Happy Winter Solstice holiday!
Winter Solstice card by Ernestine Grindal
It’s only recently, when Pluto (the destroyer of paradigms) moved through Sagittarius (the sign of shared belief and theology, among other things such as travel, world culture, etc.) that a healthy skepticism over religious dogma has moved into the mainstream. Since that time it has become easier to find scholarly articles about the origin of the Christmas holiday that celebrates the supposed birth of Jesus on December 25th. In fact, in 2012 even Pope Benedict questioned the fact of Jesus’s birthday on the 25th in the year zero.
Pope Benedict makes some controversial statements in the book. He writes of how the Gospel of Matthew claims that Jesus was born when Herod the Great ruled in Judea. However, given that Herod died in 4 B.C., Jesus must have been born earlier than Exiguus originally documented. Arguments surrounding Jesus’ exact date of birth have confounded scholars for centuries. Even the Gospel of Luke contends that the birth took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria in A.D. 6.
Regardless of the date of the actual birth of Jesus, the holiday that we now call Christmas wasn’t even celebrated on December 25th until 336 c.e. and that date was formally established a few years later by Pope Julius I. This date is nine months after the Anunciation, the announcement by the Angel Gabriel of the coming birth of Jesus, which is commonly celebrated on March 25th. March 25th is, of course, very near the Vernal Equinox. December 25th is very near the Winter Solstice.
The solstices and equinoxes (cardinal points) have an important correlation to the tropical Zodiac – they mark the date on which the Sun moves […]