Pagan-Roots-Of Christmas-Bob Davis Podcast 887

Christmas Is Indeed A Pagan Holiday

I know there are religious people who don’t want to hear this but Christmas is a pagan holiday. These days we’re disconnected from history and our ancestors. I’ll explain in Pagan-Roots-Of Christmas-Bob Davis Podcast 887.

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice is especially relevant here. The shortest day in the northern hemisphere. December 21st. The next day the sun starts its journey back toward us and the days will start getting longer.

A Time To Rest, Repair And Recharge

Second people have taken this time to hunker down, rest and prepare for the coming brighter and warmer months. This goes back millennia.

The Shortest Darkest Days

In contrast to those in warmer and brighter places those of us who live in the far northern reaches of North America and Northern Europe know only too well how dark it gets. Even more how long those dark and cold nights can be.

Jesus Was Not Born On December 25th

We are told Jesus Christ the bringer of light, was born in December. Truth is the bible doesn’t say when the savior was born.

The Bringer Of Light Was A Summer Baby

Moreover astronomers believe Christ was probably born in the summer, or fall somewhere between 6 or 7 BC, and 3 or 2 BC.

Rome and Saturnalia

Finally it was the Roman Catholic Church that set Christ’s birth on December 25th. Oddly enough, the new celebration would coincide with the celebration of the Roman God Saturn.

Santa IS A Pagan Symbol

Even more, Santa’s origins are rooted both in a Greek Saint in about 300 AD, and the Norse god Odin. Above all once Artist Norman Rockwell and the advertising industry shaped and advanced the idea of Saint Nick as a rosy cheeked white bearded grandfatherly symbol. Our modern Santa. For more on Odin, click here.

Holiday Season

This year I spent a little time and thought about our Winter Holiday Season, which starts with the celebration of the harvest on Thanksgiving, includes a parade of totems in New York City, and ends with New Year’s.

Natural Rhythms

Are we immune to natural human rhythms? Were our ancestors dumb? How has commerce and communication in the modern age obscured the pagan roots of Christmas, and New Year’s? Does this change the nature of Christmas for the faithful? I don’t think so.

Happy Holidays

And of course, Merry Christmas

Sponsored by Reliafund Payment Processors and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Pagan-Roots-Of Christmas-Bob Davis Podcast 887

Podcast 546

Podcast 546-What Is Next? Almost all media these days is advocacy journalism. It used to be called ‘yellow journalism’. Back in the day yellow journalism was characterized by newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst who, when an artist he’d sent to Cuba cabled Hearst the fact that the USS Maine had blown up because of an accident, famously replied, “You supply the pictures, I’ll supply the war!” Everywhere we turn these days we are bombarded with the surface arguments. The personalities, the propaganda, the arguing back and forth. It goes far beyond media bias. It has become media advocacy. Telling you and I who to vote for and why. Telling us what we are to believe in and what our country stands for, and why. It’s a fact of life on both sides of the fence. We end up going back and forth about nonsense, most of the time. For me to add to this noise, seems to be a waste of time. Of course I have my own point of view about politics these days, and I’ll try and save most of those observations for podcasts detailing state by state polls, or addressing specific issues when they need to be addressed. How you vote, who you vote for and why you vote the way you do is your business. The easy thing to do these days is turn on the microphone and bloviate about what happened on the campaign trail today. It is much harder to find something to discuss that goes beyond. Hence Podcast 546-What Is Next? How can we move to the next step in the country and the world. Not what happens after election day 2016, or Inauguration Day 2017. This question deals with what happens down the line. If we spent a fraction of our time actually trying to inform ourselves about issues we can know about, rather than consuming propaganda, we would be better citizens and better stewards of the future for the country. The answers to the things we can know about, aren’t in social media or even necessarily searchable. The answers are in libraries. We can’t be fully informed about an issue if we don’t even know what questions to search. So let’s get started answering the question, What’s Next? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus Performance.