This has been the shortest day of the year--and now we endure the longest night. Tonight, the light is at its weakest; our perceptions are clouded, and our spirits dimmed by the oppressive darkness. The winter months, in fact, are generally cold, damp and depressing--the perfect climate for Yahweh to thrive--but tonight, when darkness claims the world and the truth is almost invisible, he is at his strongest. Even the moon does not shine as brightly tonight. To those inclined to symbolic thinking, this seems like the least auspicious day of the year--and in the long, dark night of prehistory, it was just that. The bitter cold made food scarce, and kept us huddled in caves, desperately trying to keep a tiny, flickering flame alight.
But sapience learns. Sapience adapts. Sapience cooperates, rises above its circumstances, and finds the spark of hope even in the most impossible places. In those first winters, when the wind howled outside and even seeing the next sunrise was in doubt, we huddled close, not only to the fire... but to each other. When two bands of wandering humans happened to share a dwelling, they'd exchange gifts, both as a show of good faith and to strengthen the bonds between them.
As we grew as a species, becoming more advanced and spreading out across the continent, the solar calendar became the center of our existence, and the Winter Solstice became even more important to us--in the northernmost regions, the entire rest of the year was a mad scramble to raise livestock, grow crops, and store up enough food to survive the winter. Yesterday was when we set everything aside--with the last seasonal crop in storage, we tapped the booze that had spent all year fermenting, slaughtered most of the cattle so they'd be feeding us during the winter instead of the other way around, and threw one last drunken, orgiastic party before shutting things down for the winter. Gifts were shared, marriages arranged, and stupid amounts of food and alcohol were enjoyed. Over time, as we diverged culturally, these festivals speciated as well. The Romans celebrated Saturnalia by unchaining their primordial chaos god and turning their social order on its head for a week; the Japanese celebrated the rebirth of the sun with funerary processions and stand-up comedy (look, don't ask me, I have no clue); and my own people took the whole slaughtering thing a little too seriously and ritually sacrificed horses, cattle, sheep and the occasional person to our pantheon of hairy, drunken supermen.
Then, Yahweh came out from the desert. A thunder-god, grown to monotheistic proportions by devouring his siblings in the Semitic pantheon, Yahweh paused only long enough to fatally maul his Indo-Iranian counterpart--the equally-bloated Ahura Mazda--before laying waste to Europe. Entire civilizations were subverted, their gods swept aside and consumed by Yahweh, their dearest traditions repurposed to glorify him.
But the middle-eastern culture of the people who brought Yahweh to Rome was, and still is, so utterly alien to peoples shaped by temperate Europe that the transformation was imperfect. Their rituals, like their calendar, revolved less around the equinoxes of the sun than around the phases of the moon--their new year was in September, and the winter solstice meant nothing to them. When Yahweh abandoned them for the more effective vector of the Roman military-ecclesiastical apparatus, it became necessary for him to adapt--thus, the Solstice became the official birthday of a man who, what with the shepherds abiding in the fields watching over their flock by night, was most likely born in midsummer. The particular day we celebrate his birth, in fact, is not only the date of the Roman solstice celebration, but is also the Nativity of the Unconquered Sun, the feast day of Sol Invictus--the very god worshiped by Emperor Constantine before he betrayed his country and became the thrall of Yahweh!
My gods are dead, my culture in ruins, and my heritage beyond any hope of recovery--and this may not be such a bad thing. We did not die the slow death of the Amerindian; I will never experience the alienation and displacement of the African-American, never truly understand the beaten-dog paranoia of the Jew. We are not who we were before Yahweh passed over us, not Saxons or Jutes or Lombards; we were chewed up, swallowed, and spat out as Christians--and with that gone, I am only a human, devoid of label or tribe, with only Prometheus Lucifer to show me the path. But how better to reclaim the ground my ancestors lost, in however tiny measure, than to reclaim the Solstice for nobler things than some Iron Age guru's birthday? My hypothetical brothers, I posit that it is our duty to take back what was stolen from us--to show Yahweh's toadies that they don't have a monopoly on peace and goodwill this time of year!
With that in mind, as of this Solstice night, I am declaring the start of a new Antagonistic festival--the Satanalia! For three days preceding the Solstice and three days after, the followers of the Satanic Ideal are exhorted to make up for the lack of Prometheus's light by embracing the heat of Lucifer! It's time for revelry! Chaos! Obscenity and licentiousness! Love and charity! Cats and dogs living together! Get out there, be happy, and make as many other people happy as you can!
Your Supreme Muckety-Muck commands you: arise, soldiers of Satan, and let the War on Christmas begin!
