Theos-Talk Archives (December 2006 Message tt00920)

Dear Friends, 
 
In 1879 H.P.B. wrote an article on Christmas which remains fundamentally valid today, both as a historical account and as a philosophical reflection. 
 
She said:    
 
“We are reaching  the time of the year when the whole Christian world is preparing the most noted of its solemnities – the birth of the Founder of its religion. When this paper reaches its Western subscribers there will be festivity and rejoicing in every house.  In North-Western Europe and in America the holly and ivy  will decorate each home, and the churches be decked with evergreens; a custom derived from the ancient practices of the pagan Druids ‘that sylvan spirits might flock to the evergreens, and remain  unnipped by frost till a milder season’. In Roman Catholic countries large crowds flock  during the whole evening and night of ‘Christmas Eve’ to the churches, to salute waxen images of the divine Infant, and his Virgin mother, in her garb of ‘Queen of Heaven’. To an analytical mind, this bravery of rich gold and lace, pearl-broidered satin and velvet, and the bejewelled cradle do seem rather paradoxical. When one thinks of the poor, worm-eaten, dirty manger of  the Jewish country-inn, in which, if we must credit the Gospel, the future ‘Redeemer’ was placed at his birth for lack of a better shelter, we cannot help suspecting that before the dazzled eyes of the unsophisticated devotee the Bethlehem stable vanishes altogether. To put it in the mildest terms, this gaudy display tallies ill with the democratic feelings and the truly divine contempt for riches of the ‘Son of Man’ , who had ‘not where to lay his head’. 
 
HPB’s critical analysis goes on, not without an irony: 
 
“It makes it all the harder for the average Christian to regard the explicit statement that  – ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,’ as anything more than a rhetorical threat.  The Roman Church acted wisely in severely forbidding her parishioners to  either read or interpret the Gospels for themselves, and leaving the Book, as long as it was possible, to proclaim its truths in Latin – ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness’. In that, she but followed the wisdom of the ages – the wisdom of the old Aryans, which is also ‘justified of her children’; for, as neither the modern Hindu devotee understands a word of Sanskrit, nor the modern Parsi one syllable of the Zend, so for the average Roman Catholic the Latin is no better than Hieroglyphics. The  result is that all the three – Brahmanical High Priest, Zoroastrian Mobed, and Roman Catholic Pontiff, are allowed unlimited opportunities for evolving new religious dogmas out of the depths of their own fancy, for the benefit of their own churches.” (1)  
 
The reasons why December 25th is the day now set for the celebration of Jesus’ birth are more related to old pagan customs than to any Christian tradition. As HPB explains, in the same text: 
 
“Though now universally observed by Christian nations as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus, the 25th of December was not originally so accepted. The most movable of the Christian feast days,  during the early centuries, Christmas was often confounded with the Epiphany, and celebrated in the months of April and May. As there never was any authentic record, or proof of its identification,  whether in secular or ecclesiastical history, the selection of that day long remained optional; and it was only during  the fourth century that, urged by Cyril of Jerusalem, the Pope (Julius I) ordered the bishops to make an investigation  and come finally to some agreement as to the presumable date of the nativity of Christ. Their choice fell upon the 25th day of December –  and a most unfortunate it has since proved! It was Dupuis, followed by Volney, who aimed, the first shots at this natal anniversary.  They proved that for incalculable periods before our era, upon very clear astronomical data, nearly all the ancient peoples had celebrated the births of their sun-gods on that very day.  ‘Dupuis says,  that the celestial sign of the VIRGIN AND CHILD was in existence several thousand years before the birth of Christ’ – remarks Higgins in  his ‘Anacalypsis’ (2). As Dupuis, Volney and Higgins have all been passed over to posterity as infidels, and enemies to Christianity, it may be as well to quote, in this relation, the confessions of the Christian Bishop of Ratisbone, ‘the most learned man that the Middle Ages produced’ – the Dominican, Albertus Magnus. ‘The sign of the celestial virgin rises above the horizon at the moment in which we fix the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ’, he says. So Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, Apollo, etc., were all born on the 25th of December. Christmas comes just at the time of the winter solstice; the days then are the shortest, and Darkness is more upon the face of the earth than ever. All the sun-gods were believed to be annually born at that epoch; for from this time its Light dispels more and more darkness with each succeeding day, and the power of  the Sun begins to increase.” 
 
HPB dismantles the collective fancy according to which Christianity has its own independent source of inspiration, as a religion.  She describes the pagan roots of Christ birth celebrations:  
 
“However it may be, the Christmas festivities that were held by the Christians for nearly fifteen centuries were of a particular pagan character.  Nay, we are  afraid that even the present ceremonies of the Church can hardly escape  the reproach of being almost literally copied from the mysteries of Egypt and Greece, held in honor of Osiris and Horus, Apollo and Bacchus. Both Isis and Ceres were called “Holy Virgins”, and a DIVINE BABE may be found in every ‘heathen’ religion.” (3) 
 
So what happens if a a modern esotericist looks at the Christmas celebrations taking place around him?   Perhaps he  will be able to see under the surface.  Behind the Christian mask of present day, he may feel the strength of sun-god celebrations made since the dawn of time in the different religious traditions, eastern and western.   
 
So, HPB says: 
 
“Let us, by all means, exchange wishes and gifts (étrennes),  but let us not be ungrateful, Theosophists! Let us not forget that these customs come to us from paganism; and that felicitations and gifts also came to us from the same source. As a matter of fact, gifts (étrennes) are but  the strenae, the presents exchanged by the Latins on the first of January.”(4)  
 
In a footnote, HPB explains  that the word  “January” comes from “Janua”, which means “door” or any kind of entrance; “the door that opens up the year”.  
 
Doors happen to have two faces. And that leads us to another example, for Saint Peter, the doorkeeper of heaven, is in fact a baptized and christianized version of the old pagan god Janus, the double-faced janitor who opens the gates of heaven so that the Sun can appear every morning, and who also opens its gates every new year, while closing the doors for the old days and years. HPB writes:  
 
“Neither a false nose nor a mask could prevent an old pagan from recognizing his double-faced Janus in the Apostle who denied his Master. The two are identical, and everybody has the right to take what is his own, wherever he finds it. Saint Peter is the coeli Janitor merely because Janus was that too. The old doorkeeper of heaven, who pulled the door cord at  the palace of the Sun, and closed it again when ushering them out, is but too easily recognizable in his new role. (...) Solomon has said: ‘There is nothing  new under  the sun’; and he was right.” (5) 
 
The fact  that we recognize Christianity as a pagan religion in its core is certainly not a reason for us to reject it. Probably the opposite. We do not have to go to Mass to see this western religion as it is, an amalgam of ignorance and tradition with some wisdom inside which can still be rescued from its curtain of ritualistic blind-belief.  Besides, we ourselves are probably not so far distant from spiritual blindness that we must feed in ourselves a purified sense of  intellectual contempt for such popular beliefs. And sages do not feel contempt for ignorance. They experience compassion. 
 
Once we  get free from automatic and instinctive rejection or adherence, we can see that  Christmas’ time does have an inner side. It is a celebration of universal brotherhood, a sun-celebration, a homage to the spiritual light within and outside our hearts. As we know, human heart  identifies itself with the sun and with the Christ within, Chrestos. And as we change ourselves and accept the expansion of our consciousness,  we also help change the atmosphere around us. 
 
Best  regards,  Carlos. 
 
 
NOTES: 
 
(1) The Theosophist, Bombay, India, December, 1879, vol I, No. 3, p. 58-59. H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, Volume II, pp. 162-163-164.
 
(2) Boris de Zirkoff, editor of H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, adds: “Book I, p. 313”. 
 
(3) The Theosophist, Bombay, India, December, 1879, pp. 58-59. H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, Volume II, pp. 163-165.  
 
(4) H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, volume XII, 1987, text entitled Thoughts on the New Year, see p. 98.  
 
(5) H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, TPH, volume XII, 1987, text entitled Thoughts on the New Year, see p. 99.  
 


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