do most cultures. Johnny Appleseed. George Washington and the cherry tree. The peaceful gathering at Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. All of them embody facts, real facts, not alternative facts, but embellished by imagination to provide a picture that conveys a truth, an insight into how we think the world is or should be. We still call the appearance of the sun in the eastern sky and disappears in the west as sunset and sunset, even as we learn at a fairly young age, that the motion is that of the earth, not the sun. It is a fact that we see the sun appear on our horizon, but it is a myth that it rises and sets.
The season or darkness, cold, and myth is upon us. While every season has its myths, the winter has more as we sit by the fireplace and retell the old stories…Oops that is so 20th century. Update: when we turn on the TV and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, or The Grinch, or It’s a Wonderful Life. These modern myths carry the same messages of hope, and faith, and love, and a light beyond the darkness. May this be a season of hope and joy, of reflection and renewal, for each and every one of my readers.

A Joyful Yule!

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Given my name (Mother Holle of the Celtic pagan tradition, midway between the maiden and the crone among the three Goddesses, and to whom the holly is sacred) I cannot fail to honor this holiday.  Two famous Christmas carols celebrate this holiday, Deck the Halls, with no mention of Jesus) and The Holly and the Ivy, which added some nativity language as an afterthought. It is one of many New Years at this time (although the official Celtic New Year was Samhain, November 1st).  It joins the ancient Roman holiday of Saturnalia and the 12 days of Christmas from Christmas Day to Three Kings on January 6th for a prolonged celebration of the lengthening of days, with warmer days eventually tagging in after. T be human, or even Mallal, is to be attuned to the seasons, to be both geocentric, and with an eye on the source of warmth and light that sustain us and all life, to be heliocentric as well.

Yule and Christmas alike have celebrations of feasting and dancing, music and greenery, family gatherings and community events. It is a time to express gratitude for the returning sun with generosity, offerings of food and other gifts to those in need. But there are two shadows that deserve to be acknowledged and honored.  One is the shadow, the darkness, in which roots and bulbs lie under the frosty ground gestating in preparation for the coming season or awakening and rebirth.  In the meantime, we humans tend to our own roots as we hunker down and try to stay warm.  Think of all the carols that celebrate that inwardness.  Let It Snow! White Christmas.  Blue Christmas. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.  I’ll Be Home for Christmas….

The other shadow is the sun, as earth absorbs more of its raise and the temperature rises, threatening agriculture, coastal areas, and other changes that make life on earth less sustainable for future generations and for all life, not just androcentric (also known as humans!). Christmas has become, over the years, a celebration of conspicuous consumption, in ways that are not good for sustainability.  A few years ago, my oldest daughter pressured me to make more of my gifts “consumables and experiences” as a way of not cluttering our lives and our space with more things to be used, discarded, or just clutter up our lives.  It has been a challenge.  Fewer gifts by drawing names among my three daughters, three sons-in-law, and four granddaughters. (And as of this year, one grandson-in-law.) I consider books consumable—once read, most of them can be passed on.  Edibles. Subscriptions.  Activities in lieu of gifts—movies, dining out, mini golf (it is, after all, South Carolina). Cookie baking for the girls, the gift of minor home repairs from sons-in-law.  

However you choose to make this holiday meaningful for yourself, your loved ones, your communities and the earth, may you have a Blessed Yule/Christmas/Saturnalia (if there are any ancient Romans life!), using this time of dormancy for reflection and renewal as we prepare for the longer days that lie ahead.