It's the Most Wonderful Time Of the Year
It's the Most Wonderful Time Of the Year
And how Santa got his start as a pagan priest, getting high on mushrooms by drinking reindeer urine
It is a strange thing.
In 1971, 90% of Americans were Christians. 50 years later, that figure was down to 69%, with a corresponding rise from 4% to 21% reporting no religious affiliation. As of 2021, only 47% of Americans report they belong to any religious organization and only 29% report attending religious services weekly.1 The march to a secularized society has been a major trend of the last 50 years and yet, according to the Pew Research Center, 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas. What is it that they are celebrating?
Humans have celebrated the winter solstice since the beginning of documented history, and likely for millennia before that. Ancient societies were completely dependent on nature for survival, and the winter solstice was the most important way post in the cycle of life and death which are the seasons. Many cultures celebrated the winter solstice as the last great feast before the death of Winter punished them with starvation and famine until Spring. Most livestock were slaughtered at this time, as there would not be enough food over the winter to feed them. Most fermentation processes of the previous summer’s crop were complete by the solstice, so the combination of fresh meat and spirits provided for a grand feast. The solstice was also a time of celebration, as the Sun God’s journey to death ended and he was reborn, slowly lengthening the daylight towards life.
The neolithic sites at Stonehenge in England and NewGrange in Ireland are both oriented towards the sun on the day of the winter solstice.
In East Asia the solstice has been celebrated for millennia, demonstrated by the Dongzhi Festival, which began with the Zhou Dynasty of China some time before 256 BC.
In India, the Makara Sankranti is celebrated by Hindus to mark the sun’s transit into Capricorn, and thus the beginning of longer days. It is a Holy day, “with Hindus performing customs such as bathing in holy rivers, giving alms and donations, praying to deities and doing other holy deeds.”
“Yalda Night” was one of the holy nights in ancient Iran, included in the official calendar of the ancient Iranians from 502 BC during the time of Darius I. The festivities that take place on this night are an ancient tradition.2
The Romans celebrated Saturnalia for centuries with a sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn, in the Roman Forum, and a public banquet, followed by private gift-giving, continual partying, and a carnival atmosphere that overturned Roman social norms. Later, Sol Invictus (literally, the Sun Returned) was the preferred religion for many Romans, and Emperor Aurelian declared the Sol religion official and dedicated a new temple on December 25th, 274 AD. Many scholars believe the date of 25th of December was chosen to celebrate Jesus’ birth by the Catholic Church in an effort to subsume the very popular sun worshipping competition the next century. 3
In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated Yule. In recognition of the “return” of the Sun, men would bring together huge logs which were burned for the entirety of the festival, usually about 12 days.
In Germany, the Yule was celebrated similarly, with the addition of the appearance of Oden, a God who made nocturnal flights through the sky at night to determine by observation who would prosper or perish in the coming year.
But the strangest similarity to Christmas’ imagery and traditions, including Santa, come from the shamanic religions of the Arctic and northern Europe and Asia. You won’t believe the parallels:
In the ancestral communities of the Arctic, the winter solstice, which occurs on December 21st, was a ceremonial and festive date. Rituals were conducted that were guided by shamans who collected the Amanita muscaria mushroom, also called fly agaric, which has powerful hallucinogenic properties.
Yes, the most magic of mushrooms - the Amanita muscaria, also called the fly agaric - were the centerpiece of the ceremonial celebration. This is the red and white mushroom that is found under pine trees throughout the Arctic to this day, the first presents under the Christmas tree. You would also recognize this mushroom from the Mario Nintendo series.
Around the solstice, the local shamans/priests would gather the muscaria to seek religious visions. The rituals would include feeding these mushrooms to reindeer - their spirit animal - and/or hanging the mushrooms in stockings over the fire. Both processes reduced the toxicity of the mushrooms so that the shamans could ingest them and experience visions, which included a journey flying all over the land. Once the shamans had completed their journey, they entered the yurt of the tribes people through the chimney (most entrances would covered by snow at this point in the season) to share the gifts of the visions delivered by the Amanita muscaria and the reindeer. I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that Santa got his start as a pagan priest getting high on mushrooms by drinking reindeer urine, but there it is.4
As you can imagine, over time these disparate celebrations - especially in Europe, northern Asia and much of the Middle East and North Africa - were combined, assimilated, borrowed and then largely forgotten as Christianity took over during the Roman period and after. It was still a very European holiday.
In America, Christian Puritans who founded Boston in the 1600s outlawed Christmas as a decadent sinful holiday, also noting that the date is never mentioned in the Bible. After the American revolution, most Americans viewed Christmas as an English tradition and therefore did not wish to celebrate it. In fact, Christmas was not a federal holiday in America until it was declared so on June 26th, 1870, along with Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day and the Fourth of July.
Today, Christmas has taken on a life of its own, outside the remembrance of the birth of Christ. According to the World Economic Forum, Americans spend over $1T on Christmas. The average American will spend approximately $1000 on Christmas presents, and the overall cost on the celebratory day is about $1500 per person (food, drink, decorations, presents, etc.). The average American spends 15 hours shopping for Christmas presents, and 22% report they spend money they don’t have to provide presents.5
We’ve built an entire culture around Christmas that has nothing to do with Christ, including Black Friday and Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. We’ve got football games to watch, holiday parties to attend (with office mates, friends, neighbors and family), and Christmas concerts, shows and other traditions to review. We have tree-lighting ceremonies, tree-decorating parties, the Rockettes, Charlie Brown & the Heat Miser, Elves on Shelves, Gingerbread Houses, Nutcracker Suites and countdowns to Christmas. We have ugly sweaters, candy canes and milk and cookies for Santa. We have egg nog, wreaths and Christmas cards, department store Santas and horrible tasting cookies with frosting on them. But why do we do it all?
The first answer is tradition. Humans crave rituals and the comfort of familiarity. We have celebrated this holiday our whole lives and share a number of very fond memories. It is a time to pause work, gather with loved ones and create memories to last a life time.
Second, the best parts of the Christmas season are full of hope and wishes for peace and joy. We need so much more of this, and less of…
The third, perhaps most influential reason is the money. The presents. The first question after the holiday is not “How was your Christmas?” but instead “What did you get?” Christmas is a huge boost to the economy every year, and marketing, advertising and major corporations make every effort to make it so. One wonders, when Santa will be brought to you by Amazon on a sleigh-like drone?
Instead, let us focus on the spirit of Christmas, even if we are those who no longer believe. Let us find the special moments with our loved ones, and let us pause to thank whatever deity we believe in now for the gifts of our very existence. Even the worst of us have so much to be thankful for, and the rest of us would be challenged to say we deserve the blessings we’ve been gifted. Let us seek out ways to share our gratitude and love our fellow humans and realize that we are all in this together, as always.
May peace and joy break out across the land this Christmas season. War is over, if you want it.
All percentages from Gallup, 2021
Quote and information about Arctic shamanism taken from “The Influence of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms on Christmas”