Three Kings’ Day. Epiphany. Twelfth Night. Whatever you want to call it. Last night was the last night of the Christmas Season. Yes, Christmas. Not so you’d notice since the Valentine’s Day shizzle went on sale December 24th. The 12 Days of Christmas song? that actually refers to the days after Christmas, the time between the birth of little baby Jesus and the arrival of Malchior, Balthazar, and Duane (or whatever the other king is named.)
Kings or Wise Men? Either way, they came from afar. They were not of the land of Judea, and for all I know they were not of the people of Israel at all. Herod was technically an Israelite, but he was happy to adopt whatever religion would give him a political edge. These Wiseguys show up and are all “Where is the King of the Jews?” and Herod is all “Over here, yo!” and the Wiseguys are all “No, we mean the baby,” and Herod’s like “What baby?” and the Guys are like “Um.” So Herod offers them a finder’s fee, right? He’ll latch on the what ever hocus pocus he hears about a star and a virgin giving birth in the suburbs in order to hold on to his power.
And power never changes. Christians started celebrating the birth of Jesus toward the end of the year not because they had a shred of evidence that He was born Then but because the Romans were too busy with their own parties to give a damn about what the Christians were up to. They called it Brumalia and it was, wait for it, a pagan festival of the solstice.
So, centuries later the Romans had become Christians and were trying to dominate Northern Europe when they ran into some hardcore pagan holdouts. You like to light your trees on fire for the solstice? Not to fear, friends, we’ve got this! Those wise men? They came from a fahr! You can be good Roman Catholics and still set your tree on fire. Just wait until January 6th, capiche? Prego!
No great surprise that the pagan tradition and the Christian tradition are all tied up together, right? Not to anyone who has spent a little bit of time studying their Ancient and Medieval History, although I am not sure how broad this group really is. Ok, I’m pretty sure this group is not terribly broad. Those nice old men in the Gideons, for example, probably don’t have much of a background in this stuff. They just want to hand out their KJV New Testaments to the kids because TWJWD. Or TWSTPAULWD anyway.
And doing what St. Paul would do could understandably make even a modern day pagan nervous. After all, if you went ahead and burned your tree on December 22nd you ran the risk of being tied to the burning tree on January 6th. Fortunately, for all our faults, we don’t do that anymore. There is a lot we don’t do in this day and age of free exercise of religion, but I have to disagree with a dear pagan friend who would like our society to be one of freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion.
First of all, I don’t think that’s realistic, but more to the point, I don’t think it is desirable. I want Tallulah to know about her grandma’s witchy ways and about grandpa’s bar mitzvah. Neither one of them are around to tell about it, so I need someone else in the community to do it. I also want her to know about The Prophet, The Buddah, the Ten Gurus, Gaia, Wakan Tanka, and whatever else I don’t know about. The promise of multiculturalism is not just that I get to do my own thing but that we all get to do our things together. If this makes some people laugh, or scorn, or bully, then we get to help them grow up. And no one gets burned in the process.