Every Holly Has Its Day

The word “holiday” is really “holy day,” and holy means dedicated to God. But it can mean dedicated to any god, or several. In C.S. Lewis’ novel Till We Have Faces, Orual, the protagonist, who lives in a small barbaric kingdom near Greece well B.C., describes the smell of blood and smoke and fear as “holy.” As in she says “The room smelled so holy that I almost choked.” Holy is a negative, scary thing for her, because her gods are fearsome and ugly. So “holiday” doesn’t necessarily indicate that a day is sacred to the Christian God. But it does mean it is sacred to a god, which makes days like this very significant. Many people don’t regard holidays as sacred at all. But they always end up being sacred to something or other. However, what they are sacred to often doesn’t match up with their name, and that’s when it’s interesting.

Easter, for example, we just had. Now “Easter” or “Eostre” or “Ishtar” or “Ashtoreth” or any number of variations, is the name of a fertility goddess. We celebrate her festival in spring, because spring is a time of fertility and new growth, and we celebrate it with eggs because they are a sign of new life, and with rabbits because they breed exponentially and thus symbolize fertility. However, it is all mixed up with the Christian celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection. In other languages, the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus is not called Easter, but “Pasche” or “Paques” or “Pascha” or any number of variations, which all refer to the celebration of Passover, which is apparently the last meal Jesus ate with his disciples before being delivered over to trial, death and resurrection. Also, in France, instead of a rabbit bringing you eggs, bells bring you candy. I have this on good authority from a French person. Bells, like church bells. I don’t know if it’s primarily an American thing, all this fertility festival.

Also, the forty days before Easter are known as Lent, and some Christians take them as an opportunity to deny their appetites, in honor of Jesus’ forty day fast in the wilderness right after his baptism. But the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent, is known as Mardi Gras, which means “Fat Tuesday,” and while it initially began as a day to use up all your more decadent foods so they wouldn’t spoil during the forty days you wouldn’t be eating them, it was soon co-opted by the god Dionysios, who prospers and grows fat on the worship of those who have never pronounced his name, and sponsors a yearly festival of modern Maenads in his holy city of New Orleans.

Then there is Halloween. Whereas Easter has (in English) a pagan name, and an at-least-half-Christian focus, Halloween has a Christian name and a largely pagan focus. Halloween has a lot in common with Samhain, the Druid festival of the waning of the year, celebrated on November 1st as Beltane, the festival of the waxing of the year, was celebrated on May 1st (but usually isn’t any more). Samhain is a celebration of darkness as a necessary contrast to light, and of death as part of the cycle of life for those who walk in harmony with the earth. Christians make November 1st their All Saints Day, which is also a celebration of death, as a good part of the lives of those who walk in harmony with God and go on to be with him after they die, and since saints are holy, or hallowed, they call the night before it All Hallows Evening, or “Hallow E’en” for short. Both are about embracing the dark mysteries of life as part of the good plan of the divine ones. Halloween as it is celebrated in America has also been somewhat co-opted by Dionysios in its decadent candyfests, but it is mainly an embracing of darkness and cold chills and the things that go bump in the night. It is a night of familiarizing and cuteifying the chilling mysteries of the cycle of life on earth. Let’s hear it for American gods!

Christmas, of course, is very popular. It has a Christian name– heck, it has Christ in its name– but since it is widely acknowledged among thinking people to be absurd to believe that shepherds with no death wish sleep outdoors in December, the date has been linked to the fact that all religions that arise where there are seasons attach special significance to the Winter Solstice, and deservedly so, since the Winter Solstice is the time when the tide turns, the light starts to edge out the darkness, and the Winter begins to wane. This is regarded by many as a suitable symbol for the birth of Christ, which began, however imperceptibly, the long slow pushing back of darkness that culminated in the rite of spring’s resurrection. This is why we decorate everything with lights, have parties, and hang holly and mistletoe across all the entrances to the house to keep dark spirits away. According to the Bible, when Jesus was a small child, some strange men brought him presents, which began the ritual of giving presents to small children and pretending they are from a strange man, and then Pluto, god of money and of hell, decided to ordain that presents should be given to everyone, not just small children, thus boosting the economy and driving more people annually to suicide. Pluto is also very big in America.

Holidays are fun, but they can also be dangerous, because they mean worship, and if you don’t pay attention to who you’re worshipping, you can get into a lot of trouble. So be careful on holidays.