dies natalis Solis Invicti

 Today is the birthday of the sun, to give his Roman name, Sol Invictus (pronounces sol inwictus), the Invincible Sun, the origin of the commercial festival which many of you are today celebrating in ignorance as 'Christmas Day'. Here in the northern hemisphere, the day of the winter solstice falls on either the 21st or 22nd December but nevertheless it has been celebrated on the 25th here in England since Anglo-Saxon times. 

Yule, the Germanic pre-Christian term for 'Christmas', still used today, is also the time which marks the halfway point of winter if we consider that the autumn equinox is that point which marks the beginning of the decline of the sun's powers: we call this 'midwinter'.

According to the Venerable Bede (672/673-735 CE) of Jarrow, in the old, historic county of Durham, the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons called December and January Yule or Giuli to give it its Old English name. It marked the turning of the year and he discusses this in his de temporum ratione (On the Reckoning of Time). The Anglo-Saxons used a ten month lunar calendar as did the Romans until 46 BCE when Julius Caesar reformed the Roman calendar into a lunar-solar one consisting of twelve months. The observant reader will see traces of the old Roman calendar in the modern English names for the months: September (septem=seven), October (octo=eight), November (novem=nine) and December (decem=ten).

Later, the Anglo-Saxons differentiated between the first half of Yule (December) by calling it Ǣrra-ġēolamōnaþ and the second half, Æfterra-ġēolamōnaþ (January). The Old Norse equivalent of Geōla being Jól. Bede also attested to another feast that was held at this time of the year, Mōdraniht, meaning 'night of the mothers'. From the original Latin:

                            'incipiebant autem annum ab octavo Calendarum Januariarum die, ubi nunc natale Domini celebramus. et ipsam noctem nunc nobis sacrosanctam, tunc gentili vocabulo Modranicht, id est, matrum noctem appellabant: ob causam et suspicamur ceremoniarum, quas in ea pervigiles agebant.''

My translation:

'They began the year from the eighth calends of January, when we celebrate the birth of the Lord. And that same night now sacred to us, they used to call by the pagan name Modranicht,that is, the night of the mothers: for the reason, we suspect, of the ceremonies which they enacted on that night.'

The 'eighth calends of January' equates to the 25th December. The 'mothers' referred to by Bede are likely to have been the very same personages known to us as the disir in Old Norse, the itis in Old High German, the idis in Old Saxon and the Old English ides. The similar etymology for these terms across four old Germanic languages seems to imply a common and ancient Germanic cultural and religious inheritance. Taking the Old Norse term, dis, we find this as a suffix in Vanadis, the dis of the Vanir, an epithet for the goddess, Freyja. This would imply that the mothers, if they are indeed disir are divine or semi-divine entities, possibly ancestrices of the Anglo-Saxons themselves, elevated to a semi-divine status by a people who honoured their distant ancestors to the point of reverence and worship.

 Indeed, there may very well be a connection between the disir and the 'mothers' via the matronae/matres worshipped by the Celto-Germanic peoples of northwest Europe. Stone altars attesting to their worship are to be found in Gaul, the Rhineland and the low countries, particularly in areas occupied by the Romans. The best known of these deities is without a doubt, Nehalennia attested to in 2nd and 3rd century BCE Gallia Belgica (Belgic Gaul), a Romano-Celto-Germanic cultural melting pot. Anyone interested in Nehalennia and similar deities would benefit from obtaining a copy of Nehalennia. Divine Lady of Prosperity, Trade and Safe Crossings by Gunivortus Goos (GardenStone), 2023.

The idisi are referred to in the First Merseburg Charm, written in Old High German and dated to the 9th century. 

                                              Eiris sazun idisi,

                                              sazun hera duoder;
                                              suma hapt heptidun,
                                              suma heri lezidun,
                                              suma clubodun
                                              umbi cuoniouuidi:
                                              insprinc haptbandun,

                                              inuar uigandun (Griffiths, 2003)

Modern English translation (by Giangrosso, 2016)

                                              Once sat women,

                                              They sat here, then there.
                                              Some fastened bonds,
                                              Some impeded an army,
                                              Some unraveled fetters:

                                              Escape the bonds,
                                              flee the enemy!

The idisi are clearly not mortal women when one analyses their activities, which resemble more that of the Nornir, referred to in the Eddas, who decide the fates of men.

Reflections on Yule Part One-The Lie of Christmas (the Dating)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stele_Sol_Invictus_Terme.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Stele_Sol_Invictus_Terme.jpg

Baths of Diocletian, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

This series of essays originated as a reaction to the recent and sudden emergence of 'Christian Nationalism' in the United Kingdom, which is yet another unwanted and unasked for import from that loony bin of religious nutters, the United States. 'Tommy Robinson's' recent public promotion of Christianity is causing a third nationalist force or movement to arise in this country: 'Christian Nationalism', which as I have argued in my earlier essay, The Dangers of 'Christian Nationalism' Arising in the United Kingdom is a relatively new nationalist movement and 'Robinson' is one of its key architects. The other two nationalist movements being Civic Nationalism and Ethnic Nationalism or Ethno-nationalism.

'Christian Nationalism' is not only a nationalist movement in its own right but has the potential to unite the other two factions, Ethnic Nationalism and Civic Nationalism. If this is allowed to happen then it would exert a powerful influence upon any future government of a 'nationalist' sentiment, such as a potential government led by Reform Uk Ltd. We have seen how 'Christian Nationalism' has, during Trump's two terms in office, exerted an influence upon policies flowing from the 'Oval Office'. If this were to happen in this country, one can envisage how 'Christian Nationalism' may quickly shed its snakeskin and transform into a fully ledged 'Christofascist' movement. Once given temporal power, the Church, as in the past, misuses this power for its own ends. In such a society, anyone with diverging political and religious views may face a certain amount of persecution.  

Having established my reason for starting this series of essays, I must now move on to discuss how the Church gradually transformed the ancient pre-Christian feast of Yule by superimposing an artificial Christian veneer. Let us start with the date of 'Christmas', 25th December. As anyone who has ever read the gospel accounts in the New Testament can affirm, there is no evidence in those accounts of the 'birth' of 'Jesus' to substantiate such a date, and to be fair, the vast majority of Christians, both real and imaginary ('Christian Nationalists') would readily agree with that. So what is the significance, if any, of that date? Quite simply, in the Roman Empire, the 25th December was commemorated as the day of the 'birth of the sun', being the winter solstice in the Roman calendar. The calendar of Antiochus of Athens, a notable Greek astrologer, who lived between the late first and the mid second century CE marks that date as the 'birthday of the Sun'. From 274 CE, the Roman festival of dies natalis Solis Invictus (the day of birth of the invincible sun) was held on 25th December. Please note that Latin words should never be capitalised, even at the beginning of a sentence, the only exception being that of proper nouns, and Sol Invictus is a proper noun. The emperor, Aurelian (Lucius Domitius Aurelianus), c. 214-275 CE, revived the cult of the sun god, and raised Sol Invictus to being the primary god of the empire.

Now the question may be asked, did the tradition of celebrating Christ's 'birthday' precede the dating of dies natalis Solis Invictus? There is no evidence that it did: the earliest evidence for the dating of the 'birthday' of 'Jesus' is the Filocalian Calendar, produced in 354 CE for a wealthy Roman citizen, Valentinus by Furius Dionysius Filocalus, an illustrator, mapmaker, scribe and stone engraver, who became the official engraver of Pope Damasus (304-384 CE). Of course, one may legitimately argue that 'lack of evidence is not evidence of absence' and they would be perfectly correct, but as the primary texts of Christianity, namely the gospels, do not specify a date, and given that the winter solstice was already an established festival in Europe, known in the Germanic lands as Yule, then it would be equally legitimate to argue that this date was chosen by the Church in order to provide a Christian veneer to a clearly pagan festival. The symbolism of the birth of the infant sun and its growing light in a dark world would not have been lost on the likes of Augustine in the fourth century CE, who commented on this in his sermons. Conveniently for the Church, the winter solstice festival is a nice and neat nine months from the date of the spring equinox in the Roman calendar, 25th March and known as the 'Annunciation', the conception of the Christ child by the 'virgin' Mary.   

Islam, an Abrahamic religion which also acknowledges 'Jesus' as a prophet, contends that his birth occurred sometime between June and October, giving plenty of scope for the Jesus freaks to make their argument that he could have been born in any of one of six months: plenty to choose from! Of all the various Christian sects, only the Jehovah's Witnesses have, in my opinion, the correct view. They view 'Christmas' as a later addition by the Church, pointing out that the earliest Christians did not celebrate his birth and that the concept originated in the fourth century CE, using the Roman feast of Saturnalia as its template. The feast of Saturnalia, as the name suggests, was held in honour of the Roman god, Saturn. It was celebrated on 17th December according to the Julian calendar. The Julian calendar was a solar one, proposed by Gaius Julius Caesar in 46 BCE, replacing an earlier lunisolar one. This remained the predominant calendar in the western hemisphere until the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 CE.  The Jehovah's Witnesses argue that as the shepherds would have been unlikely to be out in the fields in December, they propose that early October would have been a more logical time.

Sol Invictus is not the only god to be 'born' on 25th December: he is accompanied by a host of other deities who share the same birthday: Horus, Osiris, Attis, Zoroaster, Heracles, Mithra, Krishna, the Buddha, Tammuz, Adonis, Bacchus, Hermes, Prometheus and Dionysus. My sincerest apologies to any deities whom I may have inadvertently omitted to mention!