Greetings of the season to all my readers, from me and my extended family!

Some folks can't quite see the point of this frenzied social activity at this time of year, and probably ascribe it to the fact that "Jesus was born on December 25th," and everybody must have got on the bandwagon!  In fact, I believe there is more than a little evidence that the historical Jesus was born at another time of year.  However, there already was a celebration of the Winter Solstice in Northern Europe, and the leaders of the new-fledged religion simply co-opted it.  It was a simple ritual to encourage the Sun into becoming stronger, and to bring the warmer seasons back again.  It was a time of getting together in families or villages and celebrating fellowship and friendship, at a time of year when there really wasn't much to celebrate.

There was nothing particularly winter-related in any of the stories of the birth of Christ.  The account of the Great Census of Augustus Caesar is based on fact; he did order such a census, but there were several censuses ordered of Syria (and the general region of Palestine) which Christian writers have desperately latched onto, but to my mind seem quite irrelevant.  Still, there's nothing to prevent anyone from celebrating the birth of Jesus on any day that they wish, and why not the Winter Solstice?

In any case, several branches of the Human Race, especially those that live outside the tropics, have chosen to celebrate the beginning of a new year at Midwinter, because in civilized times the main occupation of human communities was Agriculture, which would fall in the middle of the year.  So what we really celebrate at Christmas is the opportunity to start anew; that any miss-starts of earlier days were erased, and we resume with a clean slate.

Kay