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'Tis the 'Holiday Season' once again for those who follow the mainstream Judeo-Christian religions and it is getting hard to move without stepping on reindeer and jolly old elves. It can be a trying time for those who follow the Craft or any other belief system for that matter. There is the constant harping by the Christian folk that commercialism has overshadowed the 'Reason for the Season'!
We know what the reason for the season is. The winter solstice has come. It has been celebrated for longer than we have an historical record by practically every ancient culture on the planet. It is also a fact that Rome counted its census and collected its taxes in the spring so as to have all summer to get the money home. Cultural anthropology has shown that as the Catholic Church spread across northern Europe on the heels of the Roman Legions they adapted many ceremonies and holidays of the conquered peoples for their own in an attempt to 'Christianize' them. Even Santa Claus was the end product of a Madison Avenue advertising campaign begun in the 1880's.
All of these and more are but facts littering the historical record of our past and when confronted with such overbearing propaganda to force the belief in the birth of a 'Savior' it is tempting to strike back with such facts. It is really not worth the effort to try. Facts have an uncomfortable tendency to confuse fundamentalist Christians. All you could achieve with such efforts would be a raising of the levels of anger and negative psychic energies in the attempt.
In this age the 'Holiday Season' has already become a guilt-driven consumerist event and the average person, whether Christian or secular, is quite likely to be experiencing an elevated stress level with the 'obligatory' activities Christmas entails for its celebrants. Rather than add to this element of discord we, as Craftsmen and Women who seek for harmony in the world can actually act in that function to calm the psychic turmoil to a degree.
Rather than trying to make them 'see reason' while they in their belief are attempting to do the same to you, let it go. It can do no great harm to let them find what joy they can in their celebration. One can even embrace the ideology of 'Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward Men'. It is after all one of the goals of the divine essence that fuels our lives and spirits as well. We as practitioners of the Craft should not find it difficult to focus all the random, misdirected psychic energy generated by the emotions of the Holiday season towards a more harmonious etheric matrix.
Why not look under the trappings of the current Christmas celebrations. You will find that a lot of it is merely a new version of an old story. Santa Claus is a descendent of the 'Year King' just as the idea of 'Jesus' is related to that ancient symbolism. In that regard one can still enjoy this time of year even as a Pagan. So long as the holiday ceremonies do not involve maiming, mutilating or murdering something (we will try not to think of all the trees) then there is really no huge reason to make a fuss about it. Every faith-based spiritual system needs its moments of divine ecstasy. All it really takes is to remember the injunction 'if it harm none' and find your own 'Reason' to seek harmony with the 'Season'.
As well as writing and researching on the paranormal and occult phenomena that intersect our reality, Douglas Mefford can also be found helping spread literature to the world at Bell, Book & Candle Publications or hanging out at his bungalow in Greenwoods Village.
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