Archive for December 2008
eid al-adha, xmas, yule, etc
Hello,
I just wanted to send some thoughts on making an effort to slowly move to celebrate the traditions of Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad, the true in faith and obedient ones, rather than our culture’s or ancestor’s traditions “just because.”
Change can be slow; I think it is important to begin aligning our rituals and ceremonies, even if slowly over time, with how God has given them to us, rather than what men and women in the past have given us. In the end only God will judge our deeds, not our friends, family, society, or enemies, or, yes, even Santa Claus. So this is just for reflection in good faith…. I copy/pasted the following sections of info from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org.
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Tomorrow (Monday) is Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى ‘Īd ul-’Aḍḥā) or the Festival of Sacrifice. One of two holidays defined for the people of monotheism, it is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide in commemoration of the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God. The devil tempted Ibrahim by saying he should disobey God and spare his son. As Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son, God intervened and instead provided a lamb as the sacrifice. This is why today all over the world Muslims who have the means to, sacrifice an animal (usually a goat or a sheep) TO GOD, as a reminder of Ibrahim’s obedience to God. The meat is then shared out with family, friends (Muslims or non-Muslims), as well as the poor members of the community.
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Compare with Yule, the root holiday of a lot of our traditions that have been attached to the birth of the Messiah, Jesus. (I know Christmas is so much more and so diverse than just Yule, but still the Yule traditions seem to be the majority of the multifaceted holiday of Christmas.)
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Yule is a winter festival identified with Christmas in modern times.[1] The pagan Germanic peoples celebrated Yule from late December to early January on a date determined by the lunar Germanic calendar.[2] When the Julian calendar was adopted in northern Europe, Yule was placed on December 25, the date of the Roman winter solstice, Bruma,[3] so as to correspond with the Christian Natalis Domini celebrations,[4] later known in English as “Christmas”.
Yule celebrations at the winter solstice predate Christianity. Yule is a feast celebrated by sacrifice on mid winter night 12 January, according to Norwegian historian Olav Bø. [8] There are many references to Yule in the Icelandic sagas but few accounts of how Yule was celebrated beyond the fact it was a time for feasting. According to Adam of Bremen, Swedish kings sacrificed male slaves every ninth year during the Yule sacrifices at the Temple at Uppsala TO NORSE gODS. ‘Yule-Joy’ with dancing continued through the Middle Ages in Iceland but was frowned upon after the Reformation. The ritual of slaughtering a boar on Yule survives in the modern tradition of the Christmas ham and the Boar’s Head Carol.
According to the medieval English writer the Venerable Bede, Christian missionaries sent to proselytize among the Germanic peoples of northern Europe were instructed to superimpose Christian themes upon existing local pagan holidays, to ease the conversion of the people to Christianity by allowing them to retain their traditional celebrations. Thus, Christmas was created by associating stories of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the central figure of Christianity, with the existing pagan Yule celebrations, similar to the formation of Halloween and All Saint’s Day via Christianization of existing pagan traditions.
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I find it an interesting cultural/spiritual phenomenon that hundreds of years after our ancestors were “eased” into Christianity by “superimposing” it on their established holidays, our culture still celebrates the signs of Jesus, who is of monotheism, through our old polytheistic roots.
And this is during an era of sophisticated education, mass information at our fingertips, a free society, and during the era of a prophet, Muhammad, coming in the tradition of Abraham and Jesus, with a law and a way of life, including two holidays holidays of prayer, fasting, charity, and feasting.
In the Bible, in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the first commandment of the Ten Commandments is “Do not have any other gods before me,” that is, do not become a polytheist (a worshiper of more than one god, specifically God Supreme our Creator).
These are just some thoughts on a line of our roots and likewise on our (biological and cultural) descendants’ traditions! I made this relationship-by-proximity diagram of Christmas. I tried to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive with it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnoberlin/3077427569/sizes/o/.
Anyways, peace in whatever form you happen to be celebrating this year.
thoughts on what makes christmas in general
