A Christmas Day Missive from Yesteryear.

Standing outside before making my cup of tea, I took in the Christmas Morning. A vivid red glow in the south eastern sky presaged the rising sun, whilst the sky was a layer-cake of shades of grey and pink and custard yellow. There is a special sort of silence about Christmas Morning and this is no exception, wonderfully devoid of human mechanical sound. No cars, no boats, no trains, no planes. Peace and goodwill to all the earth. The twitter of distant birds but no dawn chorus this. So silent is the air, a faint illusive hum can be detected, perhaps the remnant sound of the planet hurtling through empty space or the mysterious music of the spheres? Despite my solitary and stationary presence, observing, listening, it still startles several pigeons from their night time reverie, smacking their wings to a further perch. As if taking the hint, a brace of Pheasant swoop down out of their Cyprus tree hide, into the green meadow, squawking in protest that their privacy has been disturbed surprising as much me, as I them! In this time of naked boughs, when nature pretends to sleep, the ever-greens, the Holm Oaks, the Pines provide a camouflaged resting place for birds of the air - the angelic winged messengers of heavenly sound. Surrounded by such a cloud of barren branches, the defiant Camelia remains glossy green, bedecked in gaudy blooms, incongruous, like a loose woman with rouge red cheeks, tempting and dangerous. Yet reminiscent of those exotic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh - immutable, perfumed, cherishing. Preserving the divine myth of "God with us". Or perhaps not a myth? Perhaps he, she or it really is in the air? In the sap? In the synapse? In the blood? In the vital spirit? In the crib? In the flap of the pigeon's wing and the squawk of the pheasant disturbed? Now as the sun rises, black bark turns ochre, the clouds turn white, the sky turns blue. The day is born anew. Jupiter and Saturn aligned, have set, as they did two thousand and thirteen years before, over an Arab byre, announcing a special birth to divide humanity. Not that every birth is not a miracle, much taken for granted, except for the Mary and Josephs of the world. A bright point of light bring east and west together, before the blazing sun in all its glory, rises on another Christmas morning. The beginning of all genius and misery starts here. How many more before humans awaken to the mystery; desist from all desire, deceit, discontent and slaughter of the innocent? Ibrahim Colak(1) tweeted, "He had tried to be good but could not succeed." Yulia Galyamina(2) is to be sentenced on Christmas Day for waving the flag of freedom. How hard is it to be good? Living is hard. Good people can be crucified because of it. The seed of the end is always in the beginning. Salvation is in the story. So let us eat, drink and be merry, casting care to the wind, for tomorrow we die. We must celebrate both beginnings and endings, and let love reign, especially on a day such as this. "Glad tidings of great joy"?

An up-date from this:

Christmas as a festival will survive, because despite everything, it speaks of hope and forgiveness. It is an eternal message with very deep roots. The life and death of a man over two thousand years ago, is at its core. He acts as both an unobtainable objective and mirror into which we dare not look. An exemplar and yardstick against which we will be judged. An inexplicable conjunction and combination of the human and divine. 'Tempted in all things as are we, yet sin apart.' Of course we all know the sequel to 'the hopes and fears of all the years'. Hope is inextricably entwined with disappointment. Happiness with sorrow. Fear is endemic even when it is not deserved. 'Perfect love', we remember, 'casteth out fear'. We are faced with the painful reality of the world in which joy is mixed with tragedy, Christ's gospel of love being cruelly rejected, yet somehow triumphant, for in the end we know it is the only worthwhile goal, the only lasting treasure. That the accretions of wealth and glamour are only passing baubles that hang metaphorically on the tree. Despite the festive decorations it has a much darker symbolism of how secular power and wealth are antipathetical to the Christian message of selflessness and caring. That we all fall foul of fear in the face of evil, how we all like Peter deny Christ when faced with the consequences of owning him. The cock still crows. So what is the essence of Christmas in this post-Christian age? As never before technological and political clouds gather that threaten the very integrity of mankind and its spiritual dimension? Faith is never easy. Swimming against the propagandist tide is draining and dangerous but it is necessary. Although Christmas ritual can be reassuring and aesthetically pleasing, we must not let it obscure the moral power of the Man on a mission, to rescue man from himself and to create a route-map, whether temporal or eternal, personal or social, to an experience of heaven, without which life profoundly loses its meaning and purpose. Of these basic articles of 'faith, hope and charity', we are reminded every year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VOMFjQfJ8w

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Sifting through centuries of mythmaking, Reza Aslan sheds new light on one of history’s most influential and enigmatic figures by examining Jesus within the context of the times in which he lived: the age of zealotry. Balancing the Jesus of the Gospels against historical sources, Aslan describes a man of peace who exhorted his followers to arm themselves; an exorcist and faith healer who urged his disciples to keep his identity secret; and the seditious “King of the Jews,” whose promise of liberation from Rome went unfulfilled in his lifetime. Aslan explores why the early Church preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary and grapples with the riddle of how Jesus understood himself. Speaker: Reza Aslan

 It's always good to know the sun is 'returning' isn't it which of course is the significance of the winter solstice? People existed on earth many thousands of years before Christ. They all had brains and therefore mental processes and resultant beliefs trying to make sense of themselves and their surroundings. Not until relatively recently - around five thousand years ago - do these start to become discernible to us in what we recognise as 'civilizations' for which heavy reliance has to be placed on surviving archaeology in structures and written script. The above is a remnant of a largely extinct 'Celtic' one that in pre-Roman times appears to have dominated swathes of Europe. Sadly because it was largely verbal, what the Celts believed has to be inferred from the artefacts and structures that remain, such as the one above. We have the Romans to thank for obliterating it, notably in France with the campaign against the Gauls in Julius Caesar's Gallic wars around 50 BC and in Britain against the Druids post invasion culminating in the Anglesey massacre in around 60 AD. A contemporary account states, "A force was next set over the conquered, and their groves, devoted to inhuman superstitions, were destroyed. They deemed it indeed a duty to cover their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their deities through human entrails." The effect was to destroy the Priestly Class and with it the verbal history, so we have to surmise their beliefs from what remains but I think it reasonable to infer that much may have been shared with other, principally Egyptian, civilizations of the time. The sun and moon dominated the night sky and were afforded divine characteristics. The return of the sun, on which survival absolutely depended was not a given, hence the importance of the Winter Solstice, which marked the end of the retreat and hopefully the point of return. Fire was the nearest thing to the heat of the sun, and so it was encouraged to return with much feasting and celebration no doubt around huge blazes. Evidence of this has been provided at Stonehenge for example as is the structure referred to in the photograph. With the arrival of the Judean/Christian religion elements of the old were adopted and built on, both in structures - many churches are on pre-Christian holy sites - and in the ritual and ceremony of the Church. Even the return of the Sun is replicated in the return of the Son of God with its roots in Egyptian mythology of  the sun god Ra and the struggles of the gods Osiris, Isis and Horus against the disruptive god Set. Yes both the winter solstice and the celebration of Christmas as we know it, have very deep and profound psychological and cultural roots.