The Saturnalia

There was a festival celebrated in December in Rome. It is necessary to any understanding of what is happening at Christmas. That festival was termed the Saturnalia. It was the festival of Saturn to whom the inhabitants of Latium, the Latins, attributed agriculture and the arts necessary for civilised life (Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2nd ed., London, 1851, p. 1009). It fell towards the end of December and was viewed by the population as a time of absolute relaxation and merriment. During its continuance, the law courts were closed. No public business could be transacted. The schools kept a holiday. To commence a war was impious and to punish a malefactor involved pollution (ibid.). Slaves were relieved of onerous toils and permitted to wear the pileus or badge of freedom. They were granted freedom of speech and were waited on at a special banquet by their masters whose clothes they wore (ibid.). All ranks devoted themselves to feasting and mirth with presents exchanged among friends.

Wax tapers were given by the more humble to their superiors. The crowds thronged the streets, and Smith says many of the customs had a remarkable resemblance to those of Christmas and the Italian carnival (ibid.).

Public gambling was condoned by the authorities as was later card-playing, and was indulged in even by the most rigid in later times at Christmas Eve. The whole populace threw off the toga, wore the loose gown called the synthesis and walked about with the pileus on their heads. Smith’s Dictionary says this practice is reminiscent of the dominoes, peaked caps and other disguises worn at later Christmas festivals by masques and mummers. The cerei or wax tapers or lights, were probably employed as the moccoli are on the last night of the carnival. Our traditions of Christmas lights probably stems from this tradition.

Lastly, for amusement in private society, was the election of a mock king, which is immediately recognised in the ceremony of Twelfth Night (ibid.). We will come across this later.

Sir James George Frazer, in his classic study of magic and religion (The Golden Bough, McMillan, 1976), says this mock king was an allusion back to the idyllic days of the reign of Saturn, and the slaves being given temporary freedom at this time hearkened back to these days when all were free and things were just (ibid., ix, p. 308ff.). Roman soldiers stationed on the Danube in the reign of Maximian and Diocletian are recorded (by Franz Cumont) to have chosen a young and handsome man to resemble Saturn from among them by lot, thirty days before the festival. They dressed him in royal attire to resemble Saturn. He went about in public attended by a retinue of soldiers and indulged his passions no matter how base and shameful. At the end of thirty days, he then cut his own throat on the altar of the god he personated. In the year 303, the lot fell upon the Christian soldier Dasius, but he refused to play the part of the heathen god and to soil his last days by debauchery. He refused to give in to the intimidation of his commanding officer Bassus, and was accordingly beheaded by the soldier John at Durostorum at the fourth hour on Friday 20 November 303, being the twenty-fourth day of the Moon (Frazer, ibid.).

This historical account was confirmed after its publication by Franz Cumont by the discovery in the crypt of the cathedral at Ancona of the white marble sarcophagus in script characteristic of the age of Justinian with the Greek inscription:

Here lies the holy martyr Dasius, brought from Durostorum.

The sarcophagus had been brought there from the church of St Pellegrino in 1848 where it lay under the high altar, and was recorded as being there in 1650 (Frazer, p. 310).

Frazer says this sets a new light on the nature of the Lord of the Saturnalia, the ancient Lord of Misrule, who presided over the winter revels at Rome (ibid., p. 311). Here we see the extent of the traditions and the elements of human sacrifice, which extend into the festivals in both December and at the equinox. Dasius the Christian suffered martyrdom rather than participate in these revels.

As Saturnus was an ancient national god of Latium, the institution of the Saturnalia is lost in remote antiquity (ibid.).

There are three traditions associated with it.

1. It is ascribed to Janus, who, on the sudden disappearance of his benefactor from the abodes of men, erected an altar to him as a deity in the forum and ordained annual sacrifices.

2. According to Varro, it is attributed to the wanderings of the Pelasagi on their first settlement in Italy. Hercules then, on his return from Spain, was said to have abolished the worship and practice of immolating human sacrifice; and

3. The third tradition attributes the Saturnalia to the followers of Hercules who set it up after his return to Greece.

In either of the last two we see a commonality. The practice of this agricultural festival thus has certain common elements with the spring festival of Easter, as we will see later. The element of human sacrifice common to all traditions can also be traced to the worship of Moloch as the Moon god Sin, and also of Ishtar (see the paper The Golden Calf (No. 222)). This sacrificial aspect also appeared in the worship of the god Attis (see below).

The erection of temples in historical times are recorded, such as during the reign of Tatius, Tarquinius superbus, to the consulship of A Sempronius or M Minucius (497 BCE) or in that of T Larcius the previous year. It appears that at varying stages the ceremonies were neglected or corrupted, and then revived and extended (ibid.).

The Saturnalia originally fell on 14 Kalend January. When the Julian calendar was introduced it was extended to 16 Kalend January which caused confusion among the more ignorant, and Augustus enacted that three whole days (namely 17, 18 and 19 December) should be hallowed in all time coming (ibid.). Some unknown authority added a fourth day and Caligula added a fifth day, the Juvenalis. This fell into disuse and was later restored by the emperor Claudius.

Strictly speaking, one day only was consecrated to religious observance in the days of the Republic. However, the celebrations lasted over a much longer period. Historically, Livy speaks of the first day of the Saturnalia (Liv., xxx, 36). Cicero writes of the second and third days (ad Att., v, 20; xv, 32). From Novius (Attelanae) the term seven days of the Saturnalia was used and this phrase was also used by Memmius (Macrobius, i, 10) and Martial (xiv, 72; cf. Smith, ibid.). Martial also speaks of the five days enacted by Caligula and Claudius.

These five days have an ancient calendrical significance also.

Smith says that in reality three festivals were involved over this period.

1. The Saturnalia proper commenced on 17 December (16 Kalend December).

2. This was followed by the Opalia (14 Kalend January or 19 December), which was anciently coincidental to the Saturnalia. These two together lasted for five days. This festival was celebrated in honour of Opis who was allegedly the wife of Saturn. Originally, it was celebrated on the same day, and thus the Mother goddess and lover theme is evident in the origins of this festival. We will meet this theme throughout. The followers of Opis paid their vows sitting, and touched the earth of whom she was goddess (Smith, ibid., art. ‘Opalia’, p. 835).

3. The sixth and seventh days were occupied by the Sigillaria which was named for the little earthenware figures that were displayed for sale on the period as toys to be given as presents for children.

Thus, under the Julian calendar, the period ran from 17 December until 23 December when the presents were given to the children.

We now proceed to examine further the theology behind these festivals. The commonality of the traditions of the festivals are too obvious to be ignored.

The Heavenly Virgin as Mother goddess

Frazer notes that:

… the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods and her lover or son was very popular under the Roman Empire, (v, pp. 298ff.)

From the inscription we know that the two (as Mother and lover or Mother and son) received divine honours, not only in Italy but also in all the provinces – particularly in Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Bulgaria (ibid.). Their worship survived the establishment of Christianity by Constantine.

Thus, the symbolism of the Heavenly Virgin and the infant child paraded on a yearly basis are not of Christian origin. They stem from the Mother-goddess religion, which is very ancient. We will see more of this later.

Frazer notes Symmachus as recording the festival of the Great Mother. In the days of Augustine her effeminate priests still paraded the streets and squares of Carthage and, like the mendicant friars of the Middle Ages, begged alms from the passers-by (ibid.; cf. S. Dill, Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire, London, 1899, p. 16; and Augustine, City of God, vii, 26).

The Greeks, on the other hand, rejected the more barbarous rites in favour of those similar but gentler rites of the worship of Adonis (ibid.).

Frazer says that the same features which shocked and repelled the Greeks were what attracted the Romans and the barbarians of the west (ibid., pp. 298-299).

The ecstatic frenzies which were mistaken for divine inspiration, the mangling of the body and the theory of a new birth and the remission of sin through the shedding of blood, have all their origin in savagery (ibid.).

Frazer holds that their true character was often disguised under a decent veil of allegory and philosophical interpretation, which drew the more cultivated of them to things which might otherwise have filled them with horror and disgust. Modern Pentecostalism draws its inspiration from the ideas behind these religious festivals.

The religion of the Great Mother was only one of a multitude of similar oriental faiths that spread across the Roman Empire, imposing themselves on the Europeans. According to Frazer, this gradually undermined the whole fabric of ancient civilisation.

The entire Greek and Roman society was based on the concept of the subordination of individual to the state, and one’s whole life was dedicated to the perpetuation of the society. If one shrank from supreme sacrifice then it never occurred to anyone that they acted other than for base reasons.

Oriental religion taught the reverse of this doctrine. It inculcated the communion of the “soul” with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects of existence, and in comparison with the prosperity and even the existence of the state was insignificant.

The inevitable consequence of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to draw the individual more and more from the public service and to concentrate a contempt for the present life in the individual.

The misapplication of these Mystery doctrines or oriental religions and their application in Gnosticism, when placed on the biblical narrative of the City of God as a spiritual edifice, was to have disastrous consequences for the ordering of society. The effect was to loosen the ties of the family and the state, and to generally disintegrate the political body of the state. The society tended to relapse into its individual elements and thereby into barbarism. Civilisation is only possible through the active cooperation of the individual and the subordination of the interests of the individual to that of the common good (ibid., p. 301).

People refused to defend their countries and even to continue their own kind in ascetic celibacy (ibid., see also the papers Vegetarianism and the Bible (No. 183) and also Wine in the Bible (No. 188)).

Frazer holds that this obsession lasted for a thousand years. He held that it only changed at the end of the Middle Ages with the revival of Roman law, of Aristotelian philosophy, and of ancient art and literature to saner and more manly views of the world. The fact of the matter is that if the true biblical model was implemented no such problem would have existed. The problem arose from Oriental Mysteries combined with the Gnostic system, which is more prevalent today. Frazer held that the tide of this oriental invasion had turned at last and was ebbing still. He was wrong in this regard, although he also allows that bad government and a ruinous fiscal system are two major causes which strike down civilisations, as they did the Turkish Empire in his day.

We will look at the effects of the Great-Mother religion, and the Mithras system and its applications under Gnostic influence in Christianity to see that it is still there as strong as ever in more subtle forms. Yet, much of its traditional trappings are the same.

Mithras

One of the gods who competed for the worship of the West was the Persian deity Mithra.

The immense popularity of this cult should not be underestimated. The monuments dedicated to this system are scattered all over the Roman Empire and right through Europe (a map of the extent of the monuments is found in David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, Oxford, New York, 1989, p. 5).

This was a secret cult whose mysteries were never written down, and so little is known exactly of their ritual except what we can deduce from their shrines and places of worship. However, we do know that they had two forms of worship. The private and secret form was Mithraism. The public form, however, was Elagabalism and we know more of its system from this. Both were based on Sun worship.

Much of its religion was similar to the religion of the Mother of the Gods and also to what was understood to have been later Christianity (cf. Frazer, ibid., p. 302). The similarity struck the Christian doctors themselves, and it was explained to them as the work of the devil by counterfeiting a version of the true faith (ibid.). Tertullian explained how the fasts of Isis and Cybele were similar to the fasts of Christianity (De jejunio 16).

Justin Martyr explains how the death, resurrection and ascension of Dionysius, the virgin birth of Perseus, and Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus were parodies of the true Christian stories written by the demons in advance, even down to the story of Christ riding on an ass which was contained in the Psalms as prophecy (cf. Apol., i, 54).

The conflict between Mithraism and Christianity was so great that for a time the outcome hung in the balance. The fact of the matter is that the result was decided by the adoption of the Mithraic practices and giving them Christian names. The most important single relic of this pagan syncretism is that of Christmas, which Frazer says the Church seems to have borrowed directly from its heathen rival (p. 303).

The Roman army became devotees of Mithras and it is obvious from the records regarding Dasius that the Saturnalia was held in conjunction with the worship of Mithras. Thus, the Saturnalia simply preceded the solstice festival and became a part of it.

Christmas and the Heavenly Virgin

In the Julian calendar, 25 December was reckoned as the winter solstice (Frazer, ibid., p. 303; cf. Pliny, Natural History, xviii, p. 221). It was regarded as the nativity of the Sun as its days began to lengthen and its power increased from that turning point of the year.

Frazer holds that the ritual of the nativity as it was celebrated in Syria and Egypt was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines from which at midnight they issued a loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth! The Light is waxing!” (ibid.; cf. Cosmas Hierosolymitanus, see fn. 3 to p. 303).

The Egyptians even represented the newborn Sun by an image of an infant which, on his birthday (the winter solstice), they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers (ibid., cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia, i, 18, 10).

Frazer says:

No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte (ibid., noting Franz Cumont s.v. Caelestis in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, v, 1, 1247, sqq).

This is the origin of the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of the mother of Jesus Christ. It has no basis in the Bible or in fact. Christ’s mother was not named Mary and the Bible is clear that she bore other children. We will return to this myth later.

The legend of the three kings

25 December was an ancient Sun-worshipping festival and the three kings associated with it do not appear to relate to the wise men from the East in the biblical narrative, but to a perhaps older tradition relating to the so-called twelve days of Christmas. The twelfth-day sequence is associated with the three kings in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany and Austria. Their names are Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar. In Germany and Austria it is known as the Day of the Three Kings (Dreikönigstag) and in France as the Festival of the Kings (Fête des Rois). The kings go around in some areas represented by mummers who sing songs and collect from the householders. It is given a Christian basis but there is no basis in the Bible for assuming there were three people (other than the three types of gifts) or that they were kings. They are recorded as Magi or wise men. This seems to have another basis (cf. Frazer, ix, p. 329). From the customs in Franche-Comte and also the Vosges Mountains, Melchior is supposed to have been a black king, and the face of the boy playing him is blackened (ibid., p. 330). These three are invoked for healing with rituals involving three nails placed in the Earth. This smacks of the triune systems of the Celts in France long before the Christian system.

In Czech and German Bohemia, the rituals of fumigation and spices are found being used on the twelfth day. The initials C.M.B (Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar) together with three crosses are marked on doors after fumigation to guard against evil influences and infectious diseases. They were invoked under the words pray for us now and at the hour of our deaths.

The Lord of Misrule and the King of Beans

In this tradition also we see the Lord of Misrule emerge among the traditions. The full extent of time was from All Hallows eve (31 October, the eve of All Saints day) to Candlemas (2 February). However, it was generally confined to the twelve days at Christmas, termed the twelve nights. The Lord of Misrule was elected from the Court of the Sovereign in England through every office of the land. This Lord of Misrule was also elected at Merton College, Oxford as King of the Beans (cf. Frazer, ix, p. 332).

The Festival of Fools

In France, the counterparts of the English Lords of Misrule masqueraded as mock clergy, bishops, archbishops, popes or abbots. This was known as the Festival of Fools and was held either on Christmas Day, St Stephen’s Day (26 December), New Year’s Day, or Twelfth Day depending on place.

At these times there were parodies of the most solemn rites of the church where priests, wearing masks and sometimes dressed as women, danced in the choir and sang obscene chants; and laymen disguised as monks mingled with the clergy and the altar was turned into a tavern where the deacons and sub-deacons ate sausage and black pudding or played dice and cards under the nose of the celebrant. The censers were filled with bits of old shoes, filling the church with a foul stench.

In some areas of France, for example at Autun, an ass was led into the church where a parody of the Mass was said over it. A regular Latin liturgy was said over it and the celebrant priest initiated the braying of an ass (Frazer, pp. 334-335).

At Beauvais, on 14 January, a young woman with a child in her arms rode on the back of an ass allegedly in imitation of the flight into Egypt. She was led in triumph from the cathedral to the parish church of St Stephen, where she and the ass were placed on the left side of the altar. A long Mass was said, consisting of scraps borrowed indiscriminately from many church services throughout the year. The singers quenched their thirst in the intervals as did the congregation, and the ass was fed and watered. Afterwards, the ass was brought from the chancel into the nave where the entire congregation, clergy and laity danced round it braying like asses. After vespers, a large procession proceeded to a great theatre opposite the church where they watched indecent farces.

All of this is reminiscent of the rites in North Africa of the effeminate priests of the Mother-goddess system and the Saturnalia. Frazer says there is no direct evidence that one is derived from the other but the Saturnalia, with the licence that characterised it and the temporary reign of a mock king, makes it appear so (ix, p. 339). These traditions were kept up until the nineteenth century when Victorian England and Napoleonic France, following on from the Revolution, did away with them in some fashion. They were replaced, as we will see, with another form of the same errors. Much of the modern insanity derives from the USA and its commercialism.

The twelve days of Christmas, cakes, beans and money

The King of the Bean is also associated with the Festival of Fools in France and there is a more ancient significance to it. The Festival of Fools goes on to the Twelfth Day of Christmas (Twelfth Night is the night of 6 January). The eve, which is 5 January and thus the Epiphany of 6 January, marks the end of the two periods of the pre-Christmas festivities, which are associated with the Saturnalia and the Sun system and which commence from the Solstice on 25 December and continue until 5 January.

In some areas the king has a queen consort, both of whom have an agricultural significance and seem to be related to the rites also of the Saturnalia.

The king and queen are elected by lot on the Twelfth Night (i.e. Epiphany, 6 January) or on the eve of that festival on 5 January. It was common in France, Belgium, Germany and England. It is still kept in some parts of France. The Court acknowledged the practice and each family elected its own king. On the eve of the festival, a great cake was baked with a bean in it. It was divided into portions: one for each member of the family; one for God; one for the Heavenly Virgin: and, sometimes, one for the poor. The person getting the portion with the bean was proclaimed King of the Bean (Frazer, ix, p. 313). Sometimes a second bean was placed in the cake for the election of the queen. At Blankenheim, near Neuerburg in the Eiffel, a black and a white bean were baked in the cake – the black for the king and the white for the queen. In Franche-Comte they used to put as many white haricot beans in a hat as there where people present. Two coloured beans were included and drawn at random by a child. Those receiving the coloured beans were king and queen.

In England, the practice was to put a bean in the hat for the king and a pea for the queen. However, in some places only the king was elected by lot, and he chose his queen himself. Sometimes a coin was substituted for the bean in the cake. This custom was followed in southern Germany as early as the first half of the sixteenth century. It is, however, considered by Frazer to be a variation on the earlier bean custom. It shows reasonably clearly that the placing of coins in Christmas puddings stems from this custom of an earlier time.

In France, the young child present was placed under a table. It was addressed as Phoebe or Tebe and he answered in Latin Domine. The pieces of the cake were distributed according to the child’s direction. The etymology has been attributed to the oracle of Apollo by some scholars. Frazer thinks it may be simply derived from the word for the bean (Lat. faba, Fr. fève).

Every time the king or queen drank, the company cried: “The king (or queen) drinks!”, and they all did likewise. Anyone failing to do so had their faces blackened by corks or soot or the lees of wine. In some parts of the Ardennes, the practice was to fasten great horns of paper in the hair and put a huge pair of spectacles on their nose. This was worn until the end of the festival. This is probably the origin of the Dunce’s Cap.

This is still kept in northern France where a miniature porcelain figure is substituted for the bean and drawn by a child. If it is drawn by a boy he chooses his queen; if drawn by a girl she chooses her king.

These kings and queens placed white crosses on the rafters of houses to ban hobgoblins, witches and bugs. There was, however, a more serious significance to some of the office. In Lorraine, the height of the hemp crop was said to be determined from the height of the king and queen. If the king were taller, the male hemp would be higher than the female and vice versa. In the Vosges Mountains on the border of France-Compte, the practice of dancing on the roof was observed to make the hemp grow tall.

In many areas the beans used in the cake were taken to be blessed by the clergy, and divination was employed on Twelfth Night to determine the month of the year in which the price of wheat would be dearest.

The practice of lighting bonfires is still carried out in some areas and, at the time Frazer wrote, it was still done in the Montagne du Doubs on the eve of Twelfth Night (ix, p. 316). This was seemingly to ensure the fertility of the crops. There seems to be a definite, if distant, relationship to the Yule festivals of the pagans.

While it burned the people danced around it singing: “Good year come back! Bread and wine come back!”

The youth of Pontarlier carry torches over the sowed lands shouting: “Couaille, couaille, blanconnie”, the meaning of which is lost in antiquity.

In the Bocage of Normandy on the same day, it is the fruit trees that are fired. These twinkling lights are everywhere as the peasants celebrate the Ceremony of the Moles and Field-mice (Taupes et Mulots). Villages compete in the blaze, and woods and hedges are scoured for materials. They scour the fields threatening the moles and field mice and thus they believe the crop will be larger that autumn.

The bonfires on the eve of Epiphany were also observed in the Ardennes. It is useful to look at the customs here in regard to festivals of the goddess Hecate in Rome and Europe generally and the fields and the crosses involved there (cf. the paper The Cross: Its Origin and Significance (No. 39)).

Similar fire customs are experienced in the UK in Gloucester and in Hertfordshire, with twelve fires at the end of twelve lands (Gloucester) designed to prevent smut in wheat. There is a thirteenth larger fire lit in both cases – the latter being on a hill (Frazer, ix, p. 318).

This custom of making twelve fires of straw and drinking toasts of cider or ale is called Wassailing and is ancient. Oxen are also toasted in this strange ritual in some areas with a cake placed on the horns of the lead ox and then thrown by tickling the ox.

The explanation of the practice of lighting fires and especially this largest is found in examination against the practice not only in UK and France but also in Macedonia. The large fires are to burn the witches and malefactors that roam the fields at night. They are called by the Macedonians karkantzari or skatzanzari. They are overcome by binding with straw rope. They resume their human shape during the day. Over the twelve days of Christmas, they must be overcome by strenuous effort. Some places start on Christmas Eve and in others it continues or is done on Twelfth Night.

On Christmas Eve, some people burn the karkantzari by burning holm-oak faggots and throwing them out in the streets at early dawn. Here again, we have reference to the Yule festivals of the Druids. The later oak faggots were remnants of the earlier log burning.

In Ireland, they set up sheaves of oats. This was done in Roscommon where they held that, “Twelfth Night, which is Old Christmas Day, is greater than Christmas Day itself” (Frazer, ix, p. 321).

They set up thirteen candles in the sheaf, twelve smaller and one greater in the centre and attribute these to the Apostles at the Last Supper; but these are at Christmas and not Passover. Thirteen candles of rushlight named after each member of the family (or relations to make up the number) are placed in cakes of cow dung and burned to determine the length of life of each person (ix, p. 322).

The origin of candles

The use of candles goes back to the ancient Aryan religion, which used them at the Yule ceremony to ward off the gods of thunder, storm and tempest (Frazer, x, p. 264 (n. 4); and also p. 265). They were lit and tied to the sacred oak (ibid., ii, 327).

In some areas (Ruthenia, and Europe generally) they were used by thieves and burglars to cause sleep (Frazer, i, pp. 148-149), and in this case they were made of human tallow (ibid., i, p. 236). Parts of the human anatomy were also used as candles or human bones were filled with tallow made from the fat of hanged men (ibid., p. 149). Sometimes, candles were made from the fingers of newborn or, preferably as they saw it, unborn children. As late as the seventeenth century in Europe, robbers used to murder pregnant women to extract such candles from their wombs (ibid.).

Candles were burnt to ward off witches. They entered Christianity through the Catholic or Orthodox Church (cf. Frazer, ibid., i, p. 13).

Among the Germans, the ancient Aryan practice continued of lighting new fire by means of a bonfire at Easter and sending the sticks to each home to start the fires to ward off the gods of thunder, storm and tempest. The practice was introduced to Catholicism as the Easter candle. This single giant candle was lit at Easter on Saturday night before the Easter Sunday and then all the candles of the church were lit from it. This continued for the year until the following Easter, when the single Easter candle was again lit.

The practice of lighting the candle appears to take place on the night before the day of the Sun, as part of the ancient Sun-worshipping system.

In the Temple, incense was burned. Candles were not burned other than as the Menorah.

This practice of burning lights as candles or tapers was similar to that of the Saturnalia. We know from the Book of Baruch (6:19ff.) that the practice of lighting candles before idols overlaid with precious metals was Babylonian. The practice of lighting multiple candles probably entered Judaism through the Babylonian system. We will deal with it in more detail in the section on Easter.

The Menorah was seven-branched and ordered by God for the Temple. In Solomon's Temple, there were ten lamp stands with seven candles per stand representing the Council of the Elohim, of which the Sanhedrin was a copy. The nine branches in Judaism are given mystical symbolism. There is no biblical authority for them.

Weather

The weather of the twelve days of Christmas was said to determine the weather of the forthcoming year.

It is based on what appears to be a form of ancient zodiacal division of dividing the twelve days into four quadrants of three days per quadrant. This was done in the British Isles and it extended through Germany and German Austria into western Europe.

From the weather on each of the twelve days it was possible to divine the weather of each successive month of the year. It was held to be accurate and apply also to the Twelfth Day itself where the weather on each hour would determine the weather for the corresponding month. The days were thus a system of divination for the year ahead in its agricultural aspects.

In Swabia, the days were called the twelve lot days. More precise divination was determined by making twelve circles divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant represented a quarter of the month. These were drawn on paper and hung over the door. As each day of the twelve days passed from Christmas to Epiphany, the weather on each quarter day was shaded and the weather for that quarter month was determined.

In Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, it was done somewhat differently. On Christmas, New Year’s Day or on another of the twelve days, one sliced an onion in two, peeled off twelve coats, and sprinkled a pinch of salt in each of them. From the moisture left in them the next morning, it was considered possible to determine the weather for the next twelve months of the year.

This was not confined to the Germanic tribes or the Teutons – it was found also in France and among the Celts of Brittany and in Scotland.

In the Bocage of Normandy, the temperature was divined for the year from the temperature of the twelve days. This was considered more accurate than the predictions of the Double-Liégois. In Cornouaille, Brittany, the twelve days were determined from Christmas to the Epiphany – being the last six days of December and the first six of January. In other parts of Brittany and in Scotland the twelve days were determined from 1 January. They were known in Brittany as the gour-deziou or male days. It is said to mean properly the additional or supplementary days. This concept takes us back to another ancient concept of the calendar and the five excess days of the year.

From their almanac, the Scots determine the weather of the forthcoming year by that of the twelve days of Christmas. Thus the weather in January is determined by the weather of 31 December or 1 January (depending on place), and so on, as an infallible rule.

The Celts of Scotland, as elsewhere in France, are divided as to the beginning of the days: either at Christmas, on 1 January, or on 31 December. Frazer considers this an important indicator of the origin of the beliefs (ibid., ix, p. 24).

This concept is very ancient and is found among the Aryans of the Vedic age in India. This predates Christ by many centuries.

They, too, appear to have invested days in midwinter with a sacred character as a time when the three Ribhus or genii of the seasons rested from their labours in the home of the sun-god, and these twelve rest-days they called ‘an image or copy of the year’ (Frazer, ix, pp. 324-325).

Frazer follows A. Weber in this explanation of the common views of the East and West (cf. fn. 3 to ix, p. 325).

The system was thus an ancient system of the Aryans, who conquered India from the Steppes with the use of iron-age implements and harnessed horses about 1000 BCE.

Their relatives took the same festivals west into Europe. These movements are part of the dispersion of the ancient Mysteries of the Babylonian system, which found its way into the nomadic Shamans. This religion was Animism.

Ancient calendar systems

The division of the twelve days came from the ancient Aryan calendar, which was divided according to the phases of the Moon and not that of the Sun. The various Aryan languages have the name for month as the name for moon.

The days of the month alternate between twenty- nine and thirty days every two months. These days at fifty-nine times six fall short of the actual solar year by almost twelve days (eleven and one quarter days).

This appears to have been an intercalation to adjust the lunar to the solar year, which was a perversion of the true intercalation system adopted by the Hebrews, the Assyro-Babylonians and the Greco-Romans. It thus seems to have been a perversion of Sun-worship from the earliest days of the movements of the Middle Eastern tribes. The Celtic Hittites, being the first to move into Europe, took the system with them and its implementation corrupted subsequent colonisation from the Assyrian relocations and the movement of the Parthian and Gothic horde.

We now know much more about the calendar system in use in Europe and the midwinter solstice in use in Europe and the UK. The megalithic stone circles were designed to determine the solstice exactly on midwinter’s day.

The twelve days were distinct from the five days, and they appear to have been variously added to or combined in different areas.

It appears that the five extra days of the year making the 365 days, over and above the 360 days considered to be the normal year, was a very ancient belief and system of intercalary practice where, from the Mayas of Yucatan to the pyramids of Egypt, people regarded them as useless for any religious or civil purpose and did nothing on those days. This may have also had some basis for the practices. The texts of the pyramids expressly mention the five days over and above the year comprised of twelve months of thirty days (ibid., p. 340). The Aztecs and the American system, however, have eighteen months of twenty days and so did not follow any lunar system. Because of their mathematical values in the divisions of the calendar, the five days were considered to be useless and the object of no work and a general malaise of the society. This had no relationship to the Hebrew prophetic year of twelve thirty-day months, which is a symbolic idealisation of the actual revolutions of the true intercalary, nineteen-year cycle. This religious symbolism and structure is detailed in the Bible.

The five-day sequence related to the calendar is in use in solar systems or Sun-worshipping systems. The twelve days were an adjustment of the lunar to the solar which one would expect to find in the more ancient Moon-Sun-Morning Star systems that were common at the time of the Exodus (see the paper The Golden Calf (No. 222)).

The Sun god

25 December was also associated with Mithras, as he was Sun god.

The Catholic liturgist, Mario Righetti (in addition to Duchesne and also Cullman), held that:

After the peace of the Church of Rome, to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, found it convenient (sic) to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the temporal birth of Christ, to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honour of the “Invincible Sun” Mithras, the conqueror of darkness (fn. 74, II, p. 67; quote also in Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, Pontifical Gregorian University Press, Rome, 1977, p. 260).

Thus, Mithras was the god of the festival of the solstice on 25^th December, which followed immediately on from the Saturnalia. With this deity, we see Sunday-worship emerge in Rome.

The dedications to Mithra was as Soli invicto Mithrae or the Invincible Sun – the Unconquered Sun as Frazer terms it (p. 304). It was also related to him as Sol Invictus Elagabal in the public form of the religion.

The term Father was a rank held by the priests of Mithra. The term is forbidden to Christians (Mat. 23:9). It entered Christianity with the Mystery cults.

What actually occurred was that the original calendars of the Roman system began the week on Saturday and were in use in the first years of the Augustan era (27 BCE to 14 CE) following the discovery of the calendar of Nola (cf. A. Degrassi, fn. 26, p. 104; cf. Bacchiocchi, ibid., p. 244). This structure appears to be related to the system of Mithras (as we know from the Epicurean Celcus, ca. 140-180 CE) where the Sun occupied the highest place on the ladder of ascent through the seven gates of the Mithraic ladder from Saturn to the Sun. This is classic Shamanism and is practiced by animistic religion throughout the world. In Origen’s Contra Celsum, 6,21-22, we see that Celsus lists the planets in the reverse order, enabling the Sun to occupy the significant seventh position.

We later see this system emerge as the eight-day symbolism in the Roman system for the week beginning on Saturn’s day or Saturday and ending with the day of the Sun or Sunday, which was always a holiday. The planetary week was also not in the accepted order of the planets and people could not account for the difference (cf. Plutarch, Complete Works, III, p. 230; cf. Bacchiocchi, ibid., p. 246).

The differences can be seen also by comparison with the Ziggurat of the Babylonian system and the seven levels of ascent to the Moon god there (cf. the paper The Golden Calf (No. 222)).

The statement of Tertullian (Ad Nationes, 1, 13, ANF, III, p. 123), attempts to refute the charge of Sun-worship. Tertullian admits that, by then, Christians had commenced praying towards the east and made Sunday a day of festivity. He directly places the responsibility for Sunday-worship over the Sabbath on the Sun-worshipping cults, where he says they selected its day in preference to the previous day of the week (i.e. the Sabbath or Saturday) (cf. Bacchiocchi, pp. 248-249). However, by then, they were both worshipping on that day as well as the Christian Sabbath.

Prayer to the Sun in the east

Apparently, prayer to the east originated by prayer towards Jerusalem, as Irenaeus mentions being the custom of the Ebionites (Adv. Her., 1,26, ANF, I, p. 352). By the time of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, we see the orientation to be towards the source of light that dispels the darkness of the night, although Clement still mentions the ancient temples (Stromateis, 7,7,43, GCS, 3, 32; cf. Bacchiocchi, p. 255).

Bacchiocchi makes it clear that the association between the Christian Sunday and the pagan veneration of the day of the Sun is not explicit before the time of Eusebius (ca. 260-340 CE). Although previous writers associated him as true light and sun of justice, no deliberate attempt prior to Eusebius was made to justify Sunday observance by means of the symbology of the day of the Sun (ibid., p. 261).

The process thus entered Christianity by means of the earlier December festival, which was originally derived from the worship of Saturn and Opis in the Saturnalia, and its association with the Heavenly Virgin or Mother goddess and her infant child.

The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ’s birth, and the early Church did not celebrate it.

The custom of celebrating Christ’s birth began in Egypt, being derived from the Mother-goddess cult there, and the Christians there celebrated it on 6 January. By the fourth century it had become generally established in the East (Frazer, v, p. 304). The Western church had never recognised 6 January as the true date and, in time, its decision was accepted by the Eastern church. At Antioch this change was not introduced until about 375 CE (Frazer, ibid.).

The origin of the practice is plainly recorded by the Syrian Christians, as we see from Frazer quoting also Credner and Momsen and Usener (v, pp. 304-305).

The reason why the fathers transferred the celebration of the sixth of January to the twenty fifth of December was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnized on that day and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the practice has prevailed of kindling fires till the sixth.

Thus, the Saturnalia led up to the solstice when presents were given to children from 23 December, or now Christmas Eve on 24 December, in the Gregorian calendar. The rites of the solstice then took over from the original Saturnalia, but the period then became lengthened from three to seven days to which was added the twelve days.

When we count five days from 25 December we come to 31 December, from which some of the Celts and Germans begin the count. The addition of St Stephen’s Day (or Boxing Day) brings the five-day period from 27 December in line to 1 January.

The pagan origin of Christmas is also evident in Augustine, when he exhorts his brethren not to celebrate this solemn day like the heathen on account of the Sun but on account of him who made the Sun (Augustine Serm., cxc, 1; in Migne Patriologia Latina, xxxviii, 1007). Leo, called ‘the Great’, likewise rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new Sun, and not because of the nativity of Christ (Frazer, ibid.; cf. Leo the Great, Serm., xxii (al xxi) 6 and Migne, liv, 198).

However, by then it was a hopeless cause. The entire system was endemic to Christianity and the Mother-goddess cult was entrenched.

Frazer says:

Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness (p. 305).

There was a theory put forward by one Mgr Duchesne that 25 December arose from the conformity with the equinox on 25 March and this was the day on which Christ was killed and also on which his mother conceived. This digs an even deeper pit because 25 March was indeed initially adopted in Africa and elsewhere as the date of the crucifixion. However, it was on a Sunday in the only year that 14 Nisan could have fallen on 25 March. It is thus destructive to the theory. Moreover, 25 March is associated with the festival of the god Attis, as Frazer notes in his footnote to page 305. We will examine this in the sections below.

The Goat and the Bear

On the twelve days we also see mummers playing the part of a goat and a bear.

In the highlands of Scotland and St Kilda down until the last half of the eighteenth century at least, a cowherd would wrap himself in a skin on New Year’s Eve. The young people would meet and with staves they would beat the hide as a drum and proceed from house to house, where the one covered with the hide would run three times round deiseil, i.e. in the way the Sun revolves. He was pursued by the crowd crying in Gaelic:

… let us raise the noise louder and louder let us beat the hide (Frazer, viii, p. 323).

They go from house to house repeating verses. On entry, they call down blessings on the house and its cattle, stones and timber, its produce and health. A part of the hide was then burnt and applied to the noses of every person and domestic animal in order to protect the inhabitants against disease and misfortune for the coming year.

This last day of the year is called Hogmanay.

Each of the party, after the rhyme had been said and the Rann Calluin or Christmas Rhyme had been repeated, in return entered and had refreshment. The general thing that was burnt in lieu of the strip of hide was a Casein-uchd made of the breast strip of a sheep (or deer or goat) wrapped around the point of a shinty stick. The shinty stick was singed in the fire and put three times around the family and to the nose of all. No drink was taken until this ceremony had been completed. The purpose was to protect the household against witchcraft and disease.

On the Isle of Man, the feather of the wren was used (viii, p. 324).

The custom appears to be related to an older custom involving human sacrifice. Frazer notes that the Khonds slew a human victim as a divinity and took him from house to house and everyone took a relic of his sacred person (cf. i, pp. 246ff.). The cowhide no doubt substituted for this victim. The communion substituted for the body and blood of the god.

While these customs may not have connection with agriculture, the similar customs of Plough Monday certainly do, and the processions we see in Europe of men clad as animals probably identify with the corn spirit. They may have association with the Gilyak procession of the bear, and the Indian procession of the snake (ibid.).

Often in these processions (as in the last days of the carnival in Bohemia) a man was swathed from head to foot in pease-straw and wrapped around in straw ropes (Frazer, ibid.). This harkens back to the wicca man in ancient Britain.

These festivals of agriculture were associated with both the midwinter solstice and the spring equinox – both heralding the return of growth and warmth and life as the power of the Sun and summer to nature.

The Bohemian man goes by the name of the Shrovetide or carnival bear (Fastnachtsbär).

After he has danced at every house with the girls and maids and the housewife herself, they all retire to the ale-house.

For at Shrovetide, but especially at Shrove Tuesday, every one must dance, if the flax, the vegetables and the corn are to thrive (Frazer, viii, p. 326).

The straw of the bear is put in the nests of the hens and geese. The bear represents the spirit of fertility. The purpose of the dancing is to make fertile both animal and vegetable in all aspects.

In parts of Bohemia, this person is not called a bear but an oats-goat.

In Prussian Lithuania on Twelfth day a man is wrapped in pease-straw to represent the bear and another in oats-straw to represent the goat.

In Marburg in Steiermark, men appear as both a wolf and a bear (Frazer, ibid.).

The man who gave the last stroke at threshing is called the wolf. He keeps the name Wolf until Christmas, when he is wrapped in a goat’s skin and led from house to house as a pease-bear at the end of a rope. His dress as a goat marks him out and appears to associate the symbols of goat and bear and wolf in this ancient ritual of the corn-spirit.

In Scandinavia, the appearance of the corn-spirit as a goat is common (ibid.). In Sweden, led about with horns on his head, he personated the Yule-goat. In parts of Sweden they make a pretence of slaughtering the goat who comes to life again (ibid., p. 327). The two men who slaughter him sing verses referring to the mantles of varying colours, red, blue, white and yellow – which they laid on him.

After supper on Christmas evening, the people dance the “angel dance” to ensure a good crop. Yule straw (either of wheat or rye) is made into the likeness of a goat, and thrown among the dancers with the cry of, "Catch the Yule-goat!". In Dalarne it is called the Yule-ram.

In Denmark and Sweden, it is customary to bake cakes of fine meal at Christmas in the shape of goats, rams and boars (Frazer, ibid., p. 328). They are often made out of the last sheaf at harvest and kept until sowing-time, where they are partly mixed with the seed corn and partly eaten by the people and the plough-oxen in the hope of securing a good harvest. The commonality of the customs from the British Isles to Europe and Scandinavia and the East establishes beyond doubt the ancient practice as appeasement of the corn-spirit and the ancient gods. The appearance as a wether and a boar is also ancient and widespread.

The Straw-bear, being performed as it had been for centuries on the day after Plough Monday, was witnessed in Wittlesy, Cambridgeshire by Professor Moore Smith of Sheffield University, in January 1909 (see letter of 13 January 1909; cf. Frazer, viii, p. 329).

Plough Monday is the first Monday of January after Twelfth day. It is beyond dispute that we are dealing with an ancient agricultural festival directed at appeasement of the ancient agricultural gods in the sequence of the midwinter festivals, which run from the Saturnalia to the solstice high day and then on to the twelve days of so-called Christmas to the plough-festival of Plough Monday and Shrove Tuesday.

It appears to have been anciently associated with human sacrifice – perhaps in each of the three aspects or perhaps as single festivals.

Plough Monday in England was normally associated with a team of human plough-bullocks, one of whom was disguised as an old crone called Bessy. They went about leaping and dancing in high fashion, presumably to make the corn grow as high as they leapt. This was similar to the practice of the Straw-bears or Yule-goats on the continent and elsewhere in the UK.

The same practices are found in Thrace and Bulgaria on the same day, i.e. the Monday of the last week of Carnival. One dancer (the Kuker) is a man clad in goatskin. Another dancer (the Kukerica), disguised in petticoats as the old woman or baba, has “her” face blackened.

Bears are represented by dogs that are wrapped in bearskins. A mock court is set up of a king and judge and other officials. The plays of the Kuker and Kukerica are wanton and lascivious.

Towards evening, two people are yoked to a plough and the Kuker ploughs a few furrows and sows some corn. He then takes off his disguise and is paid for his trouble.

The people believe that the person who plays the Kuker commits a deadly sin and the priests also make vain efforts to abolish the customs. The Kuker in Losengrad district has a cake with money in it, which is distributed to those present. If a farmer gets the coin, the crops will be good; if a herdsman gets it, the herds will be good. The Kuker also symbolically ploughs the ground and waves to and fro to imitate the waving corn. The man with the coin is bound and dragged by the feet over the ground to quicken the fertility of the ground. This drawing by lot is reminiscent also of the Saturnalia sacrifice we saw above.

In Bulgaria itself, the festival has the Old Woman or Mother as the leading personage, played by a man in woman’s clothing. The Kuker and Kukerica are subordinate to the “Old Woman”. They wear fantastic masks of human heads with animal horns or birds’ heads and skins with a girdle of lime bark. On their back is a hump made out of rags. This festival in Bulgaria, being the Monday of the last week of Carnival, is called Cheese Monday. It is nevertheless associated with the Ploughing festival.

The same rituals associated in western Europe of going round the house and the blessings conferred by the presence of the “Old Woman” on the fertility of the village is uppermost in the minds of all. Incursion by masked people from any other village is seen as a threat and a drawing away of the fertility of the village. Such incursions are resisted.

The similarity between the Old Woman with the black face of Demeter and the two aides of Pluto and Persephone are probably behind the origins of the three kings custom, with the black Melchior representing Demeter.

The festival of Befana in Rome on the night before Epiphany is clearly related to this festival of Demeter, and the term Befana is obviously a corruption of Epiphany. She is clearly an old witch and the noise of this festival is associated with an ancient custom of clearing the area of evil influences (see also below). The same ceremonies involving Befana on the eve of Epiphany were or are observed in Tuscan Romagna and elsewhere in Italy (Frazer, ix, p. 167).

Frazer rightly sees in the Old Woman of the Bulgarian and Thracian system a reference to the Corn Mother-goddess Demeter, who in the likeness of an old woman brought blessing to the house of Celeus, king of Eleusis and restored the lost fertility to the fallow Eleusinian fields. The Kuker and Kukerica, the male and female mummers, represent Pluto and Persephone. These rituals are extant from East to West and represent the oldest of the religious festivals (Frazer, viii, pp. 334-335). We are thus directly in the middle of the Eleusinian Mystery cults and linked with the same Mystery cults of ancient times from the cult of Apollo in early Europe and of Dionysius and of agricultural symbols in the cult of worship of the Sun god. The Bull-slaying cults are thus also involved, and we see from the times of dedication of the bulls sacrificed by the Greeks in Magnesia after its dedication in the beginning of the sowing that we have a common idea of the festival. Zeus is the partner of Demeter and the final product is the slaying of the bull to Zeus in the equivalent of the month of May.

Yule logs, the holly and ivy, and mistletoe

The summer and winter solstice were seen as the two great turning points of the year. Fires were lit on both solstices. The midsummer fires were lit in the open and youths jumped the fires. This practice was found among the Celts in Ireland, Britain and Gaul and also among the North Africans in Morocco and the Atlas Mountains. Their practice is much more ancient than the Islam they also profess. The practice of lighting fires happened anciently among the pagans on May Day and on Halloween (1 November), called All Saints Day. The asymmetric nature of these festivals with that of the solstice, should be noted. The Festival of Walpurgis on the last day of April preceding May Day is the Festival of the Burning of the Witches. This type of festival is also associated with the twelve days between Christmas on 25 December and the Epiphany of 6 January. Fires of pine-resin are lit on these nights to keep the witches away. The fires are generally larger on Twelfth Night. In Silesia, people burn fires of pine-resin between Christmas and New Year to drive witches away from the farmhouses. This was the “proper time for the expulsion of the forces of darkness”. On Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, shots are fired over the fields and people wrap straw around the fruit trees to prevent evil forces from doing them harm.

In Biggar, in Lanarkshire UK, New Year’s Eve is the traditional time for this fire, which has been lit since time immemorial.

In 1644, nine witches of flesh and blood were burnt on Leith Links in Scotland (Frazer, ix, p. 165).

Fires are lit in the autumn but are not significant. The festival of the Nativity of the Virgin on 8 September was traditionally accompanied by noise and uproar as associated with Befana at Rome, and traditionally involved assassinations. Prof. Housman noted that when he witnessed the festival at Capri in 1897, a few more than the usual eight or ten were murdered (Frazer, x, p. 221).

Fires are also traditionally lit on the midwinter solstice on 25 December. The difference between the midsummer and midwinter fires is that the midwinter fires are lit indoors and form part of the ritual of the invocation of the Sun god to his place of supremacy in the heavens. Thus, the midwinter fires developed a more cloistered or family type atmosphere.

It is perhaps of significance that in the Shetland Islands, the Yule or Christmas holidays began seven days before Christmas and ended at Antinmas, i.e. the twenty-fourth day after Christmas.

The Shetlanders name these holidays the Yules. Seven days before Christmas, the elves, called Trows by the Shetlanders, are let free from their homes in the Earth and dwell above ground if it pleases them. This is the probable origin of the elf symbolism of and with Santa Claus. It seems to relate back to the concept of the misrule of the seven days of the Saturnalia leading up to 25 December.

The most important of the rituals in Yule was the saining, which had to be properly carried out to deal with the grey folk, as the elves were called.

The modern myths emanating from the USA regarding alien ‘greys’ are none other than the revamping of the elves at Yule.

On the last day of the holidays, the twenty-fourth day after Christmas, called up-helly-a, or Uphalliday in Shetland, the doors were all opened and a great deal of pantomimic chasing went on to rid the area of the mischievous elves. People piously read the Bible and displayed iron ostentatiously, “for it is well known that elves cannot abide the sight of iron”. The infants were carefully guarded and sained by learned wise women. No doubt, we have the sign of the evil eye involved here as an ancient custom (cf. also the paper The Cross: Its Origin and Significance (No. 39)).

When day dawned after twenty-fourth night, the Trows or Grey folk had vanished and the Yules were ended.

The customs of banishing evil forces and witches on a night set aside for the purpose in the period of the winter solstice and festivals can thus be traced from Rome and Calabria in the south as far north as the Shetlands. It also runs from Ireland to the Steppes and down to North Africa.

The log

We know that the Germans burnt the Yule log, which was an ancient custom even by the eleventh century. In 1184, the parish priest of Ahlen in Münsterland records bringing a tree to kindle the festal fire at the Lord’s nativity (Frazer, x, p. 247). This was found in Britain in ancient times and was common to the Teutons and apparently the Celts. John Brand is quoted by Frazer as saying that the Yule block is a counterpart of the midsummer fires made within doors because of the cold weather at the winter solstice (ibid., n. 2). This was nothing other than the erroneous application to 25 December of the solstice, which was set aside for the worship of the Sun (Frazer, x, p. 246). This lighting of the tree fire was to assist the Sun to relight its ailing lamp, and the entire system of fires and candles at the nativity before the Heavenly Virgin is the ancient worship of the Mother goddess and her infant child, the Sun. The lamps assist in the lighting of the heavenly fire of the Sun and this is the basic idea behind flame and its use in Zoroastrianism.

The Yule log was also kept among European groups and placed on the fire to ward off thunder and the effects of storms. Thus, the relationship is clearly made between the ancient gods of the Teutons over thunder and lightning and weather, and the Yule log at the solstice.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe was sacred in the religion of the Druids. The Druids who came via Egypt as Magi were picked up by the Milesians in Spain from among the Gadelians before the Scoto-Milesians went to Ireland. From there they spread into Britain and Europe (MacGeohagen The History of Ireland, Sadlier, NY, p. 42; cf. Frazer, ii, pp. 358,362; xi, pp. 76ff., 301).

Pliny (Natural History, xvi, pp. 249-251) derives the word Druid from the Greek word for oak, which is drus. It is, however, the same or similar in the Celtic, being daur. The Druids are thus priests of the oak. Their cult is thus ancient and associated with the oak groves. Other scholars prefer to derive the name from the root meaning knowledge or wisdom – hence, they were the wizards or magicians. This is also borne from the title Magi which they held (cf. Frazer, xi, pp. 76-77, n. 1 to p. 76).

The Druidic cycle of the calendar was of thirty years, and there appears to be a common relationship in their worship with that of the Boetians who, like they, worship or conjured the oak and thus both may have a common Aryan connection. The Boetian cycle, in the festival of the great Daedala, was one of sixty years and not thirty. This may have application to the Aryan practice observed among the Indians of the sixty-year cycle based on the sidereal cycle of Jupiter.

The mistletoe is cut with a golden scythe on the first or sixth day of the Moon (Frazer, xi, pp. 77-78). It is associated with fertility and was held to make barren animals and women to bring forth. It was thought to have fallen from the sky and was called the all-healer (Frazer, xi, pp. 77-79,82). Two white bulls were sacrificed at its cutting on the sixth day for this purpose. The priest was dressed in a white robe. It was cut on the first day of the Moon by the Italians, and on the sixth by the Druids. This difference is probably accounted for because of the commencement of the lunar month in both systems. Neither cut the mistletoe with an iron implement. It was not allowed to touch the Earth and, hence, it was caught in a white cloth.

The Italians believed that mistletoe growing on oak had similar properties, if we accept Pliny, and thus there was a commonality of belief to both systems.

We are thus back again to the fertility system of the Saturnalia and the healing of the Mysteries and Apollo, but in an ancient form common to the Aryans before 1000 BCE.

This system was so ancient that it was common even to the Ainu of Japan who also held it sacred. However, they use mistletoe cut from a willow because that tree is sacred to them. They agree with both the Druids (in its curative properties) and the Italians (regarding the fertility of women for childbirth) in their beliefs (Frazer, xi, p. 79).

This belief extends down to the natives of Mabuig Island in the Torres Strait (ibid.). The common belief is also found in Africa among the Walos of Senegambia (ibid.).

The veneration of mistletoe as an all-healer is found among Swiss peasants and among the Swedes (ibid., p. 82).