Defending Tradition or Cashing In?

In this Lenten season Sarah Palin has announced that she's writing a book about the war on Christmas. The cynic in me knows that this is just her attempt to cash in the phony war on Christmas now that her career in politics and phony TV journalism has gone down the tubes. Even so, the idea of the war on Christmas does resonate with a certain segment of the population.

Palin is trying to sell the book as a statement of her religious beliefs:

According to the publisher, the book will advocate "reserving Jesus Christ in Christmas – whether in public displays, school concerts (or) pageants. Palin also "will share personal memories and traditions from her own Christmases and illustrate the reasons why the celebration of Jesus Christ's nativity is the centerpiece of her faith."

The irony is that most of the manifestations of the Christmas season have absolutely nothing to do with Christ. Christmas trees, wreaths, holly, yule logs, egg nog, mistletoe and all the rest are all pagan European traditions. Many of the traditions associated with the Nativity itself are of pagan origin. Even the day — December 25th — is certainly not the date of Christ's birth, but that of the pagan Roman holiday Saturnalia, the celebration of the winter solstice that took place in the temple to the pagan Roman god Saturn.'

December 25th is also the birthday of Sol Invictus, the Roman sun god and patron of soldiers. There has long been disagreement about whether Christians took that day over, or whether they arrived at December 25th by adding nine months to the vernal equinox, when the Annunciation (the knocking-up of Mary) was celebrated.

Many Christian holidays have pagan antecedents and are steeped in pagan traditions. When I was a kid my mother was a Jehovah's Witness (she has since gotten better, thank you), so I got an earful of this. The Witnesses don't celebrate Christmas because it's a pagan holiday, or even birthdays; they believe that Christ commanded them only to celebrate his death and resurrection. That is, Easter.

But even Easter is littered with pagan traditions. The word "Easter" itself derives from Eostre, a pagan Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess. Hence the eggs and bunny rabbits. In most European languages Easter is based on the word for passover: Pascua (Spanish), Пасха (Russian, Paskha), Pâques (French), and so on.

But our pagan past is everpresent in our daily lives. Literally. In the English and Germanic traditions the days of the week are named for pagan gods. Sunday: the sun god's day (in Rome, Sol Invictus), Monday: the moon god's day, Tuesday: Tiw's or Tyr's day (Tyr was the one-handed Norse god of combat), Wednesday: Woden's day (Odin, the primary Norse god), Thursday: Thor's day (the Norse god of thunder — it's Donnerstag or thunder day in German), Friday: Freya's day (the norse god of beauty, love and sex), Saturday: Saturn's day (the Roman god).

The Graeco-Roman tradition is to name days after the planets, but since those planets are named for gods it's really the same as the Germanic. The interesting thing is that in most European languages there is a deviation from the pagan naming scheme: in the Latin languages Sunday is some form of "the Lord's day": dimanche in French, domingo in Spanish, from the Latin dominus. In German Wednesday is Mittwoch, or mid-week. In Norwegian (and other Scandinavian languages) Saturday is lørdag, or "washing day." But in English we honor the pagan gods to this day.

In Russian the days are numbered, which I'm sure Palin would say was a commie plot against religion. Monday, понедельник (ponedelnik), is the first day of the week; Tuesday,  вторник (vtornik), is the second; Wednesday, среда (sreda), as in German is the middle day; Thursday, четверг (chetverg), is the fourth; Friday, пятница (pyatnitsa), is the fifth. And then it gets interesting: Saturday, суббота (subbota), is literally the Sabbath. Sunday, воскресенье (voskresenye), is literally the Resurrection.

So, even Stalin the atheist used Christian names for Saturday and Sunday, while conservative American Christians like Sarah Palin doggedly insist on propitiating pagan deities every single day of the week. These same conservatives attend church on the day reserved for Sol Invictus, the Roman god of the Unconquered Sun, instead of the true Sabbath, which occurs on Saturday.

In their defense, these conservatives are simply ignorant of the facts, and are carrying on ancient traditions whose origins can only be known by hoary old historians or by divining the linguistic roots of day names. Or by searching Wikipedia.

And that's the "why" of the war on Christmas. Conservatives are mired in tradition, even when that tradition runs completely counter to their professed beliefs. Ostensibly Fox News and Sarah Palin are defending tradition when they natter on about the war on Christmas. But it's really about a far older tradition, one that stretches back to the first pharaoh of Egypt and beyond: making money.