{"id":53,"date":"2007-12-24T09:38:03","date_gmt":"2007-12-24T09:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2007\/12\/happy-babylonian-holiday.html"},"modified":"2007-12-24T09:38:03","modified_gmt":"2007-12-24T09:38:03","slug":"happy-babylonian-holiday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2007\/12\/happy-babylonian-holiday.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Babylonian Holiday!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So apparently December 25 started out as a holiday to worship the son of Isis. Then in Roman times it was Saturnalia, then later a Northern European pagan holiday, until in 350AD Pope Julius decreed that Christ&#8217;s birth would be celebrated on December 25, in an apparent move to ease the transition of European pagans to his church. Jesus may&#8217;ve been born in September, but definitely not in December.<br \/>\nNow, why does historical deconstruction matter? It doesn&#8217;t really. Except when you want to know how the process of rest and celebration can be co-opted to fit a political agenda. Now Christmas is the past-peak fuel for a cheesepuff economy. Kind of makes you miss Saturnalia. Come back, Caesar.<br \/>\nAnd by the way, if anyone wanted to begin a new holiday in September to reflect upon and rejoice in the life example of the man known as Jesus, I would be into that very much. No presents allowed. Except DIY, like the man himself.<br \/>\nOkay, nuff with the bah humbug. After you deconstruct, you have to reconstruct. Otherwise you&#8217;re just an asshole (speaking personally). If there&#8217;s one thing interdependence has taught me, it&#8217;s that any confused form can be contextualized,\u00a0 reinterpreted and returned to it&#8217;s Buddha nature. So if you&#8217;re caught up in this season, enjoy it. Or not it, but the people you&#8217;re with. If you&#8217;re Jewish, enjoy the Chinese food (Order me some bean curd szechuan style). And if you can tell someone you love them&#8230;sounds like a plan.<br \/>\nBTW The best Christmas Movie of all time is Scrooged starring Bill Murray. What Would Jesus Buy is a good one too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So apparently December 25 started out as a holiday to worship the son of Isis. Then in Roman times it was Saturnalia, then later a Northern European pagan holiday, until in 350AD Pope Julius decreed that Christ&#8217;s birth would be celebrated on December 25, in an apparent move to ease the transition of European pagans&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Happy Babylonian Holiday! - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2007\/12\/happy-babylonian-holiday.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Happy Babylonian Holiday! - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So apparently December 25 started out as a holiday to worship the son of Isis. Then in Roman times it was Saturnalia, then later a Northern European pagan holiday, until in 350AD Pope Julius decreed that Christ&#8217;s birth would be celebrated on December 25, in an apparent move to ease the transition of European pagans&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2007\/12\/happy-babylonian-holiday.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-24T09:38:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ethan Nichtern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Happy Babylonian Holiday! - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2007\/12\/happy-babylonian-holiday.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Happy Babylonian Holiday! - One City","og_description":"So apparently December 25 started out as a holiday to worship the son of Isis. 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. 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