Sat Ma­haraj

Nu­mer­ous Web sites pro­vide a di­ver­si­ty of opin­ions about the ori­gin of Christ­mas. These his­tor­i­cal da­ta fo­cus on the north­ern hemi­sphere and the win­ter pe­ri­od has an in­flu­ence on the way dif­fer­ent coun­tries and cul­tures cel­e­brate. Christ­mas in some coun­tries al­so dif­fer from the De­cem­ber 25 tra­di­tion. The cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas, while cur­rent­ly adopt­ed by the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty, is re­al­ly an amal­gam of cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions. Even now the new Christ­mas is slow­ly los­ing its Chris­t­ian flavour and be­com­ing an ob­ser­vance of the he­do­nis­tic char­ac­ter of a con­sumer so­ci­ety.

Christ­mas roots can be traced to the win­ter fes­ti­vals of many cul­tures. Rea­sons in­clud­ed the fact that less agri­cul­tur­al work needs to be done dur­ing the win­ter, as well as peo­ple ex­pect­ing longer days and short­er nights. The as­pect of gift giv­ing can be traced di­rect­ly to the Ro­man fes­ti­val of Sat­ur­na­lia; green­ry, lights and char­i­ty from Ro­man New Year, and Yole logs and var­i­ous foods from Teu­ton­ic feasts. Dr David Keys Ar­chae­ol­o­gy Cor­re­spon­dent of the UK based In­de­pen­dent news­pa­per, claimed "Three Cen­turies Be­fore Christ's Birth, Peo­ple Cel­e­brat­ed De­cem­ber 25" (12-24-2003). Dr Keys stat­ed that arche­ol­o­gists; have traced the ori­gins of the first Christ­mas to be cel­e­brat­ed on De­cem­ber 25, 300 years be­fore the birth of Christ.

The orig­i­nal event marked the con­se­cra­tion of the an­cient world's largest sun god stat­ue, the 34m tall, 200 ton Colos­sus of Rhodes.

It has long been known that De­cem­ber 25 was not the re­al date of Christ's birth and that the de­ci­sion to turn it in­to Je­sus' birth­day was made by Con­stan­tine' the Ro­man Em­per­or, in the ear­ly fourth cen­tu­ry AD. But ex­perts be­lieve the ori­gins of that de­ci­sion go back to 283 BC, when, in Rhodes, the win­ter sol­stice oc­curred at about sun­rise on De­cem­ber 25.

The event was pre­served by aca­d­e­mics on Rhodes or in Alexan­dria, and seems to have been passed to Cae­sar by the ldel­lenis­tic Egypt­ian sci­en­tists, who ad­vised him on his cylin­dri­cal re­forms.

The date was cho­sen be­cause the em­per­or seems to have be­lieved that the Ro­man sun god and Christ were vir­tu­al­ly one and the same, and the sun's birth­day had been de­creed as De­cem­ber 25 some 50 years ear­li­er by one of Con­stan­tine's pre­de­ces­sors, the Em­per­or Au­re­lia. He, in turn, seems to have cho­sen De­cem­ber 25 be­cause, ever since Julius Cae­sar's cal­en­dar re­forms of 46 BC, that date had been fixed as the of­fi­cial win­ter sol­stice, even though the re­al date for the sol­stice in Cae­sar's time was De­cem­ber 23. Due to the sus­pect his­to­ry of Christ­mas, the cel­e­bra­tion is in it­self ob­served on a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent days in dif­fer­ent na­tions.

The Ser­bian Or­tho­dox Church us­es the tra­di­tion­al Ju­lian Cal­en­dar, as per which Christ­mas Day (De­cem­ber 25) falls cur­rent­ly on Jan­u­ary 7 of the Gre­go­ri­an Cal­en­dar.

This day is called by Serbs the first day of Christ­mas, and the fol­low­ing two are ac­cord­ing­ly called the sec­ond, and the third day of Christ­mas. Geor­gians cel­e­brate Christ­mas on Jan­u­ary 7 (Ju­lian cal­en­dar). Ar­me­ni­ans cel­e­brate Christ­mas on Jan­u­ary 6. When it comes to giv­ing presents, Sin­terk­lae­savond (St N'cholas Evening, De­cem­ber 5) re­mains more im­por­tant in the Nether­lands than Christ­mas, al­though in re­cent years, the Dutch have start­ed to cel­e­brate Christ­mas Eve with San­ta as well. This sparks mi­nor con­tro­ver­sy each year over when it is "ap­pro­pri­ate" to start cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas. In Spain, the Christ­mas hol­i­days last from De­cem­ber 24 to Jan­u­ary 6 and are re­ferred to as "Navi­dad". The ma­jor day of cel­e­bra­tion in Nor­way, as in most of North­ern Eu­rope, is De­cem­ber 24.

In Den­mark, Christ­mas is cel­e­brat­ed on De­cem­ber 24, which is re­ferred to as Juleaften. Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tion in Rus­sia is not as wide­ly fol­lowed as in west­ern coun­tries in favour of the New Year cel­e­bra­tion Christ­mas is cel­e­brat­ed on Jan­u­ary 7 (which cor­re­sponds to De­cem­ber 25 in the Ju­lian Cal­en­dar). Here in T&T, the Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions have a unique flavour be­cause of our great re­li­gious di­ver­si­ty. We were all brought here by our Chris­t­ian colo­nial con­querors as slaves or semi­s­laves to work the sug­ar plan­ta­tions. And in the con­fines of the bar­racks they de­vel­oped their ways of cel­e­bra­tion.

The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty al­so ex­changed gifts and the scent of cur­ry fil­tered the vil­lage at­mos­phere. There are ar­eas that still re­tain the tra­di­tion of the vil­lagers go­ing to dif­fer­ent homes singing and en­joy­ing the fes­ti­val.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this fes­ti­val that is steeped in re­li­gious tra­di­tion has been re­duced to wor­ship of Lord Bac­cha­na­lia, the God of al­co­hol and drinkers. Our lo­cal me­dia is paid hand­some­ly to en­cour­age our peo­ples to ac­quire high priced al­co­holic drinks es­pe­cial­ly from Scot­land.

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha