Cold, Red Incense, And Blur

Many Western cultures, including countries that once were under Western rule, celebrate Christmas to honor peace and goodwill to humankind. 

Originally, though, these nations were among the cultures who practiced polytheistic religions that more or less resembled and sprung from the Indo-European culture, which pervaded in Mesopotamia, Assyria, India, and all the way to Norway, Gaul, Greece, Rome, and other European countries in antiquity.  This explains why the gods in mythology sometimes resembled one another in function (i.e. Odin, Zeus, and Jupiter; Venus, Cybele, and Freya; Isis, Kali, and Kwannon).  Egyptian gods are also similar except for roles of some male and female deities that were reversed compared to those in most other cultures, earning ancient Egyptians a reputation that they did everything backwards.

It has been said from the great deserts sprang forth three great monotheistic religions: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity.  Islam and Judaism pray to one God only; Islam may have the prophet Mohammed, but he is not one Moslems pray to or worship.  In contrast, Roman Catholic faithfuls practice praying to patron saints in addition to the one true God.  Given it was originally transited from a polytheistic religion, and minor deities evolved to names of minor ‘saints’ to aid ‘conversion’ while retaining the deitic identities for the originally pagan races.

There are other Christian groups who do not observe the worship of saints.  However, they also recognize the belief in the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, which is a comparatively more complex attempt to understand the one true God, and an essential component to Christian worship, including Roman Catholicism.  It is why I think, technically, and if you prefer to take things literally, the genuinely monotheistic religions today are only two: Islam and Judaism.

After the concept of Christianity was integrated into the existing Indo-European, polytheistic cultures as imposed gradually by leader of the vast empire, Constantine the Great.  The Christmas day we know was picked by the Roman Catholic Church.  In addition to the fact that Romans used transposition for their saints and feast days, the Jewish people also use an entirely different system for their calendar.  Therefore it is not likely December 25 is the exact commemorative date for the birth of the man we know as the Christ.  Christmas was originally a holiday celebrated in the West to honor Tammuz, the Indo-European deity identified with cyclical regeneration (he dies!  He lives again!), whose ‘mythic’ life integrates a love story with romantically suicidal self-castration!  If you check medieval holidays, there are other days with pagan origins most of which, like Christmas, evolved into Christian celebrations such as The Summer Solstice, Carnivale, Easter, Halloween, Martinmas, the Advent, Michaelmas, and Candlemas.

Islam does not celebrate Christmas, or even honor Christ as the deliverer of the People as Christ is descended from family patriarchs that, technically, cheated Ishmael from his birthright to Abraham’s clan, and Moslems believe Mohammed is the prophet who showed the people the Way.

The Jews, however, also don’t celebrate Christmas.  For one, they have not determined that Jesus is the Messiah.  The Jews were expecting the Messiah as a King as glorious as David, not someone who died, and then had the death interpreted as someone who ‘died for the sins’ of all, including Gentiles.  Secondly, if you check the books, most accounts of Jesus have not been actually detailed by Jesus himself, but by people who witnessed Jesus and his works. 

The most notable deviation from the traditional Jewish faith is the way life should be lived according to the records and letters written by the apostle Paul.  His philosophy talked of salvation for all — not only people of the faith, but including Gentiles, or the traditional heathens who did not observe customs dictated by God and recorded in the Torah.  It is also interesting that Paul and Jesus Christ never met; the apostle said he was inspired by the Holy Ghost to eventually convert from a consistent Christian persecutor to a Christian champion.  Perhaps these are reasons that contribute to doubts regarding Jesus as the true Messiah in Jewish tradition.

A slice of history that partially explains some of the great divides that we can never fully understand… but December 25 serves well to call many nations to remember peace and love and family and friends, at least once a year.  Merry Christmas to all.

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DSTS, recovering from a fever, is still sniffling, and yet there he is with a mug of ice cream.  Great, man.  We headed off his day with an earlier visit to a church, a temple and mad rush visits to elders to pay respects to before they head off to their holidays with family and friends.  It’s like the Amazing Race, only we have no allowance from Phil and it’s hell to commute now.  Next week I’ll be lining up for government paperwork.  Hopefully some offices are still functional?  And I just realized I’ve been home for a week!  With a new SIM card!  And I haven’t received a phone call from the Bat Phone!

Okay… should I be thankful, or expect a dark cloud of foreboding looming over my head?

PS — Three cheers for the Liempo, now older and infinitely wiser.

See ‘No? Hear ‘No? Speak ‘No?

Promo spotted for Yahoo! Philippines that utilized interesting iconic mascots:

Monkeys are great.  Grew up watching those Tarzan reruns, and Cheetah was so cool — he was like a dog named Hamster.  The episodes taught me the wisdom of raising a semi-tame monkey in a jungle where it is not likely to eat our grandfather’s stamp collection.  So really, I have nothing against monkeys used in marketing things by Pinoys, for Pinoys… except that Yahoo! Philippines is not really Pinoy.  Maybe I’m just being illogically paranoid, but let’s briefly touch on history.

In his works, Jose Rizal characterized Spaniards of the colonial period to often use the derogatory slur, ‘indio chonggo’.  During the Spanish-American War and upon occupation, Americans were documented to refer to native ‘tailless brown monkeys’ and saying ‘monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga’.

Okay, those were eons ago, right?  Indio chonggo is so outdated.  Now something in more recent times.  Jinkz recounted a conversation between him, another Filipino colleague, and two obnoxious guys — French customers of a previous employer — who casually interjected comments to the effect of, “You look like monkeys.  Filipinos are monkeys,” and, turning to one of them, ” … can I call you Monkey?”

Because sadly, this was and still is the status quo, not exactly helped by the country’s state of seemingly perpetual rut.

Does anybody even remember… wait, I forgot — the Philippines is a ‘Christian nation’ (what demographics, right?).  Let bygones be bygones, and have a laugh while you’re at it, too.  I mean, take a look at that shrine erected by a local government body in Pampanga to Japanese World War II veterans, of all people, because the Japanese invested much into the area, and because as a nation we enjoy anything Sony and Casio and Epson and sushi and Naruto, and because Go-Go Yubari looks cool in a short skirt wielding a spiked ball-and-chain, and because many Japanese men married Filipinas, and because Filipinos, unlike prideful Asian counterparts, are into… forgiveness.  Never mind thinking what this, a respect to investors, does to honoring the memories of the women and children who suffered and died, and those other veterans whose comrades marched to their deaths.  Then we get back to the real world and wonder why our collective identity isn’t taken seriously.  Seriously?  We can’t afford it.

Histrionics aside, how’s national pride defined to the present generations… does it even exist?  I don’t know if Yahoo! deployed the characters for the promo as a tongue-in-cheek joke… or maybe the company merely employed people who were absolutely brilliant that they did not bother to research on racial insults of foreigners intended for natives of a country that, as helplessly frustrating as it is, took to colonial mentality the way brown babies did to Gerber processed foods.

Is this even a big deal?  It is highly likely I am chewing my rear end off for nothing.  Maybe the marketing team for Yahoo! Philippines comprises Pinoys.  Who were inspired by Gorillaz.  And the indigenous Philippine monkeys (come visit the Philippines!).  They’re just cartoon characters, for cheesecakes.  And Yahoo! is a boon to humankind!  Buti nga may customized mascots pa… the monkeys look cute nga, eh.  The company just wants to give away Nokia phones in a fun and hip manner!  What the fuck is my problem.

Fusion Confusion

Okay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.  I’m taking up where the Lent funk left off on Good Friday.  I can’t help it, it’s the geekness in me.

When I was four, I was terrified of the Lent.  You see… back home, there were devotees who tortured themselves under the hot sun.  Lots of them.  Way serious acts of penance, and they walked by houses in long, bloody parades!  Okay, we have pain and empathy for the theme… but shouldn’t this be rated R for violence or something?  I mean, look what happened to kids like me!

Some penitents actually got nailed on crosses.  That time, I thought it was gross and disturbing… and well, I still do.  What can I say, I’m a wimp. Unless you’re weaned on Natural Born Killers, don’t you get squeamish as well, seeing blades slash across men’s and women’s backs?  And it is disturbing, when in fact, the Bible accounts of a law forbidding faithfuls to pierce or hurt any part of the body, or adorn the body with images (tattoos).  Animals were for the sacrafices, the human body was not… the logic there being the body is a gift to you from God, therefore you’re supposed to take good care of it.  For the pagans, however, that sort of thing was normal.  The question now is how come things like these find its way inot traditions supposedly Christian in origin, huh?  Huh?

Some of these practices actually have pagan things mixed in.  During the Christianization of Europe in the early centuries, many leaders figured it would be easier to replace the beliefs, as opposed to telling the people what they’ve believed for centuries were wrong.  I mean… picture a preaching scenario like that with Visigoths.  Or Vikings.  Or those Britons with fierce women warriors painted with woad.

See the way Christ’s birth was made to be commemorated in winter to replace the Winter Solstice parties.  Also, the days celebrating the cult of a Phrygian deity named Tammuz fell at the end of the year.  He’s supposed to be a guy who yearly rose from the dead, more similar to how the phoenix works.  But since Christ’s concept is the God who became human, died, and was resurrected — easy substitution.  Tammuz was also of virgin birth, so I don’t know if that fact is related to what became Europe’s Day of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated early in December (Note added on 06 October 2009: After further reading, found out Immaculate Conception refers to Catholic dogma of Mary’s supposed immaculate conception pala; if pertaining to Christ it’s called Virgin Birth in Catholicspeak. Feel free to correct if I’m wrong).

And not that I know for sure, but Jesus being born during summer, not winter, technically makes more sense if you count the info about when the tribe of Judah updated the census then, and which was the reason Joseph trekked all the way to Bethlehem despite Mary being all set to have a baby.

Also, weren’t all that sheep and shepherds supposedly camping out in the open then?  Is that doable in winter?  Then again, maybe winter isn’t that cold in ancient Jerusalem.  Hey, 6S Lemmings.  If your boss told you to go forth and eat grass in winter, would you?  I want to know.  Organized hardcopy of details, please, with labels.  Go on, this is very important, like your surprise audits.

About the celebration of the Lent… it’s accounted that Christ suffered, died, and rose again.  But it isn’t proven everything started on a Friday to end on a Sunday.  What came to be was the celebration of the last days of Christ replaced three Oriental pagan practices that became popular and evolved in ancient Europe:  Dagon/Astarte’s Fish festivities, Tammuz’s death and resurrection, and Ishtar’s day.

Let’s start with Fish on Friday.  People eat fish on Friday, but especially so on Good Friday.  And of course we know Christ taught about being “fishers of men”.  He’s done several miracles and told of parables involving fish.  Fish is a traditional food in the Bible.  Interestingly when he died and rose again, that signaled the start of what the old world order termed as the Age Of Pisces.

But before all that, the world celebrated a Mesopotamian god of vegetation and fertility by the name of Dagon.  Y’all, Babylon was where everything started.  They said that’s where the original Eden was.  And back then, Babylon became more popular than Israel.  Its religion, literature, art, and philosophy reigned supreme for a long time.  Long story.  But getting back… you know the part in the Book where Samson destroyed a temple?  That was the Philistines’ temple for Dagon.  Anyway, Dagon was half-man, half-fish.  He had a fish tail.  Why the association with fish, maybe because he’s a fertility god, and, not as obvious about it as the Greek Priapus, he was probably related to fish ’cause fish can spawn lots of eggs at a time.

He’s often associated with the goddess Astarte.  Astarte was worshipped as many goddesses, and one of them is Themis on the Greek island of Delphi (from delphos, literally meaning both “birth” and “dolphin”).  Later on, Themis was worshipped as Aphrodite Salacia.  The worhip day?  Friday.  Followers ate only fish and performed sex rituals…  TGIFs take a whole new meaning now, huh.  Actually, the word “Friday” itself is a dead giveaway… it literally means “Freya’s day”.  Freya is how Astarte became known to the the ancient Norsefolk.  Friday’s Latin rooted languages have Viernes, Vendredi, and Venerdi, taken from “dies Veneris”, which translates to Day of Venus — Venus is Aphrodite’s Roman name, and Aphrodite is the Greek development of Astarte.  And Verbal Kint is Keyser Soze.

And that’s how people really came to practice fish on Friday, now minus the group sex — except for maybe some precocious people who can afford it.

Then there’s the tradition that fish is a way of sacrafice because meat is luxury.  Back in the old days, that was so.  That’s why the rich people sacraficed cows in tabernacles while the poor people had pigeons.  Eating beef and veal was a luxury, since they were primarily for temple sacrafices… pork was a no-no — only Gentiles ate them, and so were crabs, shrimps, and squids.  Fish, in effect, since it was abundant, was the poor man’s meat.

Fast forward to the present.  Beef and pork are bad for the heart.  We have mad cow’s and foot and mouth.  The Omega-3 good fatty stuff in fish has been discovered to help reduce heart problems, and capsules are selling for as much as HK$250 a bottle at Watson’s.  Fish also has iodine that helps lessen likelihoods of thyroid problems.  There’s also caviar.  And fish is still cheap?

Onto self-flagellation, consider this entry from Penn State U’s resource pages on the Roman Calendar:

The Quando Rex Comitiavit

This day (QRCF), is for special religious observance. The exact nature of this ancient holiday is not known. The month of March belongs to the warlike Mars, the deity who personifies the protection of the state and the productivity of the community. This is the last day of the Festival of Mars. The daily spectacle of the priests of Mars doing the Dance of the Salii, leaping and dancing through the streets of Rome while carrying shields, would continue this day. The Romans called this day the Day of Blood and it would end the previous nine days of fasting. Devotees of the goddess Cybele would practice self-flagellation on this day. It was renamed Good Friday by the Christians, who prevaricated its origin and true meaning. Self-flagellation is, in fact, still practiced by some of them.

Let’s move on to Black Saturday.

Christ was born on earth to die and save people from sin.  No arguments there.  But to many, it’s a concept that’s hard to grasp.  The lazy Christian zealots of yore, though, found the perfect kindergarten method of teaching in the form of the old cult of Tammuz.  In Phrygia, people worshipped the Mother Goddess as Cybele.  Cybele  had a lover, Attis, aka Tammuz, the guy we talked about for Christmas.  Virgin birth, right?  Feast day in December.  Sometimes he’s known as Adonis, and as Adonis, he’s Aphrodite’s boy toy.

And as the story goes: Cybele and Tammuz were all lovey-dovey, but one day, near the end of the year, they had a lover’s quarrel.  Tammuz, ever the drama king, thought he’d make things better by castrating himself one Saturday.  Big surprise he bled to death.  Dumbass.  Then he rose again from the dead through divine intervention when the new year started.  Apparently, Tammuz and Cybele are into kinky stuff because they got a kick out of doing this every year.  How’s that for anniversaries.  Thus the pagans have their festival of the dead-then-resurrected deity who’s born of a virgin mother.

Lazy Zealots:  Now, do you get the Jesus Christ for Black Saturday concept?  You… replace Tam-muz… with Je-sus.  Tammuz, Jesus.  Tammuz, Jesus.

Pagans:  Uma.  Oprah.

Lazy Zealots:  Oy.

Finally, Easter.  Easter was originally a pagan celebration in Europe for Eostre, a  mother goddess.  The mother goddess is known by many names… the first is Ishtar, then Astarte, Aphrodite, and everybody else.  Pagan rituals all started in Babylon.  Its founder, the mighty Nimrod, came from the family of Ham, son of Noah, the guy of the ark fame.  Now, Ham was a perv. He crept into Noah’s room one night and stared at Noah, who was buttnekkid and totally wasted after heavy partying.  Naturally, when Noah woke up with a proper hangover and knew about what Ham did, he was like, “Ew, my son… you perv!  You are so cursed.”  And so, from Ham’s family came the pagan nations:  Babylon, Canaan, Akkad, Niniveh, and so forth.  Cush, his descendant, got it on with a woman named Semiramis, and eventually they had a kid called Nimrod, who grew up to be a mighty, mighty man.

And these people are twisted.  For example, Cush died.  So Nimrod married his mother!  Really ew.  But it was noted that the males in that family, no matter how superpower-y in exploits, were the weaker sex. ‘Cause Nimrod died. Ever the spin doctor, Semiramis claimed he became the sun god Baal.  That mad her Ishtar, the divine being borne of the moon.  Yes, the MOON.  Just look at that thing on top of her head.  She explained the moon was an egg, and that it ovulated when it’s full.  And the egg she was in fell from the sky to the sea.  And she hatched.

Man, either she must be one scary lady, or the Babylonians were high all the time that they not only fell for the story, but made it tradition.  And hence, the original celebration of Easter for fertility, in honor of the original Ishtar, and the symbols of rabbits (which mate like crazy, people.  Hefner’s logo makes sense now, huh?) and colored eggs.  And so, just saying… calling the commemorative day for Christ rising again and ascending to heaven “Easter Sunday” is a total misnomer.

You could also note the Europeans who assimilated everything in turn used the results to manipulate the people they conquered in the Americas, Asia, and Africa come the 1500s, these being the originators of the original faith.

And those are just some I’ve been mulling about on the side for about… oh, ten years now.  Kind of like a connect-the-dots/crossword puzzle spanning generations.

This is just me, but I guess the thing is, it’s still up to how you feel about these.  If you’re a traditionalist and see all these rituals aid the faith, then good for you.  Maybe you’re dependent on the Books and try to get to the core stuff.  That works for me.  If you’re not either, I suppose you have your own answers to life.  So long as you’re living fully without pushing too much, right?  Hey, 6S Lemmings!  You’re hopelessly annoying, but we know you’re just doing your job, and we wuv ya.  Muah.  Now, the cliff is thataway.

And that’s all there is to it.  Life shouldn’t be so complicated.  History already is.