A month of holidays

December is a month of holidays. For several years, I've labored to create blog posts about the holidays that fall during this month. When I realized I was focusing exclusively on December holidays but no others, I started my "Holidays Project" last summer.

At this point I've done feature posts on nearly every major religious holiday that usually falls in December, as well as several more minor ones and at least two that are secular in nature. Why so many holidays in one month?

Blame it on the Solstice. 
The astronomical event of the Winter Solstice creates the shortest daylight of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. It falls on December 21, nearly every year. Combine that fact with the nature of humans, and a holiday of some sort is near-inevitable.

We humans have a psychological and spiritual need seek out hope and a cosmic picture of the Universe that makes sense. And we probably need it most of all when food is short and we're in danger of freezing to death. That's why December is a month of holidays.

I explored Solstice traditions in some depth, in a blog post from 2016 that still gets many hits every year. Get drunk, eat dumplings or fruit, and party down. It's traditional!

Festivals of light
Not surprisingly for holidays that originated during a month of long nights, a lot of December holidays feature candles or fires.

A Solstice festival of light/fire is Yuletide. In a 2013 post, I focused on the Yuletide legend of Krampus, but the tradition of burning the Yule Log (originally a whole tree, or most of one) is probably more well-known to those of us whose ancestors hail from the British Isles, where the related custom of Wassailing also originated. Of course, many people prefer their "Yule Logs" to be made of cake, rather than wood!

Winter Solstice bonfires are a feature of a celebration in Maine. (Bangor Daily News/Eric Michael Tollefson)

Last year, the first Sunday of Advent and the first day of Hanukkah both fell on the same day, December 2. This year Advent started on December 1, but Hanukkah doesn't begin till sunset on December 22.

Compared with Yom Kippur and several of the others, Hanukkah is a relatively minor holiday that has gained a greater following because of its proximity to the Christian holiday of Christmas, celebrated on December 25 each year.

Christmas originated as a religious holiday, and it still is one of the most important holidays of the Christian year, preceded by the Advent season and smaller holy or feast days such as St. Nicholas Day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and St. Stephen's Day.  If you think about it Christmas is a month of holidays, just by itself.

Secular observations
Especially in recent years, many individuals, cultures and traditions have embraced some of the more glamorous elements of Christmas, including Santa Claus, Christmas trees, holiday lights on buildings, and Christmas presents, without much interest in the Christian religious aspects.

There will likely always be people who decry a "war on Christmas" (meaning a minimization of the religious aspects), it seems unlikely that these exuberant and sometimes garish secular holiday traditions will go away anytime soon. They're too darn much fun.

The granddaddy of municipal Christmas light displays is the annual display in Kansas City's Country Club Plaza (unattributed photographer/KC Kids Fun)

One, somewhat peculiar spin-off of Christmas is Festivus, inspired by a TV show and celebrated with greater or lesser levels of devotion by aficionados.

A considerably more spiritual, but not religious, celebration is Kwanzaa. I explored the days of Kwanzaa in some detail, back in 2017. Although the first day had to share billing with Boxing Day, the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days got their own posts. The seventh day of Kwanzaa is also New Year's Day.

However you celebrate this month of holidays, I hope you find love, joy, and peace among the hectic pace and the welter of traditions!

IMAGES: I created the "Winter Solstice" composite with help from Ksenia Samorukova (Ukususha) and Rawpixel at 123RF. Many thanks to the Bangor Daily News and Eric Michael Tollefson, for the photo of the bonfires in Maine, and to KC Kids Fun (and their unsung photographer) for the photo of the Kansas City Country Club Plaza holiday lights.

Preparing: are you?

We all have our own way of confronting (or trying to hide from) the Holidays. 

It's not ONLY Christmas, of course--although both secular and sacred Christmas imagery and messaging seem to be everywhere in my Kansas City environment. From Festivus to Kwanzaa, from Hanukkah to  Winter Solstice celebrations to Yule, there seems to be a holiday for everybody at this time of year.

Whatever holidays you celebrate, how's it going? We're at the mid-point of December. Are you ready?

Perhaps you're one of those organized, super-prepared people, who've been buying a building stockpile of presents since last January. You already have you holiday greeting cards in the mail (or your e-cards pre-loaded to send at just the perfect moment).

Perhaps you're in the thick of it now--still working on the gift list, still considering your plans. Partway there--getting there--but not done yet. That's about where I am: working on it. If you're still looking for creative gift-wrapping ideas, you may find some of my last-December Image-of-Interest posts helpful.

Or maybe you prefer to live dangerously, and save your shopping/decorating/cooking for the last possible second. Good luck, and may the Creative Force be with you, all you last-minute thrill-seekers!

No matter how you celebrate--and no matter which, if any, holidays you celebrate--I hope you find some merriment along the way!

IMAGES: Many thanks to the Explore December Holidays Pinterest Board, for the "paper dolls" image, and the talented and creative Debbi Ridpath Ohi, via The Office, and John Atkinson, via Wrong Hands, for their humorous holiday images.

Get drunk, light a fire, and eat dumplings or fruit! it's Winter Solstice!

It's the nadir of the year. The longest night, the shortest day. What're you gonna do?

What else? Have a party!

That's apparently been the Winter Solstice solution of choice for cultures all over the Northern Hemisphere since at least Neolithic times.

The famous triple-spiral design incised inside the Newgrange tomb, popularly thought to be Celtic, actually predates the Celts by several thousand years. It bears a striking resemblance to sun symbols seen elsewhere in northern Europe. The opening of the tomb precisely frames the rising sun of Winter Solstice.

Humans have undoubtedly been aware of the Winter Solstice for much longer than 5,000 years, but some of the earliest evidence that they took it seriously can be found at Newgrange, Ireland, where a Neolithic passage tomb that is thought to be at least 5,000 years old is aligned with the rising Winter Solstice sun.

I can't find any archaeological evidence that those early Irish folk had alcoholic beverages, but it's fairly likely. Fermentation is a process that happens naturally. Pottery jars discovered at Jiahu in China, that date back as early as 7000 BCE (about 9,000 years old) were found to contain the residue of a fermented beverage made from honey, rice, and hawthorn fruit, so it's not hard to imagine that other people may also have created fermented drinks, but stored them in less long-lasting containers.

Patrick E. McGovern discovered that these 9,000-year-old pottery jars from Jiahu in China contained the world's earliest known fermented drink.

Those are two of the four essential ingredients for a universally human Winter Solstice celebration: (1) knowledge that the Winter Solstice is a thing that happens, and (2) alcoholic beverages to drink. The other two are (3) Food for feasting, and (4) fires for warmth and light.

Maria Kvilhaug offers a detailed description of Old Norse Jól, or Yule traditions and cosmology. "The Yule celebration as a whole was often referred to as “drinking jól”, as in “to drink” yule. This descriptive term strongly suggests that drink was an important part of the celebration," she wrote.

Greek Poseidon (left) and Roman Saturn (right) each were honored by their devotees with several days of drinking and feasting at the Winter Solstice.

The Norse weren't the only ones who partied hearty on Winter Solstice. The ancient Greeks celebrated the Festival of Poseidon, god of the sea, with several days of drinking and parties. Perhaps better known these days is the Roman Saturnalia, celebrating a different god, but at the same time of year, and in pretty much exactly the same way--with feasting and lots of drinking.

In eastern Asia, the Winter Solstice festival of Dōngzhì focuses more on food than drink, with dumplings served more often in the north and dumpling-like filled rice balls called tangyuan served more often in the south.

Dōngzhì delicacies seem to focus on rice flour wrapped around assorted fillings. The main point: they are all warm and tasty.

The Iranian tradition of Yaldā Night also centers on food, especially red-colored fruits, and sweets. It is a gathering of family and friends to share the last fruits of summer and prepare for the leaner period of winter. The gathering continues until after midnight, the middle part of the year's longest night, thus seeing themselves through an inauspicious time into a more hopeful period. Another traditional practice is reading or reciting poetry (especially the poetry of Divan-e-Hafez, sometimes used for divination of the future).

Hafez poetry and fruits help carry this Persian lady safely through Yaldā Night.

The fourth ingredient for a quintessential Winter Solstice celebration--especially one in the colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere--is a good, warm bonfire to light up the night and keep bad spirits at bay.

Most of us know about the Yule Log, which was adopted as a Christmas tradition throughout much of northern Europe. This is a large log, sometimes a whole tree, burnt through the course of the Yule season. If there was anything left, it sometimes would be kept to light the following year's log. 

Large outdoor bonfires were often a feature of Yule, Beltane, midsummer and Halloween, in pre-Christian traditions. More recent festivals have combined the bonfire idea with the even more widespread and popular tradition of the Christmas Tree. After Christmas old, dried-up trees from many households (fire hazards, by that time) are sometimes brought together and burned in a public event.

San Francisco's Richmond-area "Friends of the Rootless Forest" safely burn discarded Christmas trees on Ocean Beach for their annual "Post-Yule Pyre" event.

IMAGES: 
Many thanks to Knowth.com for the Newgrange tomb image (from a book by Michael and Claire O'Kelly; I couldn't find a photographer's credit). 
Many thanks to Patrick E. McGovern, the biomolecular archaeologist who did the analysis of the Jiahu pottery, for both the photo (thanks also to Z. Juzhong and the Henan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology), and for an interesting article about the find.
Many thanks to Gods and Monsters for the image of Poseidon (there's an informative article at this link, too), and to Antiques.com for the photo of the Carthaginian marble statue of Saturn and the accompanying article about it.
I am indebted to Your Chinese Astrology for the photos of traditional Dōngzhì foods, and the informative article that accompanies them. 
Many thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the photo of the Persian lady reading Hafez while surrounded by fruits on Yalda Night. 
And finally, many thanks to the Richmond District Blog for the bonfire photo by "ampoda" (sorry no link available), and the article about the 2012 event by Sara B.