Perhaps one of the most delightfully contradictory occurrences in the Christian faith is the presence of so many relics from what Christians pejoratively call paganism. The Christian faith, notwithstanding its apparent disdain for so-called paganism, has historically been very accommodating to festivals and concepts that can be sourced back to the great religious traditions that predated Christianity.
Every week, Christians around the world assemble for worship on a day that was embraced by so-called pagans centuries before the Christ was born. Sunday, or the venerable day of the sun, was a high day among pre-Christian spiritual traditions. Leaders of the early church in an effort to find common ground with many of the pre-Christian faiths that existed in the Roman Empire, adopted the venerable day of the sun as the Christian day of worship much to the consternation of Jews who understood that the seventh day of the week was the day consecrated by the deity of the Bible as the days of worship.
Sunday worship is but one item on a long list of Christian appropriations from religious communities that existed before Christianity. Reverend Alexander Hislop, in his classic book Two Babylons, meticulously chronicled many of the pagan survivals in the Christian faith. Christians borrowed pagan days, festivals, clothing, special seasonal foods, rites and ceremonies, deities, beliefs and structural organization from the pre-Christian religious world.
Easter and Christmas are two of the most widely embraced seasons on the Christian calendar. It may come as a shock to many to learn that both Easter and Christmas predate the birth of the Christ. In Two Babylons, Hislop shows that the festival of Easter was celebrated by the Babylonians and other ancient societies. Easter was nothing more that a festival celebrated in honor of the goddess Astarte, the Queen of Heaven. The forty days of Lent preceding Easter in the Christian calendar were also a thing in ancient Babylon and Egypt.
Life is crazy right now in Barbados as the majority of the population prepare for another Christmas celebration. Radio stations were priming the pump from as early as November when Christmas music started to make its appearance on the radio waves. Once we in Barbados have gotten our national Independence Day (November 30) out of the way it is all hands on deck in preparation for the coming Christmas season. The buying frenzy starts in early December and reaches a grand crescendo on December 24.
Indian, Chinese, Assyrian, and Caucasian businesses begin their preparations early by stocking their stores with just about everything Black consumers love to buy for the Christmas season. All kinds of offers are made to induce Black consumers to part with the old and enjoy the luxury and convenience of the new. While Black consumers are busy trying to have a merry Christmas, the Indian, Chinese, Assyrian, and Caucasian store owners make sure that they are the ones who truly have the most prosperous Christmas of all. (When will we ever learn?)
Ever since my daughter reached the age where she no longer needed the affirmation of a gift at Christmas, I have adopted the policy of cancelling Christmas every year. Each year I try to break new records with respect to how little I spend. This year, as in previous years, I have a built-in excuse not to even go into the major supermarkets to buy food items. You can grow a beard standing in the line waiting to pay for your groceries at the major supermarkets in Barbados at Christmas time.
Like Easter, Christmas has a long history that predated the birth of the Christ. Tamuz, the son of Nimrod and Semiramis and Horus the son of Isis and Osiris along with many other sons of God in the ancient world were all supposed to have been born on Christmas day. Early Christian church leaders, on recognizing the pagan roots of Christmas, attempted to ban the celebration of the Christmas festivities. Christmas was however too strongly ingrained in the culture and customs of the people to be rooted out by a few Biblicists in the Christian church.
Even today, there are a few outliers in the Christian community that recognize the pagan origins of Christmas and would like to reimpose a ban on Christmas festivities. These outliers are however swimming against a very popular tide and will only tire themselves out in the process. Perhaps a far more pragmatic approach to the pagan roots of Christmas would be a recognition that Christianity and the other Abrahamic faiths do not hold all the answers to the deep-seated problems facing the human race.
All the great religious traditions of the world including traditional African religion attempt to provide answers to some of the vexing problems facing humanity. Maybe, the time has come for humanity to revisit some of the more ancient faith traditions practiced by our ancestors to see what new approaches we can find to help solve some of the intractable problems facing us today.
Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of Out of Babylon: Why Black People Should Leave Most Churches.