The Online Photographer

Merry Christmas! I will be taking vacation until January 2, but during that time I will re-post selections from the archives and will approve and publish comments quickly (though there will be no Featured Comments till I get back).

Winslow Homer, Christmas—Gathering Evergreens, from
Harper’s Weekly, December 25, 1858, p. 820

I started with the idea this year of listing all the December or midwinter holidays and celebrations and doing a little writeup on each, but there are too many of them. Here's a short, partial list of the holidays being celebrated at this time of the calendar:

Christmas, the big daddy. "There are those who love Christmas and then there are those who really love Christmas." —Claire Rutter, Rolling Stone. Christmas is a religious and secular holiday widely observed in the Western world. It originally derived from the midwinter festivals of the ancient world, most closely resembling the Roman Saturnalia, "celebrated with sacrifice [and] a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival"—although now we most often sacrifice a turkey. Early Christianity fought to eliminate the holiday, but it was so persistent that after several centuries the Church decided to co-opt it, arbitrarily claiming that the occasion was the birthday of Jesus. Actually, no one has any idea when Jesus was born, as nothing is known about his early life. Devout Christians as late as the English puritans refused to celebrate Christmas, considering it pagan and "made-up by Man" because it isn't prescribed in the Bible. The Plymouth Pilgrims, after having arrived on the 16th, actually started work on their settlement on Christmas Day 1620. (A kind of funny situation about that: newcomers to Plymouth Colony in 1621 and 1622 who were not from the original Separatist group found their sensibilities offended by the idea of working on Christmas day, but their alternative for their day off, playing games and engaging in various sporting entertainments, was frowned upon by the settlement leaders, who forbade such foolery and urged the newcomers to keep their Christmas, if they must, as a day of devotion behind closed doors.) Curiously, Christmas is lately returning to its secular and folk roots, as it is increasingly a secular holiday celebrated by people of many religions, and by the religious and non-religious together*. And may I just say that my town rocks when it comes to Christmas lights. The people of Penn Yan have really done it up this year. I'll miss the lights when they go; they cheer everyone up.

Hanukkah. Celebrates a military victory in which Judah the Maccabee re-took Jerusalem from the Syrian Greeks, who had defiled the Second Temple by turning it into pagan shrine; Judah re-dedicated the Temple to the glory of Israel's God. A story related to the event was that the people had one day's supply of oil for their lamps but it miraculously lasted for eight days, although exactly how that helped the war effort is something I haven't been able to uncover. It seems the more serious the source, the less is made of the oil story. A symbol of the holiday (and indeed of the Jewish religion) is the menorah, a candelabrum with seven or sometimes nine branches. An alternate name for the occasion, the Festival of Lamps, was changed to Festival of Lights by the late 1800s. The holiday migrates in date and is held over eight days and nights. This year, Hanukkah was celebrated from December 7th to December 15th, so it's over, but it's appropriate to wish Jewish people Happy Hanukkah throughout the holiday season.

Kwanzaa. Not a religious event, Kwanzaa is a pan-African cultural celebration started by Maulana Ndabezitha (previously Ron) Karenga, an African studies professor and Black separatist, in 1966, following the disastrous Watts riots in California. It is held from December 26th to January 1 and peaks at a December 31st feast called Karamu Ya Imani, Karamu for short, which initially developed separately in Chicago. Karenga has stated that the purpose of Kwanzaa is to "give black people an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society." His ideas were initially quite radical (for instance, that Jesus was psychotic** and that the cultural unity cultivated by Kwanzaa is a necessary precursor to violent revolution), but he softened his radicalism considerably over the years to make the observance more appealing to the mainstream and less threatening to non-Black people. A 2019 poll determined that 2.9% of those Americans who intended to celebrate a midwinter holiday would be celebrating Kwanzaa.

Boxing Day. An English custom dating from Victorian times (1837–1901), when servants were given gifts and a day off on December 26th—doubtless after long labors helping to stage the elaborate Christmas celebrations of their employers, and presumably because they'd had to work on Christmas day. Coincidentally, the same day, December 26th, is Zarathosht Diso, which honors the death of the prophet Zoroaster (that's spoken "zoro-aster," not "zo-roaster"). Zoroastrianism, at more than 3,000 years old, is the world's oldest monotheistic religion.

Festivus. A made-up family Christmas alternative invented by Daniel O'Keefe and popularized by his son Dan O'Keefe, a writer on the TV series Seinfeld. It heads up a long list of secular, fictional, and parody midwinter holidays, some of which are alternatives devised by anti-religious groups such as atheists or Satanists, and many of which are part of things like video games, science-fiction or fantasy book worlds, or TV shows and movies. To name just a few examples: Newtonmas is celebrated by skeptics on December 25th because it is Isaac Newton's birthday in old-style dating; various groups, such as those calling themselves Druids (Julius Caesar described the historical Druids in De Bello Gallico), celebrate the hibernal solstice on December 21st, with varying degrees of seriousness and involvement; Erastide is the midwinter festival in David Eddings' Belgariad and Malloreon series of books; Hogswatch is the parody holiday in Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels; Candlenights is a "pan-religious, pan-sexual, personal pan pizza winter holiday" created by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy on their comedy advice podcasts; and Life Day is the Wookiee celebration of life in the Star Wars Holiday Special. There are many more.

•  •  •

However you might be celebrating this year, I wish you and your loved ones health, happiness, togetherness, and good cheer!

Until next year,
Mike

*A 2022 Pew Research poll determined that 64% of Americans identify as Christians, down from 90% in 1950. And yet the observance and celebration of Christmas is not declining. Earlier Pew Research polls also report that less emphasis is being placed on religious displays such as nativity scenes, and that most people who perceive this trend are not bothered by it. A greater percentage now say they don't believe there is a factual basis for the details of Biblical Christmas stories. Most citizens who no longer identify as Christian have migrated either to non-belief or to unspecified lack of affiliation; very few have migrated to non-Christians faiths. Despite these trends, nine in 10 Americans celebrate Christmas in some fashion.

**Although this sounds extreme, it turns out—this was news to me—that it actually has deep and persisting roots in the search for the historical Jesus, spanning many years, with many scholars and psychiatrists venturing retrospective diagnoses of Jesus based on his known actions and behaviors. The idea also has echoes in fiction and in comparisons with more modern messianic figures such as Jim Jones and David Koresh. There's also the interesting question of why the followers of Jesus were not executed at the same time he was, which would have been the case if his main crime had been a challenge to the local authority. One can read an overview of all this here.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Joel Becker: "The real reason that Chanukah is eight days is because it is a delayed celebration of Sukkot, the eight-day harvest holiday. At the normal time of Sukkot (~October in the Gregorian calendar), the Maccabees were busy fighting the war, and so could not celebrate. Once they had retaken Jerusalem, they re-dedicated the Temple and caught up on observance of Sukkot. This is why Chanukah remains a minor Jewish holiday, even though it coincides with a major Christian one. We observe the major harvest holiday at its normal time. Chanukah is for remembering our fight for freedom and independence."

John Krumm: "My birthday falls on Festivus, December 23, and last year we held something of a Festivus celebration. No feats of strength, and we left the metal pole in the garage, but we had a great time airing grievances. Highly recommended for a fun time at a dinner party."