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Edited on Tue Dec-21-04 10:21 AM by emad
The Norse solstitial festival, season of the sun's rebirth, assimilated to Christmas in the Middle Ages along with its pagan trappings: holly, ivy, pine boughs, lighted trees, wassail bowls, suckling pigs (!), Yule logs, seasonal songs, gifts, and feasting.
Some said the god of Yule was Kris Kringle - ie a Christ of the Orb, a new solar king. But most northern folk remembered the reborn god as Frey.
In France it was celebrated in honor of another phallis god, like Cernunnos. The ancient Romans celebrated the solstice feastday in the form of Saturnalia, honoring Saturn (Roman name for Cronus) as the Black Sun (Aciel) of Chaldean astrologers, the Lord of Death, the Sun of Night.
The ancient Greeks celebrated this day as a feast of the god Tammuz - the Hellenisized name taken up by the Christians as Thomas, whose saintsday it is today. Tammuz was the Dying Savior of the Jerusalem cult (Ezekiel 8:14) whose rites became supplanted by those of Jesus. Tammuz then became Doubting Thomas, challenging Jesus's claim to authentic apotheosis and resurrection in the flesh. He resfused to believe in his rival's return from death until he had probed his wounds. Then Thomas-Tammuz announced his acceptance of Jesus as "my Lord and God" (John 20:28) - or so the Gospel would have it.
The story of Doubting Thomas appears only in the so-called Gnostic Gospel of John, written more than 150 years after Jesus's purported lifetime.
During the 4th century a shrine at Edessa was taken over by followers of this new Tammuz - now called St Thomas, Apostle to India, and the usual phony relics were installed........
In Italy a sacrificial victim was chosen during the Midwinter feast to represent the Lord of Death God himself and the king-surrogate. He was slain and sent to the underworld to merge with his divine counterpart:
"It was the universal practice in ancient Italy. wherever the worship of Saturn prevailed, to choose a man who played the part and enjoyed all the traditional priviledges of Saturn for a season, and then died, whether by his own or another's hand...."
Though the killing was gradually replaced by a symbolic one, the festival was never abandoned and in Christian times it became part of the midwinter Carnival. "The mock execution of King Carnival is a vestige of the ancient Saturnalia, when the man WHO HAS ACTED AS KING OF THE REVELS WAS ACTUALLY PUT TO DEATH AT THE END OF HIS REIGN." -
No internet link to this source but my thanks to Barbara G Walker, "The Woman's Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets".....
NOMINATIONS for this year's King Carnival, coming to the end of his reign?????
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