It is widely believed that somewhere between 6 and 1 BC (with partiality but not exclusivity given to dates before Herod’s death in 4 BC), on or around May 20, April 2, January 6, or December 25 (depending on which Egyptian or Roman account you read) someone was born who changed the world.
For some, if he existed, he was just a really popular rabbi. For others, if he existed, he was one of many prophets, only the last of which would get the message right. For others still, if he existed, he was just one among many who took to public instruction of ignorant, illiterate, unhygienic, disease- and strife-ridden Iron Age citizens. For others still, if he existed, he was and remains the hope of all humankind: a golden ticket to eternal life with perks.
Two thousand years isn’t that long for our species; it’s about 1/25th of the time we’ve spent in a state of behavioural modernity, and even in that scant sliver of time, we’ve taken seemingly forever to acquire basic knowledge of the world. Honestly, it still unnerves me to recall just how recently antiseptics were developed; Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis only noticed in 1847 that women seemed to die a lot less frequently in childbirth when they weren’t being worked on by medical students who’d just handled corpses. To think that something as simple as washing one’s hands before interacting with open wounds and bodily interiors would take so many centuries to get right!
Yet ever since Constantine, a tradition has been maintained in the Western world, of marking the darkest time of year–a time previously dominated by pagan rituals such as the festival of Saturnalia–with a celebration of birth. Certainly, pagan elements remain–the tree, the mistletoe, the Yule log, the wreath–just as a related springtime ritual gets its very name from a Germanic pagan goddess. Heck, in the last hundred years even consumerism has made a narratological place for itself inside of this season.
Still. If we were to lose all our scientific knowledge, eventually we’d gain it back in an equivalent way. (Only the representational language and biographical history would change.) But if we lost all our cultural traditions, chances are extremely low that we’d build new ones that looked the same; and certainly not ones that lifted in the same pell-mell way from dozens of otherwise forgotten human communities come before.
There’s something special to that uniqueness, then, outside all appeals to truth. Perhaps the Middle Eastern cultural landscape was so hungry two thousand years ago for an alternative to the violent language of Roman dictates that most anyone sharing a kind word might have gained this much acclaim eventually. Or perhaps there is indeed a greater reason this one person rose to such prominence in history. Or perhaps the world would have got along just fine without any such figure rising from anonymity at all.
Whatever the truth of it, in this one and precious life we have, this cultural tradition is one major means by which we share our humanity with family and friends. To celebrate what wealth we have–of food, of companionship, of health–in a world that provides so many with so very little. To reflect on what has brought us this far as a civilization, and what is yet needed to help us grow even further towards peace.
Whatever the truth of it, tomorrow is, for much of the Western world, Christmas Day. May it be a good and precious one for all who partake.
(And for everyone else, may the fortune cookies accompanying your Chinese take-out be excellent.)
Hugs and love to you all.
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