Editorial: An unlikely Christmas story

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If you’ve been counting down the days until the winter solstice – the shortest day of the year – congratulations, we made it, and now the days start getting longer.

If it doesn’t seem that way, perhaps it’s because, while the sun begins to set a little later from now until summer, it rises a little later in the day until Jan. 3.

So when Christmas rolls around this Sunday, even though you’ve told yourself, “The days are getting longer,” your eyes aren’t seeing the light of day any earlier.

Some sleep scientists attribute this annual phenomenon as an explanation for the Christmas blues.

But maybe this is why Christmas falls so close to the shortest day of the year – to give us hope.

Despite all the commercialism, a lot of people still celebrate Dec. 25 as the day Jesus of Nazareth was born. Most theologians acknowledge that the date was chosen out of convenience.

Ancient Greeks marked their harvest with the arrival of the great winter planet, and the god for which they named it, by celebrating.

As winter presses on, Saturn arcs higher into the sky and although no one knows for certain, this is likely how the late-December celebration came about – because Christmastime is that time when the planet Saturn is at its highest point. As it begins to descend, the days get longer, and everyone knows summertime is coming.

That sounds like a good reason to party.

According to the Greek writer Lucian, the festival Saturnalia was marked by widespread intoxication, with naked revelers going from house to house, singing and eating human-shaped cookies – a gingerbread man.

About 13 centuries ago, Saint Boniface was sent into the forest to convert the tree-worshipping Germans. Tradition holds, he cut down the mightiest tree and had it brought into his church to get his congregation started.

Imagine you are some poor Hun looking for your giant wooden god, but all you can find is the stump.

A bell rings in the distance and so you make your way into the church.

“O Tannenbaum,” you say, “there you are.”

And you worship.

A couple of centuries prior to that (and some 400 years after the birth of Jesus), the church was able to convert pagans and bring them into the fold by allowing them to continue with their Saturnalia festival.

As good as eating and drinking and cutting down nice-looking trees make us feel, it is a poor recipe for long-term happiness.

With any luck, Christmas morning will find you with family and hopefully a few children around.

And you’ll watch each other unwrap one gift after another and hopefully recognize how fortunate we are to have each other in our lives.

And find hope in the birth of a baby some 2,000 years ago, and faith that better, longer days lie ahead.