The Coming of the Sun/Son

By Ronnie Robertson - Winter Sunrise IMG_1027, CC BY-SA 2.0

We around the church take the importance of Christmas as a given these days.
But it wasn’t always so.

The Gospel of Mark doesn’t mention a word about the birth of Jesus nor was Christmas part of the early church. Some did start gathering annually by the third century for a kind of commemoration of Jesus’ birth. Eventually the Roman Church in the 4th century fixed the date of December 25th for a feast day to honor Jesus’ birth. Yet, centuries later, some of our ancestors of faith on the Puritan side of the UCC family actually forbade the celebration of Christmas as too Catholic and as an expression of inappropriate frivolity. (Of course, they weren’t very good at most any fun or festivity.) It was the 19th century influence of the Oxford Movement, of Charles Dickens, and of retailers that won the day for our modern form of a gift-giving and family gathering Christmas holiday of import.

My many years around religious studies, churches, and Christmas tells me that lurking behind all of this is something deeper that makes Christmas important: the winter solstice.

Christmas is our Solstice.
Christmas is a connection of cosmos and Christ.

Throughout history, seasonality and the movements of the stars and planets were important to peoples all around the world. All cultures knew that we are part of the earth and that tracking the earth’s rhythms is essential for life. The peoples who lived far enough away from the equator knew that there is an importance in marking the travel of the sun. Life for so many depends on the seasonal return of the sun’s light and the new life it brings.

While our Easter holiday is wonderfully tied to earth through the cycles of the moon, our Christmas holiday is tied to the earth rhythm of the sun, to the return of the light. That is why it is the perfect day to celebrate the incarnation of the Christ Light in Jesus’ birth. The light of the sun comes amidst darkness and the Light of Christ also comes amidst the intangible darkness of soul and society. The sun returns when the Son is born and so the Son must be born when the sun returns. Each coming begets the birth and growth of Light and Life.

While we mark December 21-22 as winter solstice, the ancient Romans marked it as…. you guessed it…. December 25th.

Christmas is our Solstice.
Christmas is a connection of cosmos and Christ.

I look forward to sharing the return of the Light with you all.

Blessings,
JT