If this happened today in our litigious age, pagans would sue Christians for copy write infringement. Christianity borrowed (some would say stole) its best unscriptural material from another religious tradition (and then chose to refer to that tradition as "pagan" a Latin word for ignorant country folk). This has been one heck of a successful marketing plan. And I have to add that the Christians are not alone in this, this is the tradition of religion, conversion by assimilation and accommodation. "When you can't beat them, join them."

In his book, The Winter Solstice, author John Matthews explains

The word "solstice" is Latin and it means "sun stands still". Our ancient ancestors realized that twice a year, at the end of December, and again at the end of June, to the human eye the sun in the sky appears to stand still. Between June and December, the waning of the year (that is the shortening of the year), the days get shorter and shorter until just about December 25th when it becomes obvious to the human eye that the days are growing longer. The real winter solstice is usually December 21 or 22 (which our ancestors also figured out), but it is not apparent to the human eye until a few days later. For a brief, incredible period, time stands still.

If there is any question as to the importance of the winter solstice to our ancestors, one has only to look at the ritual spaces they created all over the world. Sacred sites such as New Grange and Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and Egyptian temples at Karnac, Thebes, and Abydos were all constructed so that on the exact moment that the winter and summer solstices begin, rays of light shoot into the interior chambers, displaying symbols of spirals, daggers, serpents, and solar disks, all testament to the circle of life.

As agricultural people, our ancient ancestors relied on seasonal benevolence and abundant harvests for their very lives, so they created rituals to honor their importance. The Celtic people developed a story about the Triple Goddess and her male partner, who played a dual role as both her consort, the Horned King, and her newborn son. According to the Celts, at Samhain (or Halloween, so late October) the Triple Goddess transitions from Mother to Crone (explain word), and her consort (who last spring was her newborn son) dies or appears as death.

At the Winter Solstice, the Crone transitions into Maidenhood and her dead consort once again becomes her newborn son. Throughout this myth the Triple Goddess ages, but never dies. She was symbolized by evergreen and ivy, two plants that live in winter. And this of course is the root of our Christmas trees, the eternal evergreens that we bring into our homes at the winter solstice to decorate. Our ancestors decorated them with berries, apples, seeds, and ornaments, all symbols of the Triple Goddess' coming fertility, abundance, and spring.

As much as the power of the Triple Goddess interest me, I have a greater interest in her consort/son, the King, because he is the one who dies, often violently, and is reborn. The King was symbolized by the stag (horned deer), the boar, boughs of holly, and the Green Giant. In our reading earlier this morning, the Green Knight enters the court of King Arthur at Christmas time, and the time of the Winter Solstice. An anonymous 14th century text explains

John Matthews insists that the Green Knight enters to "play a terrible Midwinter game with all who would oppose the power of the ancient Solstice." As the Arthurian legend continues, the Green Knight issues this confusing challenge, if someone cuts him with his axe, he will return the same blow in a year's time. Arthur's nephew, Gawain, takes up the challenge and cuts off the Knight's head. Instead of dying, the Green Knight walks over, picks up his head, and tells Gawain he will be back in a year to deliver the same blow to Gawain. The Green Knight is the male consort, the dying winter, and he takes humans with him on his frightening journey of dismemberment and rebirth.

Like Halloween, with its images of otherworldly thresholds, the Winter Solstice is a liminal period where gods are reborn, humans become gods, and death and life simultaneously pass through the gates. Our most ancient ancestors celebrated the solstices with animal and human sacrifice and sometimes cannibalism. And while this sounds just ghastly today, it speaks of the symbolic dismemberment of human life. Symbolic certainly for the seasonal cycles of life, death, and rebirth, but also for the psychological dismemberment we all live.

Who in this world, in this sanctuary, has not faced disappointment and death, losses of some kind. Losses that tear us down and apart and away, losses that bring the death of one version of ourselves, until the forces of life recreate another. Life tests us, breaks us, molds us, and reshapes us.

However, these losses do not come with warranties and sometimes winter is a long season far outlasting the cold outside. A family feud, a health scare, a financial crisis, a substance abuse problem, the death of a loved one, betrayal of family or friend, all dismemberments of our heart and soul. Somehow, like the Green Knight, we must learn to pick up our head and move on into the next year.

The legendary twentieth century scholar of comparative religion, Mircea Eliade, wrote an entire book about shamans, human prophets, magicians, and priests, the mediators between this world and the world of the spirits. According to Eliade, the journey to becoming a shaman includes initiation rites of dismemberment, sometimes ritualized, but often mystical visions, dreams of being eaten, or bitten by a snake, or cut to pieces, powerful metaphors for what it means to be a human.

Dismemberment is the pivotal experience that makes a person a shaman. Eliade goes even farther, to say that it is possible to tell the difference between a fake shaman and a true one. A fake shaman shows no fear. A true shaman lives with terror, for he or she knows dismemberment. Think of this. A true shaman bears the scars and lives.

There was a St. Nicholas, a third-century bishop known for his gifts to the poor. Older than that, there were shamans. Matthews writes

Shamans also hunted reindeer and traveled with them in their visions. Therefore, Santa Claus is the old shaman himself, dressed in the red of blood and fire, driving his flying reindeer visions, bringing gifts of prophecy and hope for the New Year. Our twentieth century Santa has been airbrushed. All his seasonal jolliness makes him fake. However, in the early stories, he must have brought forth his prophecy and gifts with risk and terror. Like the shamans who faced dismemberment, can we heal ourselves? Can we bring gifts of prophecy and hope, gifts that put our broken hearts and souls together, gifts that bring rebirth, and make us whole?

The Winter Solstice tells us "yes!" That beginnings become endings and endings become beginnings, that the Green Knight retrieves his head, that the Triple Goddess births a son in the deep midwinter, that sun returns to the earth, that a 31 year old cancer survivor can adopt an infant son, and Linnea's father, Red, can still fish for trout, while his wife, Ginny, wades alongside with the net. The winter solstice tells us "yes!" with bells and reindeer, holly and ivy, dismemberment and loss, and the gift of renewal. Yes and yes and yes to life and death and life again.

I would like to close with the last lines of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.