When the daily Google Doodle is pushing something, then you can be 100 percent sure it will be misleading or approved for some wrong reason - and the pernicious nonsense today is that this is the 'first day' of Winter!
What!? In fact today is the Winter Solstice, variously Mid-winter (in the same astronomical sense that the 21st of June is often Midsummer); and the end of one astronomical year - with tomorrow the first day of the true New Year.
Certainly 21 December is early in Winter, only about one month into it, in this part of the world - but if we determine to divide the year into equal seasons of three months (which most people seem inclined to do) then most of December must be included in order that March retain its place as the start of Spring and June as the beginning of Summer.
Does it matter? Pay Attention! - Of course it matters!
- Why else would they be trying to change it? The more we can be disconnected from awareness-of and contact-with the natural world; the more our beliefs and practices become arbitrary, absurd and against common sense - the better it is for the demonic agenda: the less rooted, the worse orientated, the more easily we can be swayed and redirected and inverted...
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And the business of wishing people 'A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' - don't people see that that that is about denigrating Christmas?
Do we wish people "Happy Birthday and a Good Easter" or sing "Happy Birthday to you/ Have a great summer holiday", or "Happy Birthday Jane!... but not fogetting Joan who will be having her Birthday quite soon as well".
No - our congratulations are, and must be, fixed on that which is being celebrated - not bracketting something that comes a week afterwards. Otherwise we are dealing an indirect insult to the thing we are supposed to be celebrated here-and-now.
Isn't the birth of Jesus enough? - that we have to append to it a wholly meaningless 'New Year' of the First of January - an (again) arbitrary date that is neither Christianly significant nor astronomically relevant. And not even the most important of the arbitrary year divisions...
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/new-year-significance-of-this.html
To celebrate New Year on the First of January is evidence of a society adrift, a society that has forgotten the most important things in life.
Yes, I know about that dreadful carol 'We wish you a Merry (yelped) Chriss-mas/ And a Happy New Year - Good Tidings we bring/ To you and your Kin(g)' etc... That is exactly what I mean - cheery meaningless drivel. 'We all like figgy pudding' indeed - a song of fake bonhomie for materialistic, grasping, greedy and atheistic carol-singers, if ever there was one.
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So, a Happy Christmas to you.
(That's it.)
7 comments:
My three-year-old told my neighbor "Happy Christmas" and I thought "no... it's Merry" but didn't say anything. Then I read "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and saw it as "Happy again - and now you! Certainly we should listen to our children.
"Merry Christmas" is actually the older, more traditional greeting, still preserved in America.
@WmJas - I know - and it has an appropriate Jovian pagan connotation; but it has been preserved for the wrong reasons - ie that Merry is the standard, rather cloying, euphemism for public, extravert alcoholic intoxication with disinhibition.
December 21st is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. It is Winter Solstice. It is also the first day of winter from a perspective of the calendar. Why it is that way probably has more to do with the lag between weather and solar seasons. If we go back 45 days to November 7th and forward 45 days to February 4th there is a distinct difference in mean temperature, snow and ice accumulation, et cetera. My suspicion is that this is why the calendar has its seasons offset by 45 days to the solar seasons.
@Nick - I can't make sense of your comment, I'm afraid; except that the coldest and hottest times of year (on average) do indeed come after the solstices - there is a lag; maybe that is what you intend by the offset. That was one of the points of my post.
Ah, as in "eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die"? Perhaps it still has that connotation in England. In America, the word is pretty much used for Christmas greetings only. It never occurred to me to associate it with drunkenness.
@Wm - I don't really object to Merry on its own, and the Dickensian aspect is quite appealing; but dislike the phrase with New Year included.
The British have a particular problem with alcohol, and a blind spot about that problem.
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