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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-What a nice Christmas I had!
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Subject: What a nice Christmas I had!
I had a Merry Christmas. How about you? I worked on Profiles and Lockers,
and a two friends came by and brought Christmas dinner to share with me and
my partner. We also watched TV and saw "Return to Me" which is a cute
current movie you would enjoy because of the foxhunter hero and several hot
silverfoxes (including Carroll O'Connor) who have fun
playing poker and dancing together!!! My partner loved those parts! Hee hee.
The one from San Francisco cooked a ham and left me the hambone, which I use
in wintertime for making a combination lentil and split-pea soup which my
partner (who is also a good cook) loves.
Subject: Happy Kwanzaa! Ben Boxer wishes a Happy Kwanzaa to our African-American subscribers!
Headline:
Text: Subject: "Goddess bless us, every one!" Lest we forget our Pagan brothers, Ben Boxer wishes Happy Yule to all list members who may be of the Wiccan or related faiths. I have submitted the below article in its entirety because less informed Christians may be surprised by the Pagan origins of their holiday. On Christmas Eve, I watched Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" on TV. One of the guests was a pretty actress who was also a Bible student and a re-born Christian. Another guest, an iconoclastic author well versed on the subject, left the poor lady's arguments in tatters as he kindly, but firmly, covered her abyssmal ignorance not only of the Bible (the two stories of Creation in Genesis, etc.), but also of early Christianity in general. Her lament, echoed several times: "They didn't teach me that in Bible college!" Rallying toward the end of the show, she reached the conclusion that "none of that stuff" is important anyway "if you're re-born in Christ." Maybe that won her a ticket to Heaven -- in her own mind, at least.
Headline:
Text: In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, with it's associations of Nordic divination, Celtic fertility rites, and Roman Mithraism. That is why both Martin Luther and John Calvin abhorred it, why the Puritans refused to acknowledge it, much less celebrate it, and why it was even made ILLEGAL in Boston! The holiday was already too closely associated with the birth of older Pagan gods and heroes. And many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, many of them pre-dated the Christian Savior. Ultimately, of course, the holiday is rooted deeply in the cycle of the year. It is the Winter Solstice that is being celebrated, seed-time of the year, the longest night and shortest day. It is the birthday of the new Sun King, the Son of God -- by whatever name you choose to call him. On this darkest of nights, the Goddess becomes the Great Mother and once again gives birth. And it makes perfect poetic sense that on the longest night of the winter, "the dark night of our souls," there springs the new spark of hope, the Sacred Fire, the Light of the World, the Coel Coeth. That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, as the Christians were rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic Fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans and the Yule celebrations of the Celts and Saxons. There was never much pretense that the date they finally chose was historically accurate. Shepherds just don't "tend their flocks by night" in the high pastures in the dead of winter! But if one wishes to use the New Testament as historical evidence, this reference may point to sometime in the spring as the time of Jesus's birth. This is because the lambing season occurs in the spring and that is the only time when shepherds are likely to "watch their flocks by night" -- to make sure the lambing goes well. Knowing this, the Eastern half of the Church continued to reject December 25, preferring a "movable date" fixed by their astrologers according to the moon. Thus, despite its shaky start (for over three centuries, no one knew when Jesus was supposed to have been born!), December 25 finally began to catch on. By 529, it was a civic holiday, and all work or public business (except that of cooks, bakers, or any that contributed to the delight of the holiday) was prohibited by the Emperor Justinian. In 563, the Council of Braga forbade fasting on Christmas Day, and four years later the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days from December 25 to Epiphany as a sacred, festive season. This last point is perhaps the hardest to impress upon the modern reader, who is lucky to get a single day off work. Christmas, in the Middle Ages, was not a SINGLE day, but rather a period of TWELVE days, from December 25 to January 6. The Twelve Days of Christmas, in fact. It is certainly lamentable that the modern world has abandoned this approach, along with the popular Twelfth Night celebrations. Of course, the Christian version of the holiday spread to many countries no faster than Christianity itself, which means that "Christmas" wasn't celebrated in Ireland until the late fifth century; in England, Switzerland, and Austria until the seventh; in Germany until the eighth; and in the Slavic lands until the ninth and tenth. Not that these countries lacked their own mid-winter celebrations of Yuletide. Long before the world had heard of Jesus, Pagans had been observing the season by bringing in the Yule log, wishing on it, and lighting it from the remains of last year's log. Riddles were posed and answered, magic and rituals were practiced, wild boars were sacrificed and consumed along with large quantities of liquor, corn dollies were carried from house to house while carolling, fertility rites were practiced (girls standing under a sprig of mistletoe were subject to a bit more than a kiss), and divinations were cast for the coming Spring. Many of these Pagan customs, in an appropriately watered-down form, have entered the mainstream of Christian celebration, though most celebrants do not realize (or do not mention it, if they do) their origins. For modern Witches, Yule (from the Anglo-Saxon "Yula", meaning "wheel" of the year) is usually celebrated on the actual Winter Solstice, which may vary by a few days, though it usually occurs on or around December 21st. It is a Lesser Sabbat or Lower Holiday in the modern Pagan calendar, one of the four quarter-days of the year, but a very important one. Pagan customs are still enthusiastically followed. Once, the Yule log had been the center of the celebration. It was lighted on the eve of the solstice (it should light on the first try) and must be kept burning for twelve hours, for good luck. It should be made of ash. Later, the Yule log was replaced by the Yule tree but, instead of burning it, burning candles were placed on it. In Christianity, Protestants might claim that Martin Luther invented the custom, and Catholics might grant St. Boniface the honor, but the custom can demonstrably be traced back through the Roman Saturnalia all the way to ancient Egypt. Needless to say, such a tree should be cut down rather than purchased, and should be disposed of by burning, the proper way to dispatch any sacred object. Along with the evergreen, the holly and the ivy and the mistletoe were important plants of the season, all symbolizing fertility and everlasting life. Mistletoe was especially venerated by the Celtic Druids, who cut it with a golden sickle on the sixth night of the moon, and believed it to be an aphrodisiac. (Magically -- not medicinally! It's highly toxic!) But aphrodisiacs must have been the smallest part of the Yuletide menu in ancient times, as contemporary reports indicate that the tables fairly creaked under the strain of every type of good food. And drink! The most popular of which was the "wassail cup" deriving its name from the Anglo-Saxon term "waes hael" (be whole or hale). Medieval Christmas folklore seems endless: that animals will all kneel down as the Holy Night arrives, that bees hum the "100th psalm" on Christmas Eve, that a windy Christmas will bring good luck, that a person born on Christmas Day can see the Little People, that a cricket on the hearth brings good luck, that if one opens all the doors of the house at midnight all the evil spirits will depart, that you will have one lucky month for each Christmas pudding you sample, that the tree must be taken down by Twelfth Night or bad luck is sure to follow, that "if Christmas on a Sunday be, a windy winter we shall see," that "hours of sun on Christmas Day, so many frosts in the month of May," that one can use the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the weather for each of the twelve months of the coming year, and so on.
Remembering that most Christmas customs are
ultimately based upon older Pagan customs, it
only remains for modern Pagans to reclaim their
lost traditions. In doing so, we can share many
common customs with our Christian friends,
albeit with a slightly different interpretation. And
thus we all share in the beauty of this most
magical of seasons, when the Mother Goddess
once again gives birth to the baby Sun-God and
sets the wheel in motion again. To conclude with
a long-overdue paraphrase, "Goddess bless us,
every one!"
Subject: Solution (?) for AOL users to view new Locker Albums A member has sent me a possible solution to the problem some AOL users report they are having in trying to access the new Silverfoxes and Foxhunters Albums in the Silverfoxes Clubhouse Locker Room. Please read his e-mail below. Thanks, Neal!
Ben Boxer
From: NealWM@aol.com Subject: Re: New Silverfox Album locker When it comes to various websites created to be viewed by the major two browsers, AOL's proprietary browser will not accept it thus making unviewable...if you only try using AOL's browser. But with the last two upgrades of the AOL software, one is now able to use a third party browser within AOL instead. Netscape Nav. can be downloaded for free from their site and once you successfully sign on to AOL (after installing Netscape) you can access the internet by launching the third party browser software thus using AOL as just the gateway (or simple ISP) for the browser. The same holds true for Microsoft Internet Explorer. I use the Mac platform personally and have AOL as my ISP and have had very few problems using Netscape as my browser of choice. Hope this helps some...
neal
Subject: Re: Solution (?) for AOL users to view new Locker Albums
- ----- Original Message ----- The solution put forward by Neal is quite true. In fact, this system used to work as soon as Microsoft and Netscape added .art image (proprietary AOL format) support to their browsers. I've had IE 4.0 working over a connection supplied by AOL 3.0i, for example. I don't know about the Mac version, but Windows and Linux versions of Netscape Navigator prior to V4.7 would crash upon loading Java applets. Also, the HTML language supported by IE is richer than that supported by NS. Finally, M$'s email client, Outlook Express, allows you to manage multiple POP3 email accounts and NS Communicator doesn't. Just my $0.02 worth... GRS ------------------------------ End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #88
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Kwanzaa (Quansa) is a holiday celebrated by
many African-Americans. It is held December
26th through January 1st. It was started in 1966
by Doctor Maulana Karenga, Professor at the
California State University, Long Beach,
California.
Even though we prefer to
use the word "Yule," and our celebrations may
peak a few days BEFORE the 25th, we
nonetheless follow many of the traditional
customs of the season: decorated trees, caroling,
presents, Yule logs, and mistletoe. We might
even go so far as putting up a "Nativity set,"
though for us the three central characters are
likely to be interpreted as Mother Nature,
Father Time, and the Baby Sun-God. None of
this will come as a surprise to anyone who knows
the true history of the holiday, of course.