Waiting for some green.

It is easy to understand there are holidays at this part of year, and it is equally as easy to understand why the holidays would be associated with light.

Darkness and light are two of the earliest metaphors, and as that this is the darkest time of the year, it is understandable to bring light into the world. By doing the symbolic action of lighting a candle, we are expressing the need to bring more metaphoric light into this dark world. Or as refrigerator magnet I once had said, “don’t curse the darkness, but light a candle.”

Please do not misunderstand. This does not minimize or alter the meaning of festivals of light.

Tradition of Questioning Traditions

Every culture has its own traditions, which include those inherited from their forebearers, those borrowed from other cultures, and those which are newly invented. 

One of the most revered and hallowed traditions in modern day America is to have someone the authenticity or historical accuracy of a tradition into question. 

- “The Christmas tree was originally a pagan festival and Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus.”
- “Jews never gave presents on Hanukkah, they borrowed it from Christmas.”
- “Kwanzaa was only invented in the 1960s, why should we care about it?”
- “George Costanza invented Festivus, why does spell-check still refuse to recognize it?.”

While some may expect me to similarly question the veracity or authenticity of holidays, I will refrain, largely because my personal perspective is “live, and let live”. 

No culture exists in a vacuum, and traditions evolve as a course of nature.

Celebrating Light

Creators of Meaning

We imbue both traditions and colors with meaning. Many cultures light a candle to memorialize a loved one, or metaphorically, of a light that was extinguished.

This past summer, we saw the linguistic connections between white and happiness, beauty, kindness, and charity. 

When researching glow sticks, we saw how traditions evolved to include glow sticks instead of candles, with the same meaning. We also saw how glow sticks provided an additional metaphor and a new tradition for some, one in which the broken is an opportunity to provide more light.

Beyond the Metaphor

Light and joy are not simply metaphorically connected. There is a real relationship between darkness and depression. SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) is a mood disorder often treated with exposure to artificial light which mimics sunlight.

The sun does not simply provide light. It creates a chemical reaction. In humans, we associate that with the generation of Vitamin D. In plants, it causes photosynthesis, which is responsible for chlorophyll creation.

Evergreen

The evergreen plant is therefore similarly a celebration of the sunlight, and a reminder that the sun will return, and that spring will come soon. 

If lighting a candle is a prayer, featuring an evergreen is a metaphor for hope.

The True Meaning of Saturnalia

Many people try to point to the Roman festival of Saturnalia as the root of Christmas, and point some of the ways that the holiday was celebrated, including gambling and wearing that silly hat. They had a tradition where a fool or a child would be a king for a day, and people would have to follow his rules. Many medieval Christian communities followed suit.

The Roman god Saturn was linked to the Greek god of Kronos, so Saturnalia was said to be translation of the Greek holiday of Kronia. Except that's not exactly correct.

Each member of the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities were associated with multiple concepts. For example, Athena wasn't only the goddess of Peace, but also of War and of Wisdom. Saturn and Kronos were gods of Time and Agriculture, among other things.

As such, Kronia, or Kronos' version of the holiday was a harvest festival that did not take place anywhere near the winter solisitice. Moreover, his version of the holiday seemed rather tame by comparison. One of the things noted was that everyone would eat together, and there wouldn't be distinction between freemen and slaves during that period.

We do, however, see a different source for this type of seasonal appropriate celebration from the Greek.

Wine and Ritual Madness

There were different names for prayers to different gods. If you wanted to worship Apollo, the god of Sun, Light, and Archery, you would say a paean. A paean is a song of thanksgiving, specifically for Apollo as healer. But when Apollo left Delphi for three months every year, ie, there was no sunlight, people would begin to say dithyrambs. Dithyrambs were a more ecstatic version of poetry, associated with Dionysus, the god of Wine and Ritual Madness, among other things. 

Therefore, during the time of year when the world was the darkest, people would have some fun and worship Dionysus. Which explains why the Roman Saturnalia which took place around the winter solistice would feature a fool to take the place of the king, to represent how Dionysus ruled when Apollo was absent. 

What is not completely clear, though, is if Saturnalia was, therefore, still a form of harvest festival. Which would not be the craziest thing in the world.

There was Roman writer around 400 CE named Macrobius who had associated Saturnalia with being a festival of light. But Macrobius wasn't actually born in Rome, so it is unclear how a harvest holiday (which is generally a hyper-local event) for a god of Agriculture could be expanded to an empire which included locations that didn't actually have a midwinter harvest.

Ancient Egypt

During the Old Kingdom, the Ancient Egyptians would have a festival around this period of time (which many scholars would question precisely when it is), but it would be less to celebrate light in the darkness, rather to celebrate the upcoming harvest. In the Middle East, what we would associate with the “winter” is in fact the rainy season, and it was when the Nile River was flooded, thus irrigating the crops. 

They would use time-telling devices called gnomons to track the year by the sun's height and place in the sky. The solistice would act as a signfier for them of a different sort. When the days would begin to get longer again, it would be a sign that the harvest was soon to come.

So the celebration would be for a good harvest. 

Hanukkah

Hanukkah is a time that is associated with miracles.  What precisely the miracle is, is a completely different question. If you ask two people, you'll get three opinions.

Light as Wisdom

While in graduate school, one of my jobs was at the Institute of Narratology, and one of the stories it was my job to research as about the mother with her seven sons. The short version is that each of the seven sons is asked by the king to go against their faith, and each refuses, and is killed. The mother then dies as well.

In 2 Maccabees (~150BCE), the sons refuses pork and each expresses their belief and faith in God.

In 4 Maccabees (100 - 200 CE), the sons each highlight the importance of reason and logic, and how the king is considered to be a fool.

In the bTalmud (~500CE), each of the sons refuses to worship an idol, because there is only one God.

The Midrash of Lamentations Rabbah (~500 CE) includes many paragraphs which mock Athenians as unintelligent, whereas even the children of Jerusalem are more wiser than them.

In the version of the mother and her seven sons there, the youngest son holds an extended debate citing Biblical sources, constantly rebuffing the emperor's fallacious logic about God.

Harvest Festival Redux (Hanukkah version)

By the end of 2 Maccabees, the earliest source, we read how the Maccabees purified and reconsecrated the Temple, with the word "Hanukkah" meaning consecration.

And then something weird happens: They had a festival for 8 days, comparing it explicitly to Sukkot, the autumnal harvest festival. They took the same willows and palm fronds as they did on Sukkot, to create a holiday of thanksgiving to God.

In other words, Hanukkah was also originally a harvest festival?

Chabad and Santa Claus

With movies like the "Miracle on 34th Street" highlighting the "miracle" of Christmas, and Chabad bringing the menorah prominently into the public sphere, it is easy to ask if these are in the true spirit of the holiday?

Holidays have always evolved. But more than that, every year, a different aspect of the holiday may be particularly poingant. We are able to reinterpret the original story and expand its meaning, with relevance for the current day.

One example is that in 14th century Spain, the miracle of Hanukkah was considered to be about Judith seducing Holofernes with cheese and wine, and decapitating him. That's why they ate wine and cheese.

As an earlier commentator had noted, miracles are part of the course of nature.

Color and Context

I keep discovering seemingly ambiguous color relationships. For example, a green cross could indicate a cannabis dispensary, or a WWI chemical munition. The bright green glow stick could connote a memorial or a rave.

One way to look at syncretism is that it’s the practice of providing new meaning to a different culture’s symbols. 

Two cultures give gifts, each to celebrate a different idea.
Two cultures light a candle, each with da ifferent inspiration.
Two cultures gamble, with a different meaning behind every spin.

Legally, intent matters, even though to the outsider, the intent perhaps can’t be seen. The outsider may conflate the two, but that doesn’t change things.

Prop Theory

A holiday allows us to recreate a different time and place, with the props we have at our disposal. The same way that a short 4th grader could play the tall President Lincoln in a school play, or children could play the wise men in their church’s Nativity play, means that we don’t need to get bogged down with historiographical details like “when exactly was Jesus born?”

Instead we should have debates about the best topping for latkes. Maybe this year try something green, like guacamole. Even though our grandparents (if they had ever seen one) would have likely called the avocado an "alligator pear".

We use what we have to remember and honor the past and to hope for a better future.